A Crown of Snow and Ice: A Retelling of The Snow Queen (Beyond the Four Kingdoms Book 3)

by Melanie Cellier

  Oliver slumped into a chair without speaking, his eyes on the fire. There was definitely something wrong with these people. I just couldn’t work out what.

  Giselle looked from him to me and then shook her head sadly. “It was only our first day,” she said, but I didn’t hear any hope in her voice. She looked over at me. “As far as we could judge everyone seemed genuinely bemused by our questions about the mirror. And they had even less desire to talk about their object, whatever it might be.”

  I had no answer for that, so silence fell. After a long moment, Oliver seemed to wrench himself from his gloomy thoughts, focusing on me. “What about you? I don’t suppose you have anything more promising to report?”

  “Well,” I said. “I’m pretty sure I found the object.”

  Chapter 22

  Oliver and Giselle’s excitement quickly tempered when they heard the full story. Neither of them argued about the likelihood of the object being inside the building, but knowing it was in there didn’t do us much good if we couldn’t even peer at it through a window.

  I promised that I would focus my efforts for the afternoon on the people rather than the village itself. We agreed to leave any direct questioning about the object for the moment. Instead the Eldonians would focus on asking about the mirror, and I would try to extract information about the forbidden building.

  “Where’s Sterling?” I asked, as soon as we had agreed on a plan, however half-heartedly. My rumbling stomach had pushed our missing guide into my mind. “Have either of you seen him today?”

  “Not since first thing this morning when we addressed the elders,” said Oliver.

  “There are some food stores over here,” said Giselle from a small cupboard on the other side of the room. “I guess he’s left us to make our own meal.”

  I frowned. Preparing my own meal didn’t worry me, but something about his disappearance didn’t sit well. When Oliver looked at me questioningly, I smiled and shrugged off the thought. Sterling had been absent from his village for who knew how long. Was it really surprising he had things he would rather be doing than babysitting us?

  The afternoon did not go well. I had decided to take the approach of quickly abandoning any conversation that seemed less than fruitful. That way I could speak to more people and hopefully find one, somewhere, who was inclined to be a little less unfriendly. But by the time I returned to Sterling’s house, I felt sure I must have spoken to everyone in the village without finding such a person. For all my hours of effort, I had learned nothing.

  Unless you counted that the small windowless building was forbidden. Which I didn’t. That I already knew.

  One look at Oliver’s face told me they had fared no better. The darkness in his eyes scared me. I didn’t know what else we could try if this village failed us. And I didn’t know how Oliver would take defeat.

  Giselle must have seen the same thing in him. Maybe she even saw something similar in my own face. Whatever it was, she kicked us both out of the house. Sterling had still not reappeared, and she said she would prepare some food but not with us hovering around.

  “Go for a walk through the valley,” she commanded. “You look like you need it, and I certainly don’t need you here.”

  For a second Oliver looked like he would resist, but then he caught me watching him and shrugged. Why not? his eyes seemed to say. It doesn’t matter what I do, after all.

  It broke my heart.

  Silently we pulled our jackets and boots back on and ventured outside once again. Only this time we ignored the village itself, striding quickly to its outskirts. I wanted to go back through the thin passage of stone, back to the snow—something I never thought I would say—so that I could feel flame on my skin again. But Oliver led me the other way, deeper into the valley.

  We passed the barns in silence, skirting the fields beyond. Young growth appeared in the plowed earth, and the sight was at once comforting and jarring. Life goes on, it said. But at the same time I knew that only here in this valley had spring taken hold. Winter had gripped the rest of Eldon with icy fingers and refused to relinquish its grip. And the aching pain in my healed ankle—absent in all these weeks with my own personal heat source—reminded me of it with every step.

  I didn’t even realize I’d sighed until Oliver reached over and took my hand. He had never done such a thing before, and I stared at our entwined fingers for a moment, wondering if I should pull away. But I couldn’t bring myself to do it. I had thought he was falling apart, and yet a strength seemed to flow into me from his firm clasp.

  We walked past the fields and into a small grove of trees tucked up against the surrounding cliffs. Only once we had passed out of sight of the village did he sigh, his body releasing tension I hadn’t even realized it held.

  He dropped my hand and I flexed it, hidden within the folds of my jacket-skirt. I had always prided myself on my strength, so why did I feel strangely empty now, and cold, without his warm fingers in mine? I forced my hand to still. I would not be weak. I would not be helpless. I didn’t need my power, and I didn’t need anyone else. I would find a way to save us.

  Oliver turned suddenly to meet my eyes, and my thoughts fell away. Fear gripped me. Because I could read too easily the same determination in his eyes. Without thinking, I closed the space between us, grabbing the front of his jacket in both of my cold hands.

  “What?” I asked. “What are you planning?”

  My words seemed to take him by surprise, and he hesitated for a moment. Finally he reached up to place his hands over mine. I didn’t let go of the jacket.

  “We’re not making any headway here. There’s no sign of the mirror, and we can’t even get them to give us any information on their object. Let alone the object itself. It’s obviously a powerful object since it’s nullified your powers, but that means we can’t force them to help us. I’ve been so sure I needed to bring this object back to the palace, but then I realized I was wrong.”

