Page 236 of Winter Gods & Serpents

I love you. The words rang loud in my ears, my heart taking stab after stab, it wavered and then it stilled, sending me in an agony of hurt as I cried the well and swell of it all out, the sound drowned by my palm and heavy mourning skies. I was happy and then I wasn’t.

He could not be mine because happiness never knew me, refused to know me. He could never be mine for I’m sentenced to hate him. He could not be mine for he was never mine, never to be mine and never meant to be. And I was lost, now to never be anyone’s, to never be his; for I’d sold each part of me for premise of retaliation for those who had me, for a bit, for too little and far too short, for a while but never long, for those I loved and never said I did till they were gone, the one’s he’d taken away from me. The irony of fates, the irony of gods, the one I had vowed to kill was the one my heart vowed to protect.

“Snow.” His footsteps left the temple directed towards me and he called in the air again, searching, “Snow…please. Please, come back to me. Hurt me, hit me, battle me, hate me, stab me all you want. Do it all, but do it all close to me. Do what you came her to do. Don’t…don’t go soft on me, my love.”

I bit on the smile and the stuttering laugh that left me full of heavy tears. I whipped the fog of tears away with my palm, blood smeared across my face, air tasting of salt and steel.

Rage, pain and unshed tears fogged my sight, missing the two blurred Isjordian soldiers slowly approaching me, malice intended on every step. Within flashing seconds, a cloth was over my mouth, a dull pain rang behind my back and before the world spun, one of them grabbed and hoisted me onto their arms. The pure nothingness of the void, again.

The heartache gone with it.

* * *

Snow, my mother’s voice called jerking me awake. It is time.

Why was this becoming a habit of mine? Next time, if anyone wanted my attention or wanted to tie and bargain me to anyone they need only ask. I would happily oblige to avoid the razor-sharp pain in my skull and the whizzing sound drumming along my ears and head, all of that good stuff.

We were close to the sea, the wind breezed furiously around me, coating my lips in a salty taste, the sea bashed against the rocks like sharp lightning cracks, accompanied by the only other sound of seagulls.

When I gathered to open my eyes, my surroundings felt beyond foreign. I laid on a cold stone floor, my hands bound tied behind my back, someone liked bondage more than many by the looks of the intricate knots my fingers grazed. Metal bars separated the grey stony room between me and another dark figure sat afront, arms and legs crossed, quietly observing.

Dragging my body up, I managed to stand upright leaning on the wall, when I realized we appeared to be in a tower. One face of the wall completely ruined and open, facing angry sea and rocks almost hundred feet below us.

“You are a busy man, dear uncle, whatever it is that you want to say or do, please do not hesitate on my behalf,” I said with a raspy voice, smiling like a madwoman. The amount of backstabbing today was on a legendary scale, quite the crowd of haters I have gathered. My, my, wasn’t I popular.

He stood solemnly staring hate at me, his eye betraying nothing but vileness. “For years I had to stand your mother's presence around me, then you and your siblings came along and that dolour doubled, tripled then quadrupled. The spawn of her betrayal looming and growing into princes and princesses that one day would inherit the graced lands of Isjord. How did you think that made me feel, niece?” he said, squatting in front of me. Eye glowing in a washed skin creeping blue.

His dramatics made me roll my eyes. “For the love of Caelum, spare me pissing pity talk. Dear, dear, uncle, don’t you think your anger was a tad bunch misdirected?” I spat, my nostrils flared, and my mouth twisted to a sneer. My hate for sentimentalists stood as still as mountains, and for his as far as the skies, the rotten idiot. “She did not leave you, she was stolen from you.”

He leaned in, lips peeling into a snarl. “Your mother had the choice to refuse his request, but she chose him, not me.”

“How about I take you to the other land, maybe you can take this up with her yourself,” I threatened, tugging on my bounds hard, making him flinch. Whatever had happened, my mother was dead, him talking like this about her felt as if her memory was being tainted.

He examined me and smirked, standing to pace about the room. “Do you know how difficult it is to kill three royal children and a queen?”

I straightened in anger at his words.

“I could have made my work easier if I had just killed her before she had Eren, but my loving brother had been so taken with her, he never let her out of his sight. I’d never though Silas could love but whatever that bitch had done to him soon would fade. But then just when I was about to give up,” he said, slapping his palms together, “a bright solution came. So eager, aren’t they, the Adriatians? Something about a terrible prophecy of wolfs, dragons and thunderbirds, was it not? One moment they received my letter, the next they attacked. How could anyone doubt my confirmation. I, prince of winter, a liar?”

My eyes drew closed in a fiery anguish that dug my heart and pierced every bone. I could not hide the cry twisting on my face. His words, they stabbed me deep—deep on my still open wound, and I bled as I had never before. He had been the one to tell the Adriatians. He was the reason, he was the one. I could not think. I rocked myself back and forth shaking in pain and fury, it felt as if I mourned them for the first time. He was why they were dead.

“You three served no purpose to Silas anyway, after Eren and you didn’t bloom any blessing it was pointless to wait for Thora, he also had Fren and Reuben. Whatever happened did not affect him whatsoever, but the damned lords and other kingdoms almost overthrew him over that damn wall and then he was forced to agree in the end, putting his plans to a halt, unfortunately. Till he thought of the agreement, the lords would fall for it, they knew we needed what Adriata could offer, trades became costly, our Aura weakening till we invested most of our coin in guard and maintenance of those damned walls. But the barbarians refused and then came you, till they asked for you,” he said almost laughing. “The salvation.”

Snow, my snowflake, open your eyes, look and listen. My mother’s sweet voice circled like a breeze about my ears and my eyes flew open. Even gone she still watched over me.

“What about me?” I asked, but I already knew, and he had already said enough from his behalf. As Moriko had said, my father’s way into Adriata was me.

“You, sweet niece, his key to this damned wall, into this damned kingdom,” he answered, flinging his hands in the air in exclamation. Clicking his tongue and shaking his head he continued, “But the troublesome little wench you are, almost lost him that. You even forced him to stage that fiasco of bandits to kidnap and keep you locked away and out of his plans till the deal, he learned then that you were not only words after all.”

Moriko had been correct—too correct.

“A smart girl weren’t you, but you did not count the extras. Silas knew of your alliance with the general, he knew it was useless to trail you, that you were far from knowing any of his plans, but poor Samuel, he had connections. If you had found out, you’d ran, hid, even warned someone. He did come very close, and I dare say found out enough to know what was going on, very unsmart on his behalf, it earned him death after all.”

My father trailed Samuel because of me, because I was using him for information. He had died because of me. I could not anymore, everything that had happened was my father’s doing, the evil was him from the whole beginning, without him would not be the destruction of Olympia, the Adriatian attack, the thousand Isjordians dead, my mother’s, Eren’s, Thora’s, Samuel’s deaths and so many more.

“First he stole from Solarya, then Hanai and Seraphim, now Adriata, what is next Eldmoor? I do not understand what it is that he wants? War?” I questioned with a half voice.

“No, the point is to get all of them without extensive war, there is an easy way now, you finally were useful to him, congratulations, niece,” he laughed and clapped towards me.