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

by Melanie Cellier

  I could already see where this was going, but I didn’t interrupt.

  “The servant girl was much beloved by all who knew her. Except for the noble girl who was jealous of her despite their stations.”

  “Let me guess, the noble girl is the Snow Queen,” said Giselle, with a disbelieving look. “And I suppose she told you all about her jealousy.”

  Sterling gave us a wry smile. “I am not without intelligence, you know. I can read between the lines as well as the next man. And, as I said, we are none of us without our weaknesses.”

  “Was there really an enchantment on the royal family?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, that part I made up. I needed to link the story to the village. To give a reason for them to possess an object that protected them from both snow and enchantment. Estelle was given a magical cloak by her godmother. One that would reveal her true self when she wore it. So she might attend a ball at the palace, and be seen for who she truly was.”

  He looked disgusted. “What a ridiculous use of such power. Truly, power is wasted on the godmothers.”

  “And yet Estelle’s pedestal is empty,” I said. “And the one here bears a cloak. I suppose the noble girl stole it?”

  “It is all rather predictable, is it not?” he said. “She hated the idea that her own servant might be judged more worthy of being a princess than her. But she was a different person then. It would be many years before she became a queen worth serving. But even now, when Estelle is long dead, she cannot let go of her completely. She keeps the portrait and the cloak, a constant reminder. But perhaps when she rules over Estelle’s kingdom—when it has become an icy wasteland that serves only her—perhaps then she will at last be able to put it all aside.”

  I wanted to be sick at the calm way he said the words, at how coldly he viewed the horrifying story about his chosen ruler.

  “The servant girl became a princess anyway,” I said, trying to understand how the noble girl had ever become the Snow Queen. “So Estelle didn’t need the cloak in the end.”

  “No.” Sterling looked thoughtful. “I suppose that only enraged her noble mistress further. And when she tried to use the garment herself, it didn’t work how she had imagined. Even her only family turned away at the sight of her true self.”

  He said the words with no more emotion than he had said anything else, but in spite of myself I felt the force of them in my gut. Didn’t we all fear that somewhere deep inside? That if people saw our true selves, they would turn away in disgust. However dark her heart had been as a girl, could I wonder that it had only become more twisted?

  Giselle must have seen the reluctant pity on my face because her next words seemed directed as much at me as Sterling. “A sad tale, certainly. But whatever she suffered then, she isn’t that person anymore. I would say she’s long since forfeited her humanity with the choices she’s made and the magic she’s used. She might have twisted godmother objects, but she seems to have twisted herself even more.”

  Sterling actually laughed at that. “It’s an apt parallel. Only the objects have kept her alive so long, and it’s hard to know where they end and she begins. I have long pondered on it. She searched many years for an object that would remove her crippling emotions. Strip her of the grief and anger and make her strong. She told me long ago that she eventually found a locket. The second of her many magical acquisitions after the cloak. The locket was enchanted to guard the wearer’s heart. That seems to have been the start of the ice theme.”

  He glanced down at the frozen bench beneath his knife. “I suppose when what you wish to guard against is actually your heart itself—when you direct such an object against itself in such a way—it is bound to have unexpected results.” He looked up at us. “But you won’t see that object on display anywhere. Even I have not seen it. She keeps it close to her always, I believe.”

  Something about the calm way he spoke such monstrous things about his own mistress ignited my fire again without conscious thought. It sizzled against the ice table, and I sent it shooting along the surface to consume his potatoes.

  He jumped back with a yelped exclamation, and I cut off the flames, standing tall again.

  “You can stay here if you want,” I said, turning to leave the room. At the door I paused, looking back. “But I intend to melt this place to the ground, so you might want to consider leaving before that happens.”

  I didn’t wait to hear his response before stalking out of the room.

  Chapter 28

  I was done skulking below stairs. As usual for a palace, a set of servants’ stairs stood just outside the kitchen door, and I stormed up them. I could hear the patter of Giselle’s feet behind me, but I didn’t stop to look back or speak to her.

  The staircase led us up to a small antechamber. We had yet to explore the state rooms on the main floor, but I easily recognized the purpose of this space. Maybe because I had stood in the equivalent stone room in many other palaces.

  I pointed across at a door on the other side, larger and more ornately carved than the one we had just entered through.

  “I think that’s the throne room. Or a banqueting hall, at least.”

  Giselle worried at her lip beside me. “Do you think she’s in there? Do you think he’s in there?”

  I snorted contemptuously. “She sounds like the type to sit around on her throne all day, don’t you think?”

  I strode forward and put my hand on the door, but a soft protest from Giselle made me pause. I looked back at her.

  “Do you think…Are you sure that’s a good idea?” she asked.

  I paused, forcing myself to truly consider her words. Now was not the time to let reckless emotion drive me. If the Snow Queen was holding solitary court inside, with the man I loved chained to her side, did I really want to go bursting through these doors? I tried to think of other options, craftier ones, but nothing came to me. I could feel down to my bones that there was no escaping a confrontation with this woman—or whatever she was.

  “No,” I said at last, in answer to Giselle’s question. “But I don’t have any other ideas. And I’m sick to death of all this snow and ice. It’s time to end this.”

