Queen Icilia's Arc

Chapter 2 of 5

The Mirror hung whole again, but it bound nothing. The last spark of spring had slipped out through the cracks before Icilia sealed them. Now it hid somewhere in her forest, and every hour it lived, the snow near it thinned. Icilia walked the trees at dawn and searched for the thaw. She found it in a shape she did not expect. A path had grown across the frost. Apple blossoms drifted along it, pink and soft, threaded through clear crystals that caught the low light. The snow around it had melted to bare mud. The spark had settled here and started to bloom. Icilia knelt and pressed her hand to the flowers. Frost crawled from her fingers, but the blossoms only bent and sprang back warm. The spark fed them faster than she could freeze them. "You cannot catch it that way." The voice was flat and small. Icilia turned. Her daughter stood among the trees, blue hair tangled with thorns, a rose scepter in her hand. Briar Rose. Icilia had not spoken to her in an age. The girl wrote no letters. She only slept and dreamed and pulled others down with her. Seeing her here tightened something old in Icilia's chest. "You should be under your castle," Icilia said. "The spark woke me. It dreams too loud." Briar Rose looked at the blooming path. "It wants to grow. You want it dead. Neither will move it." "Then tell me what will." Briar Rose stepped onto the flowers. They did not wither under her. "I can put it to sleep. A thing asleep does not run. But I do not do this for free." Icilia knew the shape of that. Cordelia had said the same words days ago. Debts stacking on debts. "Name it." "Answer my letters." Briar Rose said it without heat. "One a season. That is all." Icilia had shown this daughter the Mirror once, long ago, and the girl had walked away and never come back the same. She had told herself the Mirror only reflected. She still believed it. But she looked at the thorns wound through her daughter's arms and did not know if she believed it enough. "Do it," Icilia said. Briar Rose knelt and touched the brightest blossom. Her scepter hummed. The pink light in the flowers dimmed. The blooms drooped and folded shut, one by one, down the whole crystal path. The mud stopped steaming. Cold crept back over the ground. In the center of the path, the spark curled small and still, sleeping, no bigger than a seed. Icilia cupped it in both hands. It did not fight her. She could carry it to the Mirror now. She rose. Briar Rose watched her, waiting. "I will answer," Icilia said. The words cost her. She turned toward the castle with the sleeping spark, and behind her, her daughter did not follow.