The Kingdom of Eternal Winter (Divergent Fourtris Fanfiction)

Chapter 2

So here comes the second chapter, and I'll try to update every Tuesday from now on. I hope you'll join Tris and Tobias on their fairytale journey.

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate, may you have a pieceful time with your family and friends! ❤

Also, if you're looking for some fourtris Christmas fluff, you find a nice little short story on my profile page (sorry, not a new story though, it turns two today :-)).

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One morning, the king was unable to leave his chamber. He felt sick, like he did on too many days lately. The everlasting cold was taking its tribute together with his age. He couldn't find the strength to get out of his bed, so he told the queen to join his son in the dining room for breakfast without him.

The queen did as she was told. She had secretly been waiting for an opportunity to dine alone with her stepson. She had watched him grow up after she had married the king shortly after his first wife had passed away, and he was now old enough to choose a woman for him to marry. She needed to persuade him that that was what he needed to do in order to replace his father on the throne. Her husband's strength slowly turned into weakness. He wouldn't be able to reign his kingdom for much longer. She had asked for the wisest men and women from Erudite to examine him, but none of them had found a cause for his faltering power, other than the passing years. No medicine they brought him had cured his disease.

So this morning, the queen took her seat at the head of the long dining table while the king's seat opposite her remained vacant. The prince rose his eyebrows in surprise upon seeing his father's empty chair when he entered the dining room.

"Where's my father this morning?" he asked.

"He's unwell," the queen answered.

The prince didn't reply. He just took a deep breath and sat down on his usual seat at the long side of the table.

He didn't like his stepmother much. She was a coldhearted woman, and he couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong with her. It had been like this from the moment he had gotten to know her. His father had married her too fast for his liking. His mother's body had only been laid out in state in its glass coffin a short time before this woman appeared by the king's side and their wedding was announced.

Of course, he couldn't really remember that anymore. His memories of what he had felt before his father's second marriage had started to faint with the presence of his stepmother in the castle, and he had become numb. That was easier to bear than the loss and the pain, than the despair and the loneliness his mother's death had left behind.

He thought locking his feelings away inside him and turning cold and indifferent towards the world and the people around him had been his decision. He thought it had been the effect of losing the person whom he had loved the most and who had loved him the most, but it wasn't.

It wasn't a coincidence that his heart had cooled down after his father had remarried.

His stepmother had married the king for one reason, and for one reason only, and that reason wasn't love. The reason was power, for she longed to rule over the kingdom and all its provinces and all the people therein. She couldn't stand the idea of being nobody, so she made herself the new queen.

After being born in Erudite and studying what science had to offer, she had been living on her own for several years to study the darker side of what there was to know. After the queen's sudden death, she had sensed that the time was right to make a bid for power.

In the guise of a saleswoman trying to sell fruit, she went to visit the castle. The king heard that there was a woman offering the juiciest oranges, fragrant peaches and reddest apples people had ever seen someone sell this early in spring, so he asked to see her. Wicked as she was, she offered the king an apple to taste. She asked neither for money nor for any other sort of payment, stating it was an honor if the king would eat the fruit she had grown. So he ate it, and after that, he asked for a second apple. And after he had devoured that one, he demanded a third and asked the woman to stay and dine with him.

It wasn't something he would have done under normal circumstances, for he was still mourning the loss of his wife. But the apples dripping with a powerful potion that made him fall in love with the woman who had offered them to him changed his destiny, and along with his, that of his son and his entire kingdom.

Once settled in the castle and promised the king's hand, the future queen got to work and carried out the rest of her plan. She owned a bewitched mirror that she had gotten from darkness itself deep inside the dark forest. In exchange, she had offered it her heart, and it had hardened hers and turned it into glass instead.

Now the mirror was the most powerful thing she owned, or the pieces that were left of it, since it had burst. The biggest splinters she planted in the hearts of the king and his son while they were sleeping. It wasn't difficult to do with how deeply their hearts were still shaken from grief, and from then on out, father and son had started to change into whom they were now.

So, when this morning the queen sat down with the prince to have breakfast while the king was too weak to leave his bed, it was another step in her plan to gain full power over the kingdom. She waited until after the servants had filled their goblets and had placed their plates in front of them.

"Tobias, it's time for you to start looking for a wife. Your father is steadily loosing strength, and you'll have to be married to become the new king. It would be irresponsible to stay unmarried."

"You speak of my father as if he was already dead."

"I wouldn't dare to do that. I'm just saying that it might be wise for you to start looking for a girl who wants to become your wife. We could organize a ball and invite all the young ladies your age."

"I'm not interested in them. They mean nothing but trouble, and I don't want to give away what's left of my heart."

"You could at least try. Take a look at them. If not for your sake or mine, then do it for your father. He would love to see you getting married."

The queen pushed and pushed, well aware that she would only get him to contradict her more and more. All she wanted to do was to leave him with the impression that he was free to come to his own decisions. So she finally suggested a plan that she was sure would work out in her favor in the end, one way or another, and leave the prince with the strong conviction that there wasn't a single girl in the entire kingdom who was the right one for him. Either that, or he'd probably be dead.

"So we'll send all the girls who want to become your wife out on a mission through all five provinces. I will think of tasks they'll have to complete to show that they are worthy of your majesty. Only the one who manages to prove that she's noble enough would be eligible for becoming the queen at your side. If none of them meets the requirements, I will never mention the topic of marriage to you ever again."

Tobias looked at her, then sipped at his golden goblet and bit off a piece of his bread. He took some time to consider her offer. He wasn't interested in marriage. After all, he didn't know what love was like, and because of that, he couldn't imagine how it would feel to fall in love. He was convinced it would never happen to him. He didn't even want it, out of fear it might make him too vulnerable and crush the remainder of his heart.

The prince didn't care much about following in his father's footsteps either, even less so if it meant he had to dedicate his life to a woman he felt nothing for and doom her to a life by his side. What was a kingdom worth that was slowly crumbling apart due to the hardships of freezing temperatures under a constantly gray sky, its ground almost permanently covered by a layer of snow?

But maybe, he thought, his stepmother's plan would help to prove that there really was no girl in the entire kingdom that was meant for him, and he would be able to live in peace from then on out. The small part of his soul that longed to be loved and yearned to be shared with someone would forever be damned to keep quiet, and he'd be able to ignore that it still existed, although it was only rarely swollen enough that he noticed it at all anyway.

Yes, that was a good idea.

"Fine, you convinced me. I agree."