Daggers of Ice

Chapter 22

1010.

The Tenth Year of the Golden Age.

Arianna.

The frost-rimed hall had fallen utterly silent.
Even the torches seemed to dim, their flames shrinking low, as if the very air held its breath.

Arianna stood before her throne but did not sither spine straight, her jaw locked, her pulse a cold thunder in her veins. She could feel the tremor of Jadis at the edges of her mind, the whisper that pressed and coiled like smoke:

You are ice.
You are cold.

She ignored it.

Before her, the scouts had gathered – northmen cloaked in furs stiff with frost and blood, their faces hollow from cold and loss. They had come home, but not whole. And standing at their head was Joran.

He did not kneel.

The others had dropped to one knee as soon as they entered, the echo of movement rippling through the chamber. But Joran remained upright, his hands clenched into fists at his sides, his steel-grey eyes blazing. His breath came harsh and uneven, and his expression was carved from something dangerously close to despair.

Arianna's voice broke the silence – low, clipped, sharp as the edge of ice.
"Leave us."

The courtiers and wolves obeyed without hesitation, their footsteps echoing down the corridor until the heavy doors swung shut behind them with a resonant thud. Only the snow-light from the high windows and the faint hum of the Everwinter remained.

And then there were only three in the hall – Arianna, Joran, and Edmund standing just behind her right shoulder.

The silence stretched taut.

She looked at Joran. The grime of the road clung to him, the edges of his armour dark with dried blood. His lips trembled – not from the cold, but from something held back too long.

"Joran," she said at last, her tone steady though her pulse quickened beneath it. "Where is Myria?"

He met her gaze then, and the fury in his eyes undid her. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.

"Joran," she pressed, a fraction quieter.

A strangled cry escaped him, half-choked, half-roar. His sword arm shook. He bowed his head.

Her breath caught. The hall seemed to tilt around her.

No.

The word thundered through her skull as though it had been screamed aloud.

She took a step back, then another, her vision blurring. The world folded in on itself – the torches dimmed, the voices of her court fell away. She saw only flashes of memory: Myria's laughter, the gleam of amber eyes beneath her crown of autumn leaves, the soft smile that never faltered, not even when the snow began to fall.

"No..." The whisper scraped out of her throat like frost breaking.

Her hand shot out blindly, catching at something solid – Edmund's arm. She didn't think. Her nails dug through the soft linen of his tunic, into his skin. She felt the heat of him beneath her palm, the pulse steady and alive.

Alive.

She couldn't breathe. Her chest felt too tight, her ribs too small to contain the flood of it.

"Arianna–"

The sound of her name in his voice pierced through the haze. She turned to him, her breath ragged, her grip still locked around his arm as though he were the only thing anchoring her.