1
The grand double doors to the ballroom stared at me challengingly. Shining ones from all the courts waited beyond those doors. Waited to ogle the human who’d killed their champions in the Regency Games. I was the only human who’d survived the carnage, and the atrocities visited upon my brethren by their kind.
Rage and disgust swirled in my chest, forming a prickly ball that made my eyes sting.
“Winter’s Blade doesn’t cry,” Aspen, the bastard prince, said.
What? I touched my cheek to find it wet, then swiped at the tears, angry at the show of weakness.
This was no time for tears, no place for them.
Survive, Killion had said, and that was what I’d do.
Seven days.
That was all I had to find Nina before Killion came for me. Seven days to somehow get my family to safety, away from Middale, the capital of the shining ones’ rule.
But first, I needed to endure this ‘celebration.’ This parading of the sole human survivor and unwilling Winter’s Blade.
The doors of the ballroom swung open to admit us, and with my arm hooked through Aspen’s, I allowed him to lead me into the den of beautiful vipers.
We glided onto a polished floor that gleamed with a metallic sheen. In fact, the whole room was metallic, a combination of dull and shiny silver. Deep darkness hovered on the periphery of the room, and balconies rose up on either side of us, lit from within by amber light to make up several floors of Tuatha and Danaan, sipping from slender flutes as they watched us enter. We were, after all, the entertainment for the evening.
The high ceiling was domed but rose to a point. It was decorated with strange striations as if someone had raked the metal with a hot blade. My gaze dropped to the wall ahead of us. The whole structure shimmered like it was made of water, as if a pebble striking it would cause it to ripple outward.
My brain struggled to take it all in because the vastness of the chamber squeezed the breath from my lungs and made a knot form in my belly. This was fear. This was anxiety, and it had to stop.
I pushed my shoulders back and lifted my chin, battling against the weight of the many eyes on us.
No. Not on us.
On me.
The Tuatha regard was needles pricking my skin, intent on drawing blood, and I felt my hastily gathered bravado slipping. My head drooped as if too heavy for my slender neck.
“Head up,’ Aspen said, low and smooth for only me to hear. “You’re a warrior, a survivor. You are Winter’s Blade. All you need do now is accept your official title once the king pronounces it.”
Fuck. He really wanted that name to stick, didn’t he? What was his game? Because he had one—I could feel it in my gut. My knotted, twisted gut.
No. Aspen’s motivations weren’t my concern. I needed to focus on my own goals.
The silver wall at the far end of the room rippled, then a window appeared a couple of meters off the ground. Several figures were visible, sitting on fancy seats with a table laden with food set before them. A male with arched brows, a haughty expression, and silver-blond hair spilling over his pecs perched on a high-backed seat, slightly higher than the rest of his company.
My heart beat faster. I knew who this was. I’d seen his face in magazines and promotional pamphlets for years. A face that didn’t change and didn’t age.
The face of an ancient.
The face of the Winter King.
This was Palamon and Aspen’s father. Calling him an ancient felt contrary, considering he looked no older than thirty. To his left sat a woman with crimson hair piled high on her head in a mass of curls, and to his right was an older woman, maybe late sixties, with a mouth set in a scowl that could probably curdle milk.
There were more of them, silver-haired, pale, with eyes all shades of blue. These were the Winter Regency. I spotted Palamon perched on the edge of the company. His amethyst eyes were fixed on me, When he caught my eye, his throat bobbed, and he inclined his head a fraction in greeting. He was all dolled up in Tuatha finery, hair slicked back, looking nothing like the whiney, cowardly prince I’d rescued a day ago.
This was his rightful place, amongst the Regency, these cold, unaffected-looking creatures who stared at me like I was a specimen under a microscope.
The wall shimmered again as we drew closer, and another window opened up above the Regency one, revealing a fresh group of Tuatha. These shining ones were older, more in line with the ancient title they liked to claim. The majority were in shadow, but one stood out, lit by a beam of light, probably strategically placed.
I knew this fucker too. Hated his smug pointy face and his condescending tone. This was the voice of the council and the Regency.
This was Minimus Lowland.
Minimus looked down his nose at me, his lips in a firm, straight line—no doubt unimpressed by Winter’s Blade. How I’d like to see fear in his eyes. I’d like to see him bleed. Hell, I’d like to make him bleed.
Aspen drew us to a halt several meters away from the windows, but he didn’t release my hand.
“Your Majesty and the high council.” He inclined his head, stag horns gleaming in the silvery light cast by the windows. “Allow me to present Winter’s Blade.”
A wave of exclamations echoed across the vast chamber.
Minimus’s nostrils flared, and the corners of his mouth turned down as if he disapproved of the title, but he didn’t contradict Aspen.
“Come forward, Blade,” the king said.
His voice was deep and gravelly, totally at odds with his delicately beautiful appearance. “Come into the light.”
A beam of silver light appeared a meter away from me, lancing down like lightning from some point high above.
Aspen released me. “Go,” he said softly.
I stepped away from him and entered the light. It kissed my form, settling over me like a gauzy blanket. Then a screen appeared above the council window, and I was on it, larger than life. Except I didn’t look like me.
The cut of the outfit Aspen had dressed me in made my shoulders look broader, and my thighs seem more powerful. The severe ponytail Blossom had pulled my hair into made my cheekbones stand out like razors, and the kohl she’d rimmed my eyes with made them seem intense and searing. I looked defiant, confident, and lethal.
I looked like an assassin, and the gasps and murmurs that lit up the chamber told me I wasn’t the only one that thought so.
“Danika Khatri,” the king said. “You are the sole human survivor of the Regency Games and the protector of Winter. Your family will be given homes in the bosom of Middale, and you will have the honor of serving your crown.”
The honor? Servitude more like. I kept my expression impassive. Fuck him and his title. I’d be gone soon, and when I returned, it would be to bring them all down.
The king sat up straighter. “I now pronounce you—”
“I object!”
The beam of light bathing me winked out, and so did my image on the screen. It was replaced a moment later by that of a male Tuatha with hair like autumn fire and eyes like a gathering storm. His coloring told me all I needed to know.
This was the Autumn Court.
The woman beside the Winter King sat forward, eyes wide and fixed on the man on the screen. “Brother, you promised you would not do this.”
Brother?
“Hush, my love,” the Winter King said. “Let the Autumn King speak.”