“My dear. You received my message then,” the queen says as I approach. I have to navigate multiple sections of the winding river to draw near to the queen, but as I cross the ice, my feet don’t threaten to slip.
Whether that’s due to the nature of the queen’s magically crafted ice or my newly discovered command over my body, I’m not sure.
“You did have it delivered by the hands of your best guards,” I say.
The queen’s eyes flicker with annoyance, but other than that, she doesn’t show much reaction. Her back has been rigidly plastered to the back of her throne since I’ve arrived, her hands placed neatly upon the edges of the handrests.
I bet that’s how she sits all the time.
My shoulders slouch instinctively just thinking about it.
“I see your Turning hasn’t robbed you of your excellent manners,” says the queen, her pale cheekbones highlighted in the light floating down like stardust from the ceiling.
“I see your immortality hasn’t kept you from developing knots in your shoulders,” I launch right back, though there’s no spite in the words. Only cruel boredom.
I’ve survived only days of my immortality, and I’m already bored by it.
What an excellent start.
“My son has grown fond of you,” says the queen, changing the subject, I suppose.
I fight back the urge to wince, the little critter of guilt crawling around in my chest. “I’m not so sure that’s the case any longer,” I try to say with little feeling. It’s much easier than it should be.
The queen’s pale brow furrows, and she tilts her head to the side.
The image of a feline surveying its dinner comes to mind.
“Mm,” she says by way of answer, but then she sets her hands in her lap and continues. “I am interested in striking a bargain with you, Blaise.”
“I’m afraid I’ve been warned against such since I was a youth.” My response is cool, though I can’t deny my curiosity has been piqued.
When the queen first summoned me here, I was sure it was to kill me, to take yet another thing away from Nox, but now I’m not so sure.
Whatever the queen wants, it can’t be anything good. But if she’s willing to strike a bargain, she seems to be under the impression that she has something I want.
The thought almost makes me laugh.
I don’t even remember what it feels like to want.
To crave something other than the all-consuming need for blood.
There is nothing else.
“How generous of you,” I say.
I watch the corners of the queen’s lips twitch as she fights off a sneer. It’s an expression I’m all too familiar with, though the queen is better at mastering it than most.
“There is nothing for you here, my dear,” she says, and though it’s not the same at all, I feel a kinship with Nox, the way he speaks of her touching him as if he’s hers. It’s in the way she speaks to me as if there’s an intimacy between us—one I haven’t offered. One she’s simply presumed.
If I were still human, I might cringe.
But I am not, so instead I yawn.
Well, I might have done that as a human as well.
Abra tenses, and I glean a glimmer of satisfaction from that.
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, unable to help from getting myself into trouble even when the consequences are potentially eternal, apparently. “You seem to be under the impression that I have Nox.”
It’s a foolish thing to say, to egg her on about our relationship, but the tidbit of satisfaction I feel at her annoyance is like opium to my emotion-starved heart, and I can’t seem to get enough.
The queen is silent for a long while, and there’s a part of me that’s sure she’ll withdraw her offer, that she’ll have me beheaded or staked after all for my bit of insolence. Instead, she perches on the edge of her throne and wraps her arms around her torso.
The gesture is uncertain and vulnerable and so very, very human, and for a moment the queen is no longer an ancient force to be reckoned with.
She is young and unsure and very much afraid.
“It is my understanding that you and I share something in common, my dear,” she says, and her words scrape against my hollow chest.
I trace the icy floor with the tip of my boot and do my best to appear disinterested. Like my heart isn’t thudding like a pick against the bitter layer of ice that’s caked my chest ever since I awoke into this nightmare of a life.
“And what do you believe that is?” The words are scornful, but my tone is more earnest than I intend for it to be.
“We both know the agony of losing a child.”
My heart stops beating. The air I breathe chills my chest, my lungs.
I don’t want to think about that. Because somewhere, deep down, I’m glad for the numbness that has settled over my soul, the dampness that waters down any emotion that might make it past the barriers of my intense cravings.
