Daggers of Ice

Chapter 21

1010.

The Tenth Year of the Golden Age.

Arianna.

Arianna twirled her finger an inch above the rim of her goblet, watching as the liquid within obeyeda lazy spiral, drawn by the gravity of her will. The wine shivered like a living thing, its surface reflecting the fractured light of the hall. She did not look up as the great doors thudded shut behind the last of the emissaries.

Raenor lingered at the threshold for a heartbeat longer, his golden eyes flicking toward her in silent question. She ignored the look – the slight cant of his head, the faint scrape of claw on stone – until she heard the heavy doors close behind him too.

Silence.
At last.

Her chin rested against the back of her hand, her other fingers tapping an idle rhythm on the arm of her throne. The sound echoed faintly through the frost-lit chamber, soft and brittle as the whisper of ice cracking on a lake.

You are cold.

Raenor's reports weighed on her. The giants were stirring again – not yet marching, but restless, the way wolves pace when they scent blood on the air. And now, the emissaries had come demanding reassurance. Would the giants retaliate? Would they spill down from the moors and crush the northern passes beneath their feet? Would their queen truly hold them back?

Had they been doubting her?

The wine stilled. Her tapping stopped.

When would Myria return?

She had sent the dryad west, to trace the trail of burned villages – whispers of raids and smoke in the snow. Myria's absence left the court off-balance, left her off-balance. Myria had been the only one besides Raenor who could speak freely without fear of Arianna's temper. Her counsel was the rare kind born not of ambition, but of belief.

You are ice.

The wine froze solid in her cup, a crystalline spiral sealed mid-turn. Arianna lifted a finger; frost crept up the metal rim in reply, sharp and glittering.

The giants would not attack.

Not even in retaliation.

They wouldn't dare.

She had visited Ettinsmoor only a handful of times. The first had been as a child – bundled in furs beside Jadis on the great white sled, her small hands gripping the polished rail as they hurtled across the frozen plain. The giants had welcomed the Witch with booming laughter, massive heads bowing low, their voices shaking the very ice.

They had toasted Arianna, too. "The queen's puppet," they had called her.

She could still remember the feast – roasted elk larger than houses, wine poured from barrels big enough to drown in, songs that echoed off the mountains. Jadis had smiled, gracious, radiant – and when they had departed, she had murmured into the wind that they were beasts masquerading as kings.

"Never mistake noise for greatness," the Witch had said. "The true giants of Charn were beauty and order incarnate. These are the descendants of cowards and gluttons."

They had visited again, and again, until Beruna. The giants had fought beside Jadis that day – not for loyalty, but for pride, for blood. When she fell, they had retreated to their moors, proud and untouchable once more.

Arianna had let them be. For a time.

Then came the year she'd gone north to them – against Raenor's warnings – bearing no army, no crown. They had laughed when she spoke, great booming roars that shook the stones, and she had known then what they saw: a small creature, fragile and edible.