  With the final word, I thrust my full weight against the door and walked through into the throne room of the Snow Queen.

  The vast hall looked much as I had imagined, lined with tall windows down both sides, a high, vaulted ceiling far overhead. On the far end a large dais held an imposing throne carved in whorls of ice. The traditional second throne was missing, leaving no doubt there was only one ruler in this frozen kingdom. Instead a tall figure stood beside whoever sat on the throne.

  I stood too far away to make out either of their faces, but I could well imagine who they both were. I strode forward without checking to see if Giselle followed me. If she wanted to keep out of this fight, I wouldn’t blame her. Not after the iceflakes that had guarded the outside of the palace. Who knew what horrors guarded the queen herself?

  But nothing came forward to challenge me as I made my steady way across the empty floor. Even with my focus on the figures ahead of me, I noticed something different about this floor. It wasn’t completely smooth like those in the rest of the palace, and the light reflected differently from the ice.

  A hissing voice behind me told me Giselle had followed, and that she’d noticed me glancing at the floor.

  “It looks like the surface of a frozen lake.”

  I stilled briefly in surprise before striding on. Why should it surprise me at this point that the Snow Queen would build her palace on a frozen lake? She clearly had no fears this place was going to melt.

  But she should be afraid, a voice inside me murmured, accompanied by a comforting swell of warmth in my middle.

  As I got close enough to see their faces, my eyes were drawn irresistibly to Oliver. He watched me approach, but his eyes didn’t connect with mine. This wasn’t the Oliver I knew, the one I had come to love. This was the Oliver I had first met in Eldo
n. A vise gripped my heart and squeezed, nearly causing me to stumble.

  Yet again, I lost control of my fire which sprang unbidden to my hands.

  “Ah,” said a voice like the clanging of bells. “The little fire girl. How fascinating.”

  My eyes snapped to her face, and for the first time I saw the woman who had been slowly destroying this kingdom. The kingdom Oliver loved so much.

  A crown, several times taller than any I had ever seen, perched atop her head, the steep points rising up in shards of ice. Her strange coloring looked just as it had in her portraits, and she made even the frozen version of Oliver beside her look flushed and alive.

  Her cheekbones cut as sharply as her pointed crown, her features beautiful, I supposed, if not for the red in her eyes and the absence of color. But nothing about her looked natural, and the sight of her made me want to shiver, not admire.

  But the prince at her side showed no such revulsion. He showed no emotion at all as he watched me and his sister draw closer and closer. I longed to run forward and send my power racing through him, as I had done so long ago at the palace. But when I went to take another step, the queen waved a lazy hand, and a waist-high wall of ice sprung up before us. I only just stopped myself from crashing into it.

  “I think that is far enough,” she said. “I am not so fond of fire, you see.” The bells of her voice sounded musical, but also grating. A clanging that reverberated in my head and set my teeth on edge.

  “I can well imagine, Your Majesty,” I spat the last two words at her. “I’m not so fond of ice, myself.” My hands—still burning—reached out to melt the ice that blocked my way. But before I could do more than release a few puffs of steam, my attention was drawn sideways to Giselle.

  Something on the far side of the room had captured her attention. She strode down the long wall of ice, making no effort to bypass it, and after a quick glance at Oliver, I dashed after her.

  “What are you doing?” I hissed, glancing back at the throne again. The Snow Queen remained seated, watching us with a small smile on her face.

  When we finally reached the side wall, I frowned. Apparently it hadn’t been coincidence that had led her to sprout the wall where she had. Not when the only decoration we had seen in the entire palace outside of the portrait gallery hung on the wall in a direct line with it.

  “Look,” said Giselle, her expression fascinated. “I recognize it.”

  I sighed and actually looked at the object in front of me. The elaborate gilt frame held nothing, its large oval interior bare, revealing the ice wall behind. I couldn’t imagine the purpose of such a thing. There could be no need to highlight that this building was made of ice. The palace itself did a more than adequate job of that.

  But when Giselle reached a hand forward, as if to trace the distinctive markings of the frame, I pulled her back, noticing it wasn’t completely empty after all.

  “Careful,” I said. “That looks like it could cut.” I glanced back at the throne again, my mistrust growing at the smug look on the queen’s face.

  Now that I had seen the tiny shards around the inside edge of the frame, I realized what this was. Or at least had once been. A mirror. And now that I knew it was a mirror, I realized the frame did look vaguely familiar.

  “It’s our mirror,” said Giselle, shock and anger in her voice. At least she didn’t try to touch it again.

  “But it’s broken.” I struggled to think clearly. My desire to get to Oliver overwhelmed my mind. I needed to free him. Every time his blank eyes fell on me, it cut like a fresh wound. I had never imagined he would look at me that way again.

  “The royal mirror of Eldon. Our royal mirror. The one we’ve been searching for. It might be broken, but this is it.” Her voice turned sad. “Or it was. I suppose I’ll never get the chance to see it now.” She spun around to face me only to push straight past, stalking back toward our original position. “I may have only seen it in that portrait back home, but I’d recognize it anywhere.”

