Queen Glaciana Frostborne Alpineglow's Arc

Chapter 19 of 33

The climb down the mountain took two days. The whole way, Victor said little. He rode close to Glaciana, one hand pressed to his chest, as if he were holding something in place. She asked twice what troubled him. Both times he shook his head and looked back at the thawing peak. Only when they reached the palace and the doors of their chamber closed behind them did he finally speak. "I need to tell you what I felt," Victor said. He sat on the edge of the bed, still in his heavy blue coat, the sapphire crown set aside on the table. His grey eyes were fixed on the floor. "Under the mountain. When the crystal broke. I felt a heartbeat." Glaciana sat beside him. She had feared this since the chamber. Something had woken in the melt, and she did not know if it meant her people harm. "A heartbeat," she said. "Whose?" "I know it." Victor pressed his palm flat against his ribs. "I have known it since I was a boy. Before my father died. I had a dragon." He said the word plainly, the way he said everything. "We hatched him ourselves. He slept in the courtyard. Then one winter he flew north and never came back. I was told he died in the cold." Glaciana went still. "And the heartbeat in the mountain—" "Is his." Victor looked up at her. His jaw was tight. "He didn't die. He froze. The crystal held him under the ice for years. Now the ice is gone." For the first time in days, something eased in his face. "He's waking. And he's coming here." Relief and fear moved through Glaciana at once. Not a monster, then. Not a thing loosed to prey on her villages. A creature that belonged to the man she loved. "You're certain," she said. "Certain it's the same one. Certain he means us no harm." "I know his heart the way I know my own." Victor took her hand. His grip was steady now. "He knew me as a child. He will know you as my wife. And when we have children, he will guard them the way he once guarded me." He stopped, the boundary named, the subject closed. But he did not let go of her hand. Glaciana thought of the empty courtyard below, of a kingdom that had asked for years who would come after her. She had married for love. Now that love brought a guardian out of the ice for the family they meant to build. She rose and went to the window. Far off, above the bare grey peak, a shape lifted against the sky and turned toward the palace. "Then we make room for him," she said. "Before he arrives." Victor stood and came to her and hugged her from behind. He whispered in her ear and rubbed her belly, “And make room for our own children.” Glaciana’s face blushed hard.