CHAPTER 48

QUEEN MALINA

I'm jolted awake by a deafening crash.

I tear my eyes open in a panic, and Dommik jerks upright beside me. My heart slams inside my chest, and we take one look at each other and start yanking on our clothes as fast as we can.

Fear grips me around the throat, crushing it under its merciless hold.

The ice walls of the house have frosted over, making everything opaque. It's stopped snowing, but the morning air is chilled and stark, which for some reason, seems to make the noises in the air extra sharp. As soon as we're clothed, Dommik grips my hand and we slip out of the open doorway and around the stone part of the wall.

"It's the bridge," I say, shaking my head with utter dread. "We need to get back now! We never should have left."

I can tell by Dommik's darkening expression that he doesn't like to hear me say that, but it's true, and we both know it.

That cracking noise is unmistakable. The fae are breaking through my barriers, and I'm not there, because I selfishly took the opportunity to come out here with Dommik last night. I should have stayed closer to the bridge. Monitoring it and making sure I was ready. Instead, we've been caught unawares.

I'm so angry at myself I could scream.

"Hurry, take me there. I might be able to defend the barriers before they break through them all!"

He pulls his shadows in and then begins to leap us in that direction. We stop just outside the castle walls, standing in view of the bridge.

The bridge that's full of fae soldiers.

Fear and anger burst through me, and ice crystals stab up through my palms.

I follow their trail on the bridge to the mouth where my barriers begin, and my stomach drops like a brick in a bucket. In front of it, not behind it, stands the Stone King, his formidable form unmistakable.

My body impulsively tightens with muscle memory, as if reliving the way he pinned me beneath the weight of the stone table and threatened to squish me like a bug.

I have a feeling he's come back to finish what he started. Not just crushing me, but all of Orea.

There's another resounding crack, and the third layer of my barrier crumbles. The king is here, on Orea's side, using his magic to rip through my barriers with boulders.

"Take me there now!" I say frantically to Dommik.

When he doesn't, I start running, but after only a few strides, Dommik snatches me up from behind. "No!" he growls in my ear as I flail. "It's too late!"

He's right. I watch as the fae king's magic starts smashing through every layer of my defense. Through every layer of my hope.

I'm not good enough. Everything I've tried to do has fallen short. I'm not as powerful as them. Not as skilled or knowledgeable in magic. These fae make it seem like everything I attempt is child's play.

Tears fill my eyes, but Dommik suddenly jerks behind me, his arms going lax. We both fall, pitching to the ground. The breath gets knocked from my ribs as he lands heavily on top of me, but I manage to roll out from under him. When I push myself up, I see he's face down in the snow, unmoving.

Alarm clangs against my chest, and I shove him on his side. "Dommik!"

But then I freeze when I see two familiar fae standing over me.

The twins, Fassa and Friano. Thick black hair past their shoulders, brown eyes and smooth faces—faces that used to look at me with charming attention but now stare down at me with disgust.

"Queen Malina," Fassa says, the mole on his right cheek indenting in with his sneer. "We thought we might see you again. We were sure to be ready, in case you returned."

I hold up my palms to attack, slices of ice springing up, yet he grips my wrist and clamps something over it. My arm drops with the abrupt weight, and the magic that was collecting in my hand shatters away.

There's a sensation of a heaviness pressing over me. As if something beneath my skin is damming up the access to my magic. The suppression radiates from this smooth gray cuff he's placed on me.

Desperately, I try to pull it off, but I can't slip it past my hand.

"Who's this one?" Fassa says as he kicks at Dommik's unconscious body.

"Don't touch him," I hiss, but when I try to lurch forward, Friano stops me, gripping the back of my neck like a collared dog.

"You're the reason for this little frozen blockade?" Friano tsks, while the sound of cracking and crashing continues behind us. "You are a nuisance. The king isn't pleased."

My eyes narrow. "How are you on this side of the bridge?" I demand, glancing back toward it. The Stone King is making quick work of the layers, but that doesn't explain how they're already on Orea's side.

He ignores my question and, instead, pulls me upright. "Let's tie them up," Friano says to his brother. "Then we'll find out what the king wants to do with them."

I try to wrench away, but he's so much stronger than me.

To my utter disappointment, Fassa snaps another one of those shackles around Dommik's wrist too and then bends down to haul him up and over his shoulder. With Friano's grip on my arm, we are dragged into Cauval's ruins and bound to a cracked and fallen pillar.

