“Please,” my mother pleaded.
“Enough, woman!” my father shouted, silencing the room.
“My only son,” she cried, pressing her hands together. I’d never seen her so emotional.
“He is a soldier, proud to serve with me to protect the kingdom he will one day rule.” He slapped his hand on André’s shoulder, pride in his features. “Isn’t that right, son?”
André stood tall, tilting his chin upward. “Mother, I will be safe.”
I watched them leave, my stomach dipping as they did.
Thudding from hundreds of horses sounded in the distance. They were galloping over the drawbridge. Slivers of cold danced around the large room. The lamps around us were lit one by one, illuminating the stone walls from their shadows. Their flames flickered, offering heat that was quickly sucked away by cold drafts. I shuddered and looked to my mother for comfort, but her cold, dead gaze warned me to stay away.
Since Jasper’s death, she had barely spoken one word to me in private. She was ashamed of her daughter, frolicking, as she’d called it. I had been reminded of my only job, an advantageous marriage. No one would want me if word got out about my sole indiscretion, and the betrothal my father had worked hard to set up would be broken. He had wanted to get the fae under his thumb for a long time, and my union with Blaise would help him accomplish it. He would stop at nothing to make it happen, even murder. Painfully, the only other person who could whisper a word of what had happened was dead.
“What happened?” I asked Adius. I knew it pointless to go to my mother, but ever the surprise, she climbed down the steps, then grabbed me by the arm. She pulled me into a dark corner, looking around for eavesdroppers before leaning into my ear.
“Berovia sent thousands in the night. Mercreatures sank a lot of their ships, but over a thousand still reached our shores.”
“They’re here?” My shoulders tightened. Most of them were sorcerers too, but unlike us, they used elemental magic and were called solises, while we were called lunas, after the moon. The others joining them were the light fae, who also lived and ruled in Berovia. “Why have they come?”
She tightened her grip on my arm, making me wince. “Why do wicked people do evil things? To cause suffering, nothing else. Your brother...” Her eyes filled with tears, a rare show of emotion on her tight, angular face. “He will bring them to their knees. He is strong, like your father.”
“They will be okay?” I meant to reassure her, but it came out as a question.
She licked her lips. “Of course they will.” She released my arm, leaving half-crescent marks on my skin. “But you must not repeat this information to anyone. Hundreds have already died. We can’t let anyone know how bad it has become. We must stay here until the battle is done. They will try to kill us, Winter.”
The castle suddenly felt smaller.
I cast my gaze downward. “Are we at least winning?”
Her long pause told me we weren’t.
***
The hours fell into each other as we sat still, listening to drawn-out screams and distant shouting, until a scout came wearing a somber look. He dipped his head, then kneeled at her throne.
A howl erupted from my mother when the words left his lips. She clutched at her stomach, growling inwardly. Her eyelids shut tightly; tears fell from the corners. I stepped back and gasped. He handed her my brother’s staff. It was splintered at the sides and stained with blood. My heart ballooned, and the world dissolved beneath my feet. Prickles ran through my arms.
My brother was dead.
I didn’t take it in at first.
Mother was inconsolable. His death extinguished the little light left inside of her. I watched it flicker, then fade as she clung to the wood until her knuckles turned white, as if she were holding onto a part of him. Her nailbeds bled when she dug them in further. Pressing his staff against her chest, she looked at me. Tears pricked my eyes as the first lights from morning peeked through the stained-glass windows. I looked up at the Mortis Royal Crest of our family, feeling its crushing weight on me.
I couldn’t stand to watch. I ran from the room and to my secret hiding space, a passage hidden behind a tapestry. It was where André and I would go when we were kids. He would teach me how to fight with a sword, which my parents never allowed, as it was a boy’s skill. Still he taught me, but I wasn’t very good.
I ran my hands along the wall, inhaling sharply. My tears fell thick and fast. My throat tightened. I breathed deeper and quicker, but it only made it worse.
The last time I saw him played on repeat. I should have hugged him or pled with my father like my mother did, not that it would have done much good.
I dropped to my knees, drooping my head down. Tears collected in the dirt that had been dragged into the tunnels behind the walls.
Morgana’s reading trickled into my thoughts.
They were the deaths she saw, and the crown, it would now be mine.
The terrifying truth dawned on me, bringing with it a constriction in my chest.
I was heir to the throne.
FOUR
Everything had changed. I was no longer a naïve fifteen-year-old girl, broken over death and scared of a crown. I was sixteen, and I was ready.
My anxiety had dissolved, thanks to the capsules Morgana made up for me. Whatever herbs she used, they took the edge away. The constant buzz that had me looking over my shoulder at every opportunity was gone, and I was finally on the road to being fixed.
The tower room was smaller than the one back at Magaelor. Mother and I had been sent away, to live on a small island—Inferis—after André’s death. The only time I had been permitted to leave the island was when I’d been briefly taken to Niferum to meet my fiancé, Blaise, some months ago.
The castle, living quarters, and a vast wood made up the island. It was always gray and windy. White cliffs overlooked deadly waters filled with mercreatures. My father continued to reign back at Ash Court and had refused to see us. He had taken a mistress and all but discarded my mother. She told me he was still hurting from his son’s death and would come around, but I didn’t see it happening.
I looked at Morgana, then around at her tightly packed bookshelves, her open briefcase filled with objects, and the newspapers stacked in the corner. Loose spiderwebs hung around the lamps on the wall. I closed my eyes and listened to the howling wind outside the window.
I sighed deeply. “When?” I questioned.
“Soon,” Morgana said as she circled me. She stared at me with shuttered eyes. “You will rule when frost has fallen.”
“The frost has already fallen!” I pointed at the large arched window. “The frost is always on the ground.”
Her glimpses into the future had become vaguer by the day. I knew it was treason to speak of these matters—because to ask when I would rule was to think of the king’s death—but the days dragged out, bleeding into another with no end in sight, and I was tired of being caged up. Dark evenings and gray afternoons made for a miserable life.
“My father. Is he well?” I asked, finishing our conversation with the same question as always.
She closed her eyes briefly, as she always did, then opened them. “He is well.”
“Good,” I said, biting my bottom lip. Asking about his health did alleviate my guilt on asking about his death, even if it was an oxymoron.