  I stared up at him, trying not to allow myself to hope that he’d actually thought of another way. But it wasn’t hope I saw looking back at me in his eyes. It was despair. I trembled, and his hands dropped from mine, circling around me instead in an embrace I barely noticed.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s no reason it needs to be me that brings the artifact back to the palace. You and Giselle could do it just as well I’m sure.”

  My mouth wanted to protest, but his eyes silenced me. What is he planning?

  “I can understand why the villagers wouldn’t want to risk their object. And they’ve made it clear they feel no loyalty or allegiance to me or the crown. So I need to show them they can trust us. That we will return it. I’ve been wracking my brain trying to work out how to do so, when I realized the answer is simple. I’ll offer myself in exchange. I will remain here—as a hostage of sorts, I suppose—until you return with the object.”

  He forced a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. I knew the prospect of staying back and leaving us to defeat this enchantment on our own must be killing him.

  “You will come back for me, won’t you, Celine?”

  His attempt at lightening the mood didn’t work. I shook my head quickly, and his expression dropped.

  “No,” I said, more strength in my voice than I expected. “I won’t come back for you.”

  His eyes searched mine, and I wondered what he saw there.

  “I won’t come back for you because I’m not leaving you in the first place. Without that object—and without me—you won’t survive here. None of you will. We saw that on the mountain. We have to convince them all to come down with us.”

  “But they never will, Celine,” he said, fear in his voice. “It’s only been a day but already I can see that. These people will never follow where I lead. They will never give me the object or come with me down the mountain.”

  I remembered the elder’s words about sovereignty. Did Oliver think this refusal from the villagers was an act of defia
nce against him? Was that what had given rise to this mad plan? Did he mean to sacrifice himself?

  I shook him. “You cannot stay here. I will not leave you to die here alone.”

  Oliver’s breath caught, and a different look crossed his face. One that made me pause and forget for a moment all about enchantments and godmother items and the killing power of a blizzard.

  “I wish it could be true,” he said, his words a whisper. “I wish it could be that you will never leave me.”

  This time it was my own trembling that made my hands shake his jacket. “I will not leave you.”

  One hand slipped up from my waist, somehow free of its glove, to trace the lines of my face. “I wish it were true,” he said again. “But even without all this, you are a creature of fire and heat, Celine. You were before ever your godmother got involved. Why do you think she gave you such a gift? You could never be happy here, in a kingdom of snow, trapped in a palace like ice. How could I ask such a thing of you?”

  I couldn’t breathe, but somehow I found the breath to speak. “You wouldn’t have to ask.”

  Even as I said the words, I wondered if they were true. Would I stay here for him? Would I condemn myself to a lifetime in this frozen kingdom? But the answer was already burning through my veins. Here in this valley where my gift had been stripped from me, I still felt heat rushing through every part of me. It jumped from his hand to my face, and it seemed to center around my heart.

  Love. The word whispered in my mind, echoing through me until it grew into an all-consuming shout. I never dreamed when I sailed from Palinar that such a thing could be possible. But I hadn’t met Oliver then. Not truly. I could never have loved the icicle that the enchantment had made him.

  But the real Oliver—the one I had seen since our eyes met on that first day when Lord Treestone’s men attacked—that Oliver burned just as brightly as me. He might be prince over the ice and snow, but for all his words about my fire, one just as strong burned in him.

  It drove him, while still only partially freed from the cloying fog of enchantment, to track us through the forest and scale a castle alone, little more than a shadow. And it drove him now to fight, and to sacrifice himself, to save his people and his kingdom. A kingdom he knew inside out. I had seen it in my weeks in Eldon. Oliver was no prince who hid himself away in his palace, above the people he was called to serve. He was certainly confident in the icy marble halls—a figure of assurance and authority—but he was also at home in the southern woods, in the tunnels of the capitals where he could read the tunnel markings like any local civilian, and on the ice-filled mountains themselves where he could snowshoe like an expert and track a snow leopard without pause.

  The shout reverberating inside me spilled out of my eyes, and I saw his own light up in response. His hand dropped from my face, returning to my waist and pulling me hard against him. His eyes blazed back into mine, but still he hesitated.

  “Are you asking?” His voice sounded ragged, and it took me a moment to recall our long-ago conversation.

  I nodded, unable to speak, and then our lips met, mine angled up to meet his as he pressed his face down to mine.

  His kiss reached all the way down to my toes, filled with too many emotions to separate. Our love and longing swirled with our desperation and fear and despair. I knew, without a doubt, that if we had stood anywhere but this valley we would both have gone up in flames by now. None of my attempts at training would have been a match for emotions like this.

  If only our biggest problem was his icy kingdom and my aversion to the cold. But we both knew it was not. And our desperation fueled a kiss that tasted too much of goodbye.

  I clung to him still because I was afraid if I let go I would fall. I had promised myself I would be strong, but some things I could not withstand.

  When Oliver at last pulled away, he rested his forehead against mine, both of our breaths ragged. It hurt to look at him, so I closed my eyes.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he breathed against me. “Sometimes you seem too bright to be real.”