The stone digs into my back as Dommik gets tied on the other side. I can only see him if I strain to look over my shoulder. The twins search Dommik's lax body, yanking out his weapons one after the other, while they ignore my attempt at getting myself free.

They've bound me with thick leather straps that look like horse's reins. I struggle to get out, but the reins bite into my skin. No matter how hard I try, I can't call up my magic either.

When they're finished, they walk out, just as another crack crashes through the air outside. Deep in my bones, I know that sound marks the final barrier breaking.

Orea is wide open.

If I'd been here right at the beginning, if I'd had time to see them coming, Dommik and I could have attacked. I could have been ready to fortify, to throw ice magic at them from this side.

Instead, I was tucked in Dommik's arms, sleeping with a peace I did not deserve.

When will I stop failing Orea?

I glance over my shoulder and call Dommik's name, but he doesn't stir. Worry mangles my insides. What if they hit him too hard and he doesn't wake again? What if they struck him so hard they killed him?

My worry turns into panic. "Dommik!"

He stays slumped, his hood thrown back, but then I see his shoulders lift slightly with a breath, and I exhale in relief.

I try to get myself free from the bindings again, but the straps are looped tightly around me with barely any give. Instead, I focus on the strange cuff around my wrist that seems to be affecting my magic.

Both my arms are pressed against my sides, so it takes some maneuvering before I'm able to wrench my hands together in front of me. As soon as I do, I start tugging at the cuff as hard as I can, spinning it, trying to squeeze it over the bones in my hand. I even pick up some of the snow beneath me and shove it under the cuff, hoping it will help, but it doesn't.

It won't come off.

When the fae king comes striding in, I nearly jump right out of my skin.

Dressed in stone-plated armor and a marbled crown, his granite eyes land on me as he comes to a stop. I can't move. I'm stuck in place, fear freezing me.

"The Cold Queen . You thought you could keep us out with a few shards of ice?" he asks, and while his words are mocking, his tone is hardened.

Anxiety stomps down my nerves as he regards me, and though no stone presses down on me, my breath feels tight. Suffocated.

"Are you responsible for the death of my soldiers?" he asks.

My heart beats wildly, but I don't reply.

The king takes another step so he's looming over me, watching me like one might study an insect that lost its leg. Deciding if he should step on me now or leave me to struggle.

I lift my chin, looking back at him without falter. I have learned to look men like him in the eye when they wished me to drop my gaze and bend my neck in submission.

My gaze tells him the same thing as my silent mouth: I won't submit to him.

I am a queen, and cold does not cower.

The two of us stare at each other, while the twins stand several paces behind him. Outside, I can hear the wind shuffling, can hear soldiers shouting as his army breaches Orea.

Again.

Still, we watch each other.

Within this overbearing glare between enemies, there is a push of wills. A push of worlds .

He is so very fae, and I am so very Orean, and though I am not yet forty years, I can feel centuries' worth of hostility emanating from us both. As if I hold the blood of every Orean who has ever been betrayed by a fae, and he holds that of every fae who has hated an Orean.

He wants to crush us, I want to be rid of them, and it's obvious that a broken bridge and even a barricaded one was only a temporary respite. So long as our realms are tethered, death and threat will always have a way to return.

Perhaps Dommik was right. Perhaps the bridge to nowhere was a lie and that track of land did lead somewhere else. Somewhere far from the fae, so that the Oreans who crossed it went somewhere new, somewhere better.

The bridge was never supposed to connect us. I see that as clearly as I see the grooves of granite in the fae king's eyes and the chiseled lines of his jaw.

The girl who crossed into Annwyn, who married a fae and bound our worlds together, perhaps she was the true villain in all of this. For all that's happened since then is betrayal and war and, now, annihilation.

Our worlds were never meant to tether.

So the fae king can look at me with hate, and I can look at him right back, because none of this should have ever happened.

King Carrick tilts his head, as if it's tipping with the thoughts weighing down his mind, and I wonder if perhaps he was thinking similar things to what I was.

"No," he finally says, answering some unspoken question. "You're far too weak to have killed my soldiers. You weren't even able to successfully block the bridge."

Humiliation and anger scrape against my insides, rubbing my shortcomings raw.

Satisfaction pulls at his face and he leans closer to me. "This is why you're losing your world, Orean queen. Because you are not strong enough to keep it."