  I hurried to follow her, struggling to grasp the fact that the mirror we had pinned so much hope on had already been destroyed. Not that we needed it to tell us the source of the curse now.

  “I see you are observant, little princess,” said the queen when we faced her once again. “How do you like my mirror?”

  “It’s not your mirror, it’s ours.” Giselle almost spat the words. “And you’ve broken it.”

  “Yes.” The queen sighed, her eyes straying back to the frame. “I was most disappointed at the time, but it has turned out far better than I could have hoped.” She reached out a languid arm and patted the prince beside her.

  I actually growled, wanting to leap over the ice and rip her arm off. She smiled at me as if she could read my thoughts, and I forced myself to calm down. She had wanted us to see that mirror. And I wanted to know why. Was it purely to taunt Giselle with what she had stolen from her family?

  “What did you do?” demanded Giselle. I had never seen the younger girl look so regal.

  “I tried to use a second magic item to enhance its power. To infuse something of myself into it.”

  “The mirror can only be used by the royal family of Eldon,” snapped Giselle.

  To my surprise, the queen nodded in agreement. “So it seems.” Her gaze strayed again to the empty frame. “It did not take kindly to my attempts.” But then she laughed, and I had to stop myself pressing my hands to my ears as the sound echoed painfully in my head.

  “But it seems that something of me transferred into it after all. And then I discovered the power in the shattered pieces—no more than specks of dust in some cases.” She smiled again. “Such clever little shards, as it turned out. Able to worm their way into a person’s heart and make it as frozen as my beautiful mountain. Such powerful magic in those royal mirrors!”

  Giselle swayed beside me, looking sick. I gripped her arm to steady her and glared at the queen.

  “If you’re trying to say this all happened by accident and wasn’t part of your plan, I don’t believe you.”

  “Not originally part of my plan,” she said. “Once I understood the power of the shards, naturally I knew my time had at last come to act. For years beyond counting I have waited, amassing the right tools, ready to spread my snow and ice down the mountains.” Her terrifying eyes seemed to glow. “And I knew my moment had come. I began to send down my winds, each of them carrying such precious, invisible cargo. Sent first to the capital and then out into the rest of the kingdom. Only the farthest southern regions have yet to feel my wind blow.”

  I shivered. How far would her winds extend once she reached the capital? Eliam was right to fear the encroaching cold.

  “The magic is slow to work,” she continued. “But that gave me time to study it. To perfect it. I have learned how best to use the power.”

  This time her gaze flicked not to the mirror, but to Oliver. So that was how she had managed to freeze his heart again so quickly. I understood Sterling’s words now.

  The thought of the traitor made me want to spit. He was far more dangerous than I had supposed. He might even be the only servant who served her with a free heart and mind.

  “Why are you telling us this?” asked Giselle. “Is it just that you’ve missed having a chance to gloat?”

  The queen laughed again, sounding genuinely amused. “Of course not. I have no need to gloat. I merely hoped to rid myself of the tiresome necessity of a battle. I hoped you would see how impossible it is to resist me. I hold an entire kingdom in thrall, after all.”

  “Enough!” I said, sending a stream of fire into the partial wall of ice in front of me. “I will free Oliver’s heart as I have done before, and then we will leave. And once we’re gone, I will melt your precious palace, and your throne, and all of your enchantments with them.”

  I strode forward through the newly created gap, steam rising around me. I expected to have to burn through much more than one thin half-wall, but the queen made no move to prevent me
approaching Oliver. I watched her out of the side of my eyes, not trusting in her seeming acquiescence. But even when I placed my hands flat against his chest, she made no move to intervene.

  As soon as I felt his broad chest, still warm with life beneath my hands, thoughts of the queen fell away. The fire from my anger was nothing compared to the inferno that raged inside me now. Freeing him would be easy. I pushed warmth down through my arms and out my hands, keeping it just short of bursting into actual flame.

  “Oliver! Wake up!” I repeated the words I had used once before.

  I expected him to glow, as he had then and Giselle after him, but the warmth instead seemed to leach out of me and disappear into him without making him any hotter. I tried again, with more force, but when nothing happened beyond singeing his outer shirt, I stumbled backward.

  “I don’t understand,” I said, my eyes on his. He had not reacted to my presence in any way, and I was finding it hard to breathe.

  It was the queen who answered. “The prince is not infected with a single speck of dust blown into his heart on the wind, little girl. He has a shard placed there by my own hand. He will not be so easily freed.”

  I shook my head, refusing to believe it. Oliver wouldn’t give himself up so easily. He would fight.

  “Oliver,” I said, keeping my voice low, and pretending the queen wasn’t there. “Oliver, please. It’s me. It’s Celine. You can fight this. You must try!”

  “I can see it’s you, Celine,” he said, the sound of his voice shocking after his previous silence. “I haven’t lost my mind, you know.”

  The voice was his, certainly, but his tone was cutting and cold. I had never heard him speak like that, not even in Marin when we had first met. I stumbled back another step while he surveyed me coldly from head to foot. I had never been so conscious of being in such physical disarray before. I was very far from the perfectly dressed princess who could shock a room into silence.