“I—you’re the queen.” The title of “aunt” seemed far too cozy for the stone-hearted ruler sitting across from me.
“The queen,” she emphasized. “Am I your queen? Will you pledge your life to me at tomorrow’s initiation? I wonder if you harbor some doubts about where your loyalty belongs. In fact, I am starting to have some doubts of my own.”
I was nearing another patch of quicksand. “Isn’t that natural? To doubt?”
“Certainly. But that doesn’t make it desirable. Not in one of my masters. Not when the kingdom might be on the brink of war. Not in my heir. So, who, I ask again, am I to you?”
I wanted to say that I would never fight in her war. But she held Arcus’s life in her hands. She could hurt me all she liked, but I wouldn’t let her take her wrath out on him. Rebellion was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
“You are my queen,” I forced out.
“Then stop pushing me.” The words came as a low-voiced warning.
Her face remained smooth and controlled, but her nostrils flared, her eyes gleaming with fathoms of dormant embers ready to combust. Beneath her polished veneer, a cauldron of tempestuous power. I had a moment of startled recognition. Her emotions were like mine: quick, fervent, near the surface. Perhaps she had trouble controlling them, too. A part of me felt a kinship with her, whether I liked it or not.
“If you’ll excuse me,” she said in a lighter tone, “I have much to do before the wedding. Be ready for the seamstress. She will come this afternoon to measure you for your wedding gown.”
As I rose and curtsied, my hands curled into fists. Once the initiation was over, she would turn her attentions to Arcus. She’d all but said she planned to torture him for information tomorrow. I couldn’t keep waiting and watching. I needed to act.
As I strode angrily from the anteroom, I noticed the Frostblood servant standing sentinel in the throne room, his back against the wall next to the fireplace.
A spurt of indignation heated my skin further. The queen must have chosen that spot deliberately. A punishment for being a Frostblood, no doubt. How uncomfortable it must be for him, standing for long periods so close to that blazing heat. He let nothing show on his face, though. He’d had years to perfect that blank look. At least twice as many years as I’d been alive, from the look of the harsh creases in the finely drawn map of his skin.
I approached him slowly, still deciding how to play this. I needed him to trust me.
“You know the Frost King is a captive in this castle.” I left a moment of silence for him to fill.
He kept his eyes aimed at the wall behind me. “Yes, Your Highness.”
His voice was as rusty as an iron bucket left in the rain. Did no one ever talk to him? My heart contracted in a brief pulse of sympathy. It had been like that in Blackcreek Prison when Captain Drake first captured me. I could have melted into the stone floor or frozen to the iron bars of the cell, becoming just another fixture in the prison, and it wouldn’t have mattered.
“I have a theory,” I said. “The tunnels under the lava fields—they were created by Frostblood servants, weren’t they?”
He swallowed but didn’t speak.
“I saw some carvings in the walls during my first trial. Frostblood symbols I’ve seen on pillars in the king’s castle. Now, why would the Fireblood masters of Sudesia carve Frostblood symbols into their tunnels?”
He didn’t even blink. I tried not to be impatient, praying I wasn’t wasting my time.
“They wouldn’t, of course,” I answered myself. “Which means Frostbloods were there. I think they dug those tunnels and left marks on them, something that was precious, a tribute or an act of rebellion. Most of them died, didn’t they? The heat. The lava. So many ways for a Frostblood to suffer despite all that thick, frozen skin. The king has burn scars. I bet you have some, too.”
One of his hands twitched, a butterfly’s wing of movement. A tiny, telling reaction.
“There aren’t many Frostbloods left here, are there?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“I bet it was you who made the container of ice for my second trial. Suspended on a bridge? Is that right?”
He nodded.
“Do you know the tunnels?” If he could navigate for me, we might be able to use them to get Arcus back to his ship. “The queen plans to interrogate the king and I don’t think she’ll be gentle about it.”
He shook his head, his lips pressing together until they turned white.
Encouraged, I went on. “You don’t know King Arkanus, but I can tell you that he is a good king. A good person. He doesn’t deserve what Queen Nalani plans to do to him.” No reaction. I tried a different tack. “Have you ever been to Tempesia? Most of it is covered in snow for more than half the year. In the north, they barely have a summer at all. There are festivals in the mountains to celebrate the snow. Frostblood craftsmen create magnificent sculptures out of ice. I know the king would take you on his ship. You could live among your own people.”
His eyes held longing, but he shook his head once again.
I sighed in frustration. “What’s your name?”
“Broderik.”
“Broderik, are you a Frostblood or not? The king has no one to help him but me, and I can’t do it alone.”
I watched him, waiting. I was about to give up, when he gave a hesitant nod. My heart leaped. “If you can tell me anything, anything at all that might—”
“She plans to move him after the initiation,” he whispered. I had to lean in to hear him. “He’ll be transferred to the prison tomorrow morning. I overheard her telling her personal guard.”
Panic gripped my chest. “Tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
So she’d already been planning to move him to the prison for interrogation before I’d even spoken to her. Questioning me must have been an afterthought, or a way of gaining information. Either way, this meant her plans for him were firmly in place.
“Don’t you know anything that could help?” I asked. “If you don’t know the way through the tunnels, is there anyone else who does?”
He hesitated before saying in a rush, “The only people who use the tunnels are the masters. And sometimes Prince Eiko. But there’s no sense asking any of them.” His eyes darted to the corner and back to me, widening. “Go. She’s coming.”
He returned to his blank-faced stare.
The door to the anteroom started to open. I slipped from the throne room.
There was no doubt where I had to go next. If Prince Eiko sometimes used the tunnels, perhaps he had a map. Queen Nalani had said that the prince slept late in the mornings.
A perfect time to search his observatory.
TWENTY-FOUR
I VAULTED UP THE OBSERVATORY tower stairs and entered the room at the top, narrowing my eyes against the sudden brightness. The round room was well lit by three tall windows and crowded with tables, bookshelves, nautical instruments, and metal contraptions I had no name for. I swept toward the nearest bookshelf, which also held rolled-up maps.
I had another reason for searching the observatory. Ever since my failed mission in the library, the whereabouts of the book had played on my mind. Prince Eiko had intercepted me the night I’d broken in. He’d known I was looking for something and certainly seemed to know more than he was saying. If he had the book, where better to store it than among a hundred other volumes in a tower used only by him?
I traced my fingers over the spines of books, then pulled scrolls from their perch on the shelves, unrolling and tossing them aside one by one. There was nothing neat or methodical about this. Prince Eiko would know his inner sanctum had been ransacked, but I had no time to be careful.
“Can I help you with something?” an amused voice asked.
I jumped and whirled, recovering my composure with a glare. “You startled me.”
Prince Eiko sat on a chair tucked into the shadows between an armoire and a painted screen, making him almost indiscernible at first glance.