He starts looking around the ruins, critical gaze taking in the disintegrating structure. "This is your great history of Orea?" he asks with a disparaging tone. "This is nothing . So insignificant that it wasn't even worth my time when I first arrived."

Then he lifts his hands, and the entire structure begins to shake and shift, the very ground trembling. My heart pounds past my ribs as the walls start cracking. Then they start shifting and smoothing, stretching and realigning.

He smiles cruelly. "Let me show you how quickly your Orea will be forgotten."

I watch in stunned silence as he uses his magic to transform the ruins into a sturdy, solid castle. Using immense power as if it's nothing .

For centuries, Cauval has laid here in frozen waste, and within seconds, a single fae transforms it. Erases it.

There's so much power in the air I can taste its dust, as if it's signifying the ashes of Orea itself blowing away.

No longer are the walls reaching for an open sky. They stretch and close, the stones groaning and grinding as they move. The stone melds into an arched ceiling upon solid brick walls. Beneath me, the floor rolls with stonework that flows over the snow like roughened ripples.

Then the pillar we're tied to moves too, tearing a frightened screech from my throat as Dommik and I are lifted with it. The pillar stands upright, making our bindings slip down until we crash upon the floor.

I jerk my body up, trying to fix the bindings that hold me sideways, adjusting until I can sit upright. On the other side of the pillar, I can see Dommik's legs sprawled out, head lolling upon his chest.

The noises stop as every crack and crevice is filled in and smoothed, and then the stone becomes inanimate once more.

The king looks at me with triumph.

"See how quickly Orean history is replaced?" he says, hands dropping down to his sides. "See how easy it is for fae to lay claim? The stronger, better species will always win."

He walks over to where I now sit, and the cavernous hall echoes the sounds of his footsteps bouncing against the solid gray walls. "You see now, don't you, Cold Queen? Fae are superior. You've always known that. It's why you wanted our magic in your veins."

I swallow hard as I look up at him, seething and shaking all at once.

"Oreans can never win against the might of the fae."

After he makes sure his words have sunken in, he turns, and the stone doors he's created scrape open.

It feels as if something inside of me has been scraped open too.

"Leave them," the fae king says to the twins. "Make sure she can hear every soldier that marches through. Let her lay witness to our victory until she is nothing but bones and frost. Let this be her living tomb, where she's left to die while fae thrive." Then he strides out of the building, leaving my teeth to chatter in his wake.

Outside, I can hear the army march in, just like he wanted me to.

I glance around, but the inside of this new castle he's built is nothing like what Cauval used to look like. Anger stabs like chips of ice behind my eyes as I stare at the twins.

Pruinn is dead at Ravinger's hand, but I wish he'd been able to kill these two off as well. I wish more than anything that he was still here. Stone wouldn't win against rot. I'd take great pleasure in seeing Ravinger decay the fae king's flesh from his bones.

But he's not here, and the twins stand over me with a condescending curiosity that enrages me. If only these two had been a part of the casualties Dommik burned. If only he'd killed them before I'd been such a fool and willingly let them slice open my hands and let my blood drip.

I've had so many failures.

"How did you get here?" I ask, my voice hoarse. "You and Pruinn. You three were in Orea when he lured me here. How? The bridge was still broken."

They shake their heads in unison.

"How were you and the king here right now?" I go on. "How was he on this side to break down my barriers?"

Still, they stay silent, their identical expressions filling me with an outburst of anger. "I'm here to die," I spit. "What does it matter anymore?"

"All of it matters," they say together.

I strain against the bindings that pinch into my arms, the unrelenting pillar at my back a reminder of just how stuck I am. "Or perhaps none of it does," I argue coldly.

None of what I've tried to do has mattered at all.

They walk closer, their steps sounding hollow through the empty building.

"Did you know why Pruinn chose you?" Fassa asks, cocking his head as he studies me.

"Because I'm an Orean royal."

"You're the Orean royal," he corrects, making me pause. "The Colier bloodline consists of the longest-ruling monarchs in all of Orea."

"I know that," I snap. "You think I don't know my own family history?"

The twins walk around the newly constructed castle, their long black hair giving off an ethereal shine. "What we think is that you were a fool, Cold Queen. Easily tricked with illusion and compliments," Friano tells me.

A hammer of guilt slams into me, because he's absolutely correct.

"Are you going to trick me again now?" I challenge, my tone full of sharpened ends. "Use your magic to make it seem like this place is something other than what it really is?"

