Nala Sapphire's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The queen's words pointed Nala toward the east storeroom, but she went for the wrong reason at first. She wanted to show the prince she shared his grief. Yet she knew nothing of his grandmother beyond a name. If she stood before him and spoke of loss, the words would ring hollow. So she went to the storeroom not to comfort him, but to learn. The warm thing had to become real to her before she could touch it. The east storeroom smelled of dust and old cloth. Nala pulled a sheet off a tall shape in the corner. The frost goddess stood beneath it, carved from ice. Blue flames spilled from her open hands. Gold draped her shoulders. A dragon's tail coiled around her feet. Nala saw at once that no court sculptor had made this. The hands were a child's hands, copied wrong, then fixed. An old woman had loved a boy enough to carve him a goddess. At the statue's base lay a small box. Inside was a letter, sealed under a thin skin of frost. The paper had gone soft with age. Nala read what she could through the ice. It was a love letter, written to the grandmother, long ago, by someone who signed with only a heart. The grandmother had kept it her whole life. Now Nala understood. The old woman had carved love into ice because she knew how to hold it there. A voice cut the dark. "You were told to leave this alone." Tobias stood in the doorway. His cloak dragged the floor. His gold eyes were cold, but his jaw was tight, and one hand gripped the frame. He had followed her. He stared at the statue like it might strike him. Nala did not reach for him. She set the letter down and pointed at the goddess's hands. "She made these twice," Nala said. "The first time they were wrong. She carved them again until they were right. For you." The prince said nothing. His throat moved. "I didn't know her," Nala went on. "I won't pretend I did. But I know this." She touched the blue flame, and under her hand the ice brightened, fed by her own magic. The flame climbed. "She wanted it to last. So it will." His mask cracked then. Not into tears. Into stillness. He crossed the room and stood beside her, close enough that his cold shoulder brushed hers. He did not order her away. For a long moment he only looked at the hands his grandmother had carved twice. "No one has lit them since she died," he said quietly. "Now someone has," Nala answered. He looked at her, and the coldness in his eyes had thinned. He did not kneel. He did not soften his whole heart. But he had let her stand in his grief and not run. The door he guarded had opened a crack, and he had not slammed it shut.