The soldier to my right scoffed. “Mages are little more than children who’ve learned to pick their nose, compared to us,” he said.
The leader of the group flicked his wrist, and a white flame rolled along the palm of his hand. It danced and weaved through his fingers in a dazzling display. “Mages play with magic they cannot hope to comprehend during their small, short lives,” he said, “We are magic. We are fae.”
I was getting a little sick of their uppity attitudes, but I had to contain my dislike. Playing along was the only way I was going to get through this, and short of being asked to do something horrible, I was going to play along as much as I could. I didn’t have another choice.
Finally, the carriage stopped.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“You have already broken the first rule,” the soldier said, a low rumble in his throat. “Be quiet and get out.”
Already the other soldiers were filing out of the carriage, clearing the way for me to step off and finally set foot in this cold, wonderful, dangerous city.
The cobbles shone like they were slick and slippery. I was careful stepping onto them, hoping I wouldn’t fall flat on my arse as soon as my feet touched the ground. I didn’t. The ground was firm beneath my feet, and beside a little nip in the air, I wasn’t feeling the cold as bad as I had been when I first arrived in Arcadia.
The wind whispered through my hair as I looked around, gawking at just how tall those domes and spires were. I’d never seen buildings as tall as the ones surrounding me. It was enough to make me feel small, truly small, and maybe that was the point?
The soldier in charge jabbed me in the back with his metal elbow and nearly sent me skidding across the street. I glared at him, but I also bit my tongue and kept my mouth shut. Turning around to walk again, I realized he’d shoved me toward a massive white door set into a wall of pure-white ice.
The door stood at the top of a set of grand, wide stairs flanked on both sides by icy columns in the shape of lanterns. I wasn’t sure exactly where we were, after a while all the buildings started looking the same, but this one had a certain grandiose quality about it, like a church, or a… a castle.
I walked up the stairs, careful not to move too quickly along them, just in case. Behind me marched all seven of the soldiers that had invaded the Magic Box, their capes billowing with the wind. The door ahead of me bore the same antler regalia the soldiers all wore on their armor. It opened as I reached it, even if there wasn’t anyone there to push it, but it didn’t open all the way.
The closer I got, the more I wanted to stop moving. It was like pressure building against my chest, my temples, my arms. There was magic at work, here. I’d grown up around it, I knew how it felt, what it could look like, how it could sound—and more importantly, how it could make you feel. This was a barrier, I’d reached; something meant to keep people out.
People like me.
“Be on your best behavior,” the lead soldier snarled, and then opened the doors and shoved me through them. This time, I couldn’t keep my footing. I scrambled, flailed, and ultimately fell on my face on a cold, sleek floor of deep blue marble, or stone.
The fall had winded me, and it took a minute for me to find my strength and get back up again. Ultimately, it was the cold of the floor that encouraged me to stand upright. I felt like a deer taking her first few steps, totally unbalanced, my Earth shoes struggling to find any sort of grip on the smooth ground.
The door had shut behind me, and the soldiers hadn’t followed. I was rid of them, wherever I was, so I flipped them off, shoving both my middle fingers toward the door and hurling all manner of obscenities that bounced off the walls around me like gunshots.
Then someone coughed, and I froze, sucking in a sharp breath through my teeth. Slowly, I turned. Someone was there. Someone had seen what I’d done, and I was probably going to be in some trouble for it. There was one thing I knew you shouldn’t do to the fae, and that was offend or insult them.
My mouth dropped again. There were hundreds of people, all gathered along grand balconies and stalls stretching for what felt like miles, and they were all staring at me. I was standing in front of the entire Winter Court, and I’d just flipped off and cursed out a bunch of their soldiers.
A lot.
“Ah… shit.”
CHAPTER SIX
The mind does weird things when you’re put under immense pressure. Me? I remembered my first ever school play. I was seven years old. The play itself had been a production of Jack and the Beanstalk, and I had the privilege of playing the beanstalk. I had a minor speaking role, but through most of the play, I just had to stand there and not move, not talk—not until the very end, when Jack cut me down with his axe.
Argh! You’ve chopped me down!
That was all I had to say, and I managed to screw that up by seizing up just as I was supposed to start speaking. Jack had pretended to hit me with his axe, my cue was up, and all I could do was stand there and stare blankly into the audience. Panic. Utter terror of messing it up prevented me from saying a word. It took an actual strike of the plastic axe against my shin for me to finally say something. Anything.
That was the first time I’d ever yelled shit, and it had the entire crowd in stitches.
Thinking about it, the kid who played Jack was a bit of a dick. He hadn’t really had to hit me, but he’d done it anyway, and then he’d laughed about it.
Already too many seconds had passed since I’d made my grand entrance into this grandiose, domed hall, and I still hadn’t said another word. Sunlight filtered in from high above and caught on just about every glittery silver dress; every sharp, frost-white right angle; every piece of jewelry that was out on display.
It looked like the entire court was here, a sea of blank, ice-cold faces staring at me from all over. They were all immaculately dressed and so ridiculously attractive. Each face was as beautiful and as striking than the one next to it, if not more so. But they were only observers to what was going on at the center of the great hall.
A whole host of women stood side by side, each wearing fine, silver dresses of shifting mercury. Some of them had curved antlers growing out of their temples, others iridescent wings, but each one of them looked like snow princesses; snow princesses standing in front of the Royal Court… and the King.
No one, not a soul in here, was in stitches.
“Girl,” came a booming voice that filled the domed hall and echoed along its walls, “Move closer.”
For a moment, I couldn’t. I was frozen, like my younger self had been. Seven-year-old me wasn’t under imminent threat of death, though, so I swallowed hard and, taking it one step at a time, started walking along the smooth floor beneath my feet.
Sometimes it was more of a slide than a walk, but I made it work as best I could and didn’t fall over. That was important. I’d already made a fool of myself once, I wasn’t about to do it again. At least, that was the plan.
Each of the Winter Courtiers sparkled like they were ice sculptures. None of them moved much, except to start whispering as I walked past them and toward the line of fifteen women standing before the Royals. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but they were talking about me. A couple had even started giggling, which just did wonders for my already crippling stage fright.