Queen Glaciana Frostborne Alpineglow's Arc

Chapter 31 of 33

The courts would arrive by nightfall. Glaciana held her daughter and felt the hours press down. No name had come. She looked at Victor across the bed. "Not here," she said. "Not with servants at the door and elders on the road. I want this to be ours." Victor understood at once. He wrapped mother and child in furs and carried them to the courtyard. The dragon waited there, silver scales bright in the snow, horns glowing like clear ice. It lowered its body to the ground for them. Victor lifted Glaciana onto its back and climbed up behind her. "Somewhere quiet," he told the dragon. "Elariel's house." The great wings opened and beat down, and the palace fell away below. They landed before a slender elf house of pale stone and crystal windows. Elariel met them at the door. She had assisted at the birth hours before; now she stood barefoot in the cold, silver hair loose, blue eyes tired but sharp. She looked at the bundle in Glaciana's arms and something crossed her face, a wanting she pushed down fast. "You should be resting," she said. Then, quieter: "Come in." Inside, light moved through the crystal walls in soft blue. Elariel set water to warm. Glaciana laid the baby on a low table and could not stop staring at her. "Every name feels too small," she said. "She'll rule two thrones as one. Nothing I say is worthy of that." Elariel knelt by the child. She was quiet a long moment. "My mother named me for the moon," she said. "She thought a name was armor. It isn't. It's just the first thing you give a child that you don't ask back." Her voice dropped and clipped short. She touched the baby's small hand and drew away. Glaciana watched her friend and understood. Elariel carried a bond that had killed her mother, and she had no child of her own to name. The room had gone very still. "Don't reach for the throne," Elariel said. "Reach for her." Glaciana looked down. The storm had broken the moment her daughter cried. The cold had gathered and gone gentle around this one small body. She thought of the three winters she had fought, and how the fighting had ended here. "Serene," she said. "When she came, the storm stopped. The cold went calm for the first time in years." She looked at Victor. "Serene." Victor said the name once, low. He nodded. "Serene." Elariel exhaled and smiled, though her eyes stayed wet. "A good name," she said. The dragon pressed its snout to the crystal window and huffed a cloud of frost. Glaciana lifted her daughter. "Serene Alpineglow," she said. "Heir to one throne." The name was chosen. Now she had to carry it home and set it before both courts before the light failed.