"You would only see through illusion now. Your eyes are open."

A part of me wishes they weren't. Wishes I could still scent the drugging blossoms and hear lilting music and let the lies lull me into a false sense of peace. Anything but this crushing, fatalistic failure.

"Blood matters when it comes to magic, Queen Malina. Just as sacrifice has always been the price for our own tandem power, willingness has always been the price for the bridge." Friano smirks at me as he eyes my restraints. "You aren't willing right now, are you?"

The two of them laugh together as they walk out, leaving Dommik and me behind. Leaving us caught.

With Dommik still unconscious, I have nothing but the sounds of the army to accompany me.

Only that, and the twins' lingering words.

For long minutes, they repeat in my head. Over and over again. Like a defeatist mantra left to stifle me.

Except…as I go over what they said, a dawning realization starts to rise within me. All because of one single word.

Willingness .

Like a bucket of water poured over my head, the truth is there, soaking right into my skin. I stare, though I'm not seeing. Breathe, though not feeling the air.

You're the Orean royal.

Blood matters when it comes to magic.

Willingness has always been the price for the bridge.

I cannot say I've ever felt what I feel now. I never knew I could feel such opposite emotions at once. Such heights of empowering certainty that have risen inside of me… With such depths of devastating understanding.

"Malina?"

My head jerks to the right as Dommik wakes, already trying to strain forward.

"I'm here," I reassure him. "We're alone."

His head moves, gaze probably roving over the building so he can gain a sense of his surroundings before he looks over his shoulder to me. "Are you alright?"

I swallow the lump in my throat. Swallow the truth.

"Yes. I'm alright."

He tries to use his magic, cursing when he realizes he can't. He starts tugging at the gray cuff at his wrist. "What the fuck is this?" he hisses, his hand losing blood flow as he strains to shove it down his hand.

"You're going to hurt yourself," I say in light reprimand.

He growls. "Can you use your magic at all?"

"No," I say, trying to lift my wrist. "It's these gray cuffs. I don't know how, but they're blocking our magic."

Dommik lets out another curse as he looks around the new castle that the king erected. It's a slap in the face, to have taken ancient Orean stone and made it into such a perverse show of fae power.

"The king made it," I say numbly. "To prove how easily fae can erase Oreans."

Silence stretches between us. I wince at the sound of the soldiers outside.

"Tell me what's wrong."

Pulling my gaze away from the ceiling, I blink at Dommik's question. "Aside from the obvious?"

"Yes, aside from that."

I stare straight ahead. "Well, I was foolish at the bridge, an army is marching, the fae king made threats, I'm captured in Seventh Kingdom, and I'm trapped here with a shadow assassin. My history is repeating itself." I laugh bleakly. "Although, that last one isn't quite so bad this time around."

He doesn't join in with my attempt at dry humor. Instead, I feel him straining to look over at me, his silence filling the already quiet castle. He's deciphering me the same way he always has—as if he's delving down past my top layer to root around in the parts I've buried.

My eyes drop to my hands, and I drag my finger over the slice down my left palm. No shards of ice are gathered there now, just the faintest blue stains down the unsealed gash.

"There's something else," Dommik says quietly. "Tell me."

I go still for a moment.

The intensity of his tone tells me he's not going to drop this. So I swallow, placing my shaky hands back to my lap. "It was only something those fae twins said."

"What did they say?"

A torn-away sigh escapes me, the end jagged, the taste bitter.

"They pointed out the Coliers are the longest-ruling monarchs in Orea's history."

Dommik waits for me to keep going.

"The longest-ruling. An ancient royal bloodline flowing right here in my veins," I say, jerking my hand up to view the blue lines that run beneath my pale skin. "And I've ruined it. I've failed."

Tears spring to my eyes as my throat tightens. "Willingness," I murmur. "That's what they said. The bridge has always been about willingness."

Looking around the pillar, I focus on his intent face. "It wouldn't have worked," I say quietly. "My blood. Not if I hadn't been willing. That was the key, Dommik. That was what damned us all. How willing I was."

A tear drips over my cheek, and a shiver runs along my spine. I glance down where my sleeves have rolled up, at where goose bumps litter my arms.

"You feel cold?" he asks, his tone tinged in shock. "You never feel cold."

The Cold Queen who never felt coldness, yet now, I'm chilled through.

All because of that one single word.

Willingness .