Queen Glaciana Frostborne Alpineglow's Arc

Chapter 3 of 33

Victor would come to her mountain in three days, in daylight, with his crown. Glaciana meant to greet him with a gift. She walked her palace looking for one. She passed ice-carved statues, silver plates, jeweled cups from her father's vaults. Each seemed wrong. Victor was born to rule. He had held a crown since boyhood. She could not hand a king something he already owned ten times over. She stopped in a cold corridor and admitted she had nothing worth giving. So she went down to the old smithy below her mountain. The forge threw orange light on soot-dark stone. Ingrid Ironheart stood at the fire, feeding it slowly, one log at a time. Glaciana had bought hinges and blades from her for years. The blacksmith looked up and set down her work. She did not bow. "Back again," Ingrid said. "Not in a servant's cloak this time." "I need to make something. A gift for a king." Glaciana felt the words sound foolish out loud. "Everything I own, he already has grander. I don't know what a queen gives a man who ruled from birth." Ingrid studied her. "Kings have gold. Gold is easy." She wiped her hands. "You don't buy a gift like that. You make it." "I was trained as an engineer," Glaciana said. "My father taught me. But my hands are cold. Yours know steel." "Then we both work." Ingrid pulled a stool to the anvil. They chose silver. Glaciana held the small band in the tongs while Ingrid heated and hammered it. The queen shaped the face herself, flat and smooth, ready for an engraving. Her fingers remembered the tools. She cut a fine pattern into the metal by hand, the way her father showed her over cold winter nights. "Why silver?" Ingrid asked. "He wears gold and sapphire." "Because I won't match his crown. I don't want to." Glaciana turned the ring in the light. "I want him to have something plain and mine. A signet. He can seal letters to me with it." Ingrid grunted, which from her was praise. She showed Glaciana how to cool the band without cracking it. Her voice caught once. "My husband fed this fire thirty years. Never missed the timing." She fed another log. "Now I do it slow." Glaciana said nothing. She only worked beside the old woman until the ring was done. By the time the forge burned low, the signet lay finished in her palm. Silver, weighty, engraved by her own hand. Not grander than his crown. Only true. "He'll know a queen made this, not a jeweler," Ingrid said. "That's worth more than gold." Glaciana closed her fingers around it. She had her gift. But now a new fear rose. In three days she would place it in Victor's hand before her whole court, and she still did not know what he would say.