Queen Glaciana Frostborne Alpineglow's Arc

Chapter 11 of 33

The morning after the wedding, Glaciana tried her power against the cold. She stood at the tall window of the royal chambers and raised her hands. White light filled her eyes. She reached for the frost outside, the true winter, and pulled. The glass frosted thicker. Her knees buckled. Victor caught her before she hit the floor. Blood ran from her nose. The cold had not moved at all. "Enough," Victor said. He held her against his chest. "You're bleeding." "It didn't work." Her voice shook. "The wedding storm was small. This is three years deep. I push and it drinks me dry." She had never trained the power. Her father taught her forges and ledgers, not this. Each attempt cost her more than it changed. A soft thump sounded at the door. Kira slipped in without knocking, her snow leopard tail flicking behind her. She was Glaciana's maid and her closest friend, half snow leopard, quick on her feet and quicker with her mouth. She took one look at the blood and the light dying in Glaciana's eyes, and her playful grin vanished. "You're doing it wrong," Kira said. She crossed the huge room in three strides. "My mother's people carried this same power. You don't shove a mountain of cold. You don't have the strength. No one does." Victor's grey eyes fixed on her. "Then how." Kira knelt beside the queen. "You find the one thread holding it. My kind feel weather like a rope pulled tight. The curse has a knot somewhere. You don't lift the whole rope. You cut the knot." She took Glaciana's cold hand. "Small and exact. Not big and loud." Glaciana wiped the blood from her lip. "Show me." Kira guided the queen's hand back toward the window. "Close your eyes. Don't pull. Just listen for where it's tight." Glaciana breathed slow. The white light returned, thin this time, a candle instead of a bonfire. She stopped reaching for all of it. She searched. Far off, past the villages, she felt it. One point where the cold clenched hard, like a fist that would not open. It sat high on a peak she did not know. The rest of the winter simply hung from that fist. Her eyes opened. She did not fall. Her nose did not bleed. "There," she breathed. "It's not everywhere. It's one place. The cold pours out of a single peak." Kira sat back on her heels and grinned. "That’s my queen." Victor helped Glaciana to her feet. "Then we don't fight the whole sky," he said. "We go to the peak." Glaciana looked at her steady hands. For three winters she had endured the cold blind. Now she knew where it lived. The power no longer drained her, because she had stopped fighting the wrong battle. "We leave at first light," she said. "And we find who tied the knot." Victor held his queen back into his chest and kissed her forehead as he said against her skin, “I’m so glad you’re okay my love.“