  I laughed shakily, unsure how to reply. I was beautiful enough, it was true—although not like my sister, Celeste. All the women of my family were. But my beauty had done no good against the snow leopard. And it did us no good now, when we stood so close to something that could save us. For all my efforts to be more—for all my brief taste of true power—I had been reduced once again to a beautiful princess. He said he saw brightness in me, but in truth my fire had failed us.

  I tasted fear in my mouth when I remembered what he planned to do. How he planned to sacrifice himself because I had failed to protect us as we planned.

  Shaking my head, I pulled back, out of the warm circle of his arms. He looked at me, his brow furrowed and eyes confused as if waking from a dream.

  “What is it?” he asked, his gaze never leaving my face. Once again I wondered what he could read there.

  “I said that I would not leave you, Oliver, but what of you? Will you truly leave me?”

  Pain twisted his face. “I must.”

  “No!” I slashed angrily at the air with my hand. “This is not the way. This will not save us. Your kingdom needs you fighting, not waiting uselessly!”

  I saw my words hit him like a physical blow, but I wouldn’t take them back. I could feel every nerve humming. I had to make him understand. This village was poison, for all it looked so idyllic. I could sense it—had sensed it since we stepped through the rock. I didn’t know where the poison came from, but nothing good would come of lingering here.

  “I wish there were another way,” he said, “but I cannot see one.”

  I took two stumbling steps backward, his haunted eyes piercing me. Had I been cold when we started this walk? Every part of me burned now. And yet still no flames leaped to my command. I closed my eyes, drawing deep breaths, trying to think of something that might convince him.

  But when I opened them again, he was gone. I sank down onto the forest floor. For all I apparently burned so brightly, I had not been enough. I could not save us from whatever poisoned Valley View. I could not take the object by force. And I could not keep Oliver from walking away. What use was my fire now?

  Chapter 23

  I don’t know how long I remained curled there, but eventually the cold seeped through into every part of me, driving out any lingering warmth from our embrace. Even in this protected valley it wasn’t warm enough to stay outside and still for so long without a fire.

  But the cold wasn’t the only thing that had taken root inside me. I didn’t need fire, I could save us all without it. I had promised myself I could, and I would not back down now.

  I suspected the elders wouldn’t even accept Oliver’s proposal, but I didn’t want to take the risk. I could save him before he even approached them.

  I just needed the object. And I knew where to find it.

  As I strode back toward the village, new energy flowing through me, I made my plans. Dark was already falling, but I would wait for full black. Then I would force my way through that door and take the object that could save an entire kingdom. These people would thank me one day, when they had been forced away from this noxious place.

  Once I had it, we would run for it, straight back down the mountain. The villagers would undoubtedly pursue us—they would have to. But by then it would be too late. I would send Oliver and Giselle ahead with the object, and I would stay behind, just out of range. I would protect us with an inferno impossible to penetrate no matter how well these people knew their mountain. And somehow, with me as the buffer between us, all of us would make it down the mountain. Once we were back in the palace with the object, we would have the royal guard to protect us from the incensed villagers and their treasonous ideas.

  I was fired up, ready to act now, but I made myself wait. Full dark still hadn’t fallen. And a loud grumble from my belly reminded me I hadn’t eaten yet, so I reluctantly returned to the house. Calmly sitting down to eat felt too much like
being locked back up in Lord Treestone’s castle, but I needed every advantage I could get. Food would only strengthen me.

  When I appeared, Oliver quickly looked away, his eyes guarded, his fists tightening briefly. I carefully focused on Giselle instead who looked curiously between us. Eventually she shook her head and turned back to the food.

  “I’m not going to ask,” she muttered as she served it into bowls.

  I appreciated her forbearance.

  Although I forced myself to sit and eat, Oliver didn’t seem to have the same capacity. Whether it was his coming sacrifice, or our encounter in the trees, something tormented him enough that he could sit still only for a minute. After thrusting himself back from the table and striding to the fire for the third time, he was met with a glare from Giselle.

  “Sorry,” he said, sounding guilty. “I’ll go.” And before either of us could protest, he had disappeared out the door.

  “What did you do to him?” she asked, her voice halfway between exasperated and amused.

  A flush rose up my neck, and I couldn’t answer her in kind.

  “Well!” she said after a moment of silence.

  I pushed my bowl away and leaned across the table. “I don’t know when he’ll be back, which means you have to get ready for all of us.”

  “What?” Giselle seemed confused by the sudden change of topic, her blue eyes uneasy at the light in mine.

  “We’re getting out of here—tonight. So you need to be dressed and packed for a hasty exit.” I gave her a significant look, and she frowned.

  “What exactly are the two of you planning?”

  “I’m going to save us before your brother does something stupid. And I’m not waiting any longer.” I stood to my feet and pulled on my jacket. “So just be ready.”

  Giselle stood and joined me, although she made no move to pack our bags or dress herself.

  “Why do I get the distinct impression that you’re the one about to do something stupid?” She eyed me warily. “What are you planning to do, Celine?”