My cheeks warm with pride, and I straighten. “Not only operate, missus. I built it.”

Her icy eyes shine with what I think might be amusement.

“Built it? That?” the male next to her asks, though he sounds equally amused.

I nod, noting how the air still courses freely through my open throat. The nice thing about the curse is that it doesn’t punish the fae for omitting information. Information such as Zora’s aid in making the catapult.

Not that she was much assistance at all, except for helping me tug the cumbersome trough out of the barn.

“Now what does an eleven-year-old have need of a catapult for?” the female asks, wrinkling her brow in feigned suspicion.

I shrug. “Regular snowball fights are boring.”

“Now that you’re eleven?” she asks.

I confirm her assessment with a nod.

The male next to her chuckles, his heavy fur coat shaking at the shoulders.

“You seem to have quite the imagination,” the female says, and since she seems to like that about me, I decide not to correct her by telling her I didn’t make the catapult for my imagination at all, but to launch real snowballs at real people.

“Can I tell you a secret, Nox?” the female asks, and though my heart races with excitement, the question raises the hairs on the back of my head. It reminds me of something my mother always warns me. I’m not allowed to keep adults’ secrets.

But I suppose that doesn’t mean I can’t listen to them.

“Of course,” I say, though I instantly remember what else my mother tells me; I’m not to speak to strangers on the road.

But I can’t very well help it with a guard holding me still, now can I?

“My name is Abra,” the female says.

My jaw drops. “Abra? As in Queen Abra?”

I decide then that, had my mother known the Queen of Mystral would be passing by our property, she wouldn’t have kissed my head and told me not to speak to strangers.

Or at least, she would have offered the Queen of Mystral as an exception.

The queen smiles and nods.

I turn to the male sitting next to her, noting for the first time his stately posture. “That must make you the king, then.”

“How astute of you,” the guard behind me whispers, but the queen shoots him an icy glare, and he goes deathly still.

I think I like our queen.

Apparently, so does Zora, because she leaps out from behind a nearby boulder and comes hurtling at us. “YOU’RE THE QUEEN AND KING?”

I curdle in embarrassment, my cheeks going hot, but Zora doesn’t seem to notice. Her blond hair is a tangled mess, matted with soiled snow, but my sister has little awareness of her appearance as she bounces over to the royal carriage.

“I’m Zora, and this is Nox,” she says, though neither of them asked. She drops into a curtsy so low her nose grazes the snow, and when she bounces back up, condensation drips from her nose.

If the guard didn’t have my arms contained to my side, I’d bury my face in my hands.

The queen bounces her gaze between the two of us. “Zora and Nox,” she says. “Dawn and Night. The two of you even look it.”

It’s true. While Zora’s features are warm—her hair golden and her skin prone to glowing as long as she gets enough sunshine—I’m the opposite. My hair is as black as the night sky, my skin as pale as the moon.

Zora nods, as encouraged by the queen’s assessment as I am mortified. “We’re twins, but I was born in the day, and Nox was born in the night.”

I roll my eyes. Zora can’t lie either, but she always finds a way of saying things that makes them sound different from how they actually occurred. “You forgot to mention that I was born first, while the sun was still down. You were too scared of the dark,” I say, and she still is. My sister hardly sleeps, so tortured she is by her frequent nightmares.

“Tell you what, Nox,” the queen says, her pale eyelashes fluttering, “how would you like to come stay with me?”

My heart skips, and my mind replays the invitation. Before my fumbling mouth can get the words out, Zora answers for me. “You mean at the palace? Of course we want to come stay with you. Right, Nox?”

Zora must be completely oblivious to the fact there’s a guard holding me still, because she bounds right up to us and shoves me in the arm.

My tongue is numb, but not from the cold.

“Nox,” Zora hisses.

“Right. Of course. It would be our honor,” I say, having to relearn how to talk before I get my reply past my lips.

But the queen doesn’t smile like I expect her to. Instead, her blue eyes flit back and forth between my sister and me, her whitewashed lips forming into a hard line that slits across her face. “I’m afraid I must not have been clear. There is only room in the royal household for a single apprentice.” Her gaze settles on me, even as Zora recoils.

An apprentice?

The single word sends flurries of excitement racing through my veins. The queen doesn’t just wish for me to stay the night at the palace. She wants to name me her apprentice. I’m not sure what all that entails, but I’m fairly certain it means access to the queen’s laboratories, as well as a heaping pile of gemstones in my future, at the very least.

“Him? Why do you want Nox?”

The queen purses her lips, her expression less than pleasant.

To be honest, I’m wondering the same thing. Most strangers fawn over my fair-haired sister. Where her cheeks are naturally sun-kissed with health, I’m fairly certain I could spend the summer in the Sahli and still be just as sallow. Where her blue eyes are bright and inviting, mine are the shade of the ice barring a frozen lake.

People find me eerie.

Of course, people find Zora eerie too, but only after they discover she’s my twin.

A twinge of delight trickles into my stomach.

The queen prefers me to my sister.

Zora crosses her arms, and based on her acrid expression, I figure the only thing keeping me from getting another helping of snow in my mouth is the guard at my back.

“Mama and Papa won’t stand for it,” she says, and then she takes off, sprinting up and hill and disappearing from view.

“She’s just jealous,” I tell the queen, nervous now that she’ll take my sister’s assumptions seriously. “Mama and Papa will be honored.”