Fireblood (Frostblood Saga #2)(4)
As if it were that easy. However, she had a point about the room. Red brocade curtains fell in thick folds, creating a snug cocoon around the four-poster bed. An arched mullioned window, complete with a window seat, faced a garden bursting with flowers and topiaries. An overstuffed wingback chair nestled between a fireplace and a mahogany bookshelf crammed with books. Arcus had chosen the room, placing me in the wing used by the royal family. I sensed he was trying his best to make me as comfortable as possible in a place he knew felt very far from home.
Wherever “home” was. Even if people had returned to my village now that the raids against Firebloods had ended, it wouldn’t be the same without Mother there.
Grief stabbed me, a twisting knife in the dead center of my chest. Mother had died trying to protect me from the Frost King’s soldiers, from the captain who’d blithely killed her and burned our village. If she were here, no doubt she’d tell me to try to fit in, to make allowances for people’s prejudices, to hide the heat that makes them all so uncomfortable. But that’s exactly what I’d been trying to do for weeks.
I tugged at the frothy lace that dripped at my wrists, hiding my pain with petty complaints. “Could you please tell the seamstress I don’t need so much lace at my collar and cuffs? Marella’s gowns are always sleekly tailored, but this woman seems determined to make me look barely old enough to cut my own meat.”
Doreena’s gaze swept over the dress. “You look very pretty, my lady. Perhaps you’re nervous.”
I stifled the urge to argue. Now that she was my lady’s maid, I was glad Doreena felt freer to tell me what she thought. And she was right. I was nervous.
“I hate facing all those snobby nobles. They stare at me like I’m about to burst into flames at any second. Last night Lady Blanding looked me in the eye as she spilled wine on my dress! I could have happily set her hair on fire.”
Doreena came to stand in front of me, regarding me seriously with her owlish brown eyes. She still had the look of a woodland creature, ready to startle and bolt at any sudden movement. However, she’d been the first person to show me kindness here, and considering Rasmus had been king at the time, that had taken courage.
“You must not lose your temper,” she advised, not for the first time. “That’s when you fail to control your gift. And that’s exactly what they want—to prove that Firebloods are dangerous and that you’re unsuitable for court. They want the king to see you as they do: a threat.”
To some degree, I understood their hostility. After centuries of wars, broken treaties, and retaliation, Frostbloods and Firebloods had learned to regard each other with bone-deep distrust. I looked at my hands, small and sun-browned and innocuous-looking, but with the ability to wipe out a battalion of soldiers if I wanted. No wonder the court feared me. Sometimes I feared myself.
I met Doreena’s pleading gaze. “It’s hard to grin and pretend I don’t notice their insults.”
“You don’t have to grin. Just don’t light them on fire.”
I grunted noncommittally. “I make no promises.”
On the way to the dining hall, a draft from the open door of the former throne room chilled my arms into gooseflesh. I’d avoided this room in the weeks since I’d melted the throne, but tonight I was drawn to the stark emptiness, the eerie peacefulness of dust motes tracing lazy curlicues in the twilight. At sunrise, the mosaic floor tiles would flash with vivid color, but now it all looked washed in gray. Stale and abandoned.
Arcus no longer used this as the throne room—it held the echo of too many horrible memories. Instead, he’d placed a simple ice throne, square cut and modest, in a receiving room on the ground floor.
My soft-soled slippers made no sound as I approached the spot where the massive frost throne had sat for centuries.
According to myth—or history, if you believed the stories were true—the ice throne had been the handiwork of Fors, the god of the north wind. Not satisfied with merely creating Frostbloods, he’d also given them an enormous throne of ice to strengthen the powers of their monarchs. A particularly useful gift considering the regularity of the wars against Firebloods.
Not to be outdone by Fors, his twin sister, Sud, goddess of the south wind, had created a throne of lava to enhance the powers of her precious Fireblood rulers.
When their brother Eurus, god of the east wind, had tried and failed to create his own race of people, he’d ended up instead with voracious shadow creatures that killed Frostbloods and Firebloods indiscriminately. So the wise and peace-loving Cirrus, goddess of the west wind, had finally plunged into the fray, sweeping the thousands of shadowy Minax underground to a place called the Obscurum, sealing it behind a Gate of Light that no mortal could breach. Then the siblings’ mother, Neb, had decreed that none of her children could interfere in the mortal world any longer, which meant the Gate should stay closed forever.
Eurus was tricky, though. He’d saved two of his favorite Minax from exile, hiding one in the Frostblood throne and the other in the Fireblood throne. The Minax, with their ability to possess people, provoked the kings and queens into increased enmity and hatred, causing war and mayhem and the deaths of many more Firebloods and Frostbloods.
After centuries of bolstering Frostblood rule, the throne of Fors was gone. All that was left from where it had once sat was a discolored area of tile, round and shiny black, a stain that could never be scrubbed away. Much like the scar near my left ear, which the Minax had given me in this very room after it escaped from the melted throne.