Buzzing in the air above them were little clusters of snow bees feeding off ice flowers tipped in splashes of crimson and magenta that sat inside glass vases.
A maiden turned to him with a quizzical arch of her brow. “You want?” she asked in broken Kingdom.
Made entirely of ice, with blue hair, blue eyes, blue lips, and blue clothing she was tall and lanky, with arms that hung nearly to her knees and a warm, ready smile on her face.
She was a strange sight to behold, foreign and yet human enough not to be off putting.
Glancing around, Alador spotted a bowl sitting on the counter loaded with snowcapped berries and apples. Shaking his head, he reached for the bowl and brought it to his chest.
“I’m good, madam, I thank you.”
“S’okay.” She waved politely, turned and resumed her task of peeling the pile of snow tubers in front of her.
Leaving the kitchen, he headed toward the dining hall, shaking his head at how very different and unusual this palace was from what he was used to back home.
Palming a handful of snow berries, he popped them into his mouth, munching happily as their sweet juices flowed down his throat. The low ache in his stomach immediately eased a little with the first bite.
Alador was just about to pop another handful in, when he stopped short in the doorway. Standing with her back to him and facing the floor to ceiling windows was the queen.
Dressed in a robe of silvery white that pooled in a puddle at her feet, her hair—which was now a deep blue—was pinned high on her head. And though she was inside, a small cloud of snowflakes breezed around her.
Her pale skin almost glittered like diamond dust in the weak morning light. His heart jackhammered violently in his chest.
Then she turned and it was like he’d forgotten how to breathe. A halo of golden light washed around her head and shoulders. He’d seen her just a few hours ago, but it was like seeing her again for the first time.
That strange, unsettling feeling of standing on a precipice that dropped sharply on all sides came over him.
Setting the bowl on the table beside him, he then bowed deeply. It was not the centaur way to bow to those not of their ilk, but he didn’t bow to her because she was a queen.
He bowed to her because he needed to.
Wanted to.
Though he couldn’t quite understand why he felt as he did. Only that his heart was a beating drum in his chest.
When he stood back up he’d expected her to perhaps leave, or give him a dismissive nod. He’d deserved it after his treatment of her earlier. But she did neither.
Instead she gifted him with the first smile he’d ever seen on her face. He swallowed hard.
“Mistress, what are you doing here?”
Her brows gathered. “If you’re worried about the ice demons, you shouldn’t worry. I’ve set a watchman out.”
What? No, that wasn’t at all what he’d meant. He shook his head. “I apologize, that wasn’t what I implied. Rather...I thought maybe you’d be breaking your fast in your own room,” he ended lamely, cringing at how silly that had sounded.
What was wrong with him?
Since when had it become difficult for him to get his thoughts in order?
She walked toward him, gliding along a thin sheet of ice. Stopping only once she’d gotten to within a few inches of him. The air around her smelled heavily of sweet fruit and frost.
“I am sorry for disturbing your quiet,” she said, “I’ll move along to—”
Not thinking, he reached out for her arm, gripping it in his large hand. “You should stay. This is after all your palace, I’ll find another place to—”
She glanced down at his hand on her arm and he snatched it away quickly. What had he been thinking to grab her that way?
But he hadn’t been thinking at all.
It was just that she looked so sad standing there as she’d been. All alone. Staring out at the sun with a look of such longing on her face that he’d felt broken by it.
Nibbling on the corner of her lip, she shook her head. Her movements were shy, timid.
Why?
Did she fear him?
He sighed deeply, taking a few steps back to give her her space should she need it.
But she frowned instead.
Rubbing her temple, she said, “No, you can stay. This room is large enough for the both of us, surely, and the children too, when they come down for breakfast...” her words trailed off, and she glanced away.
She was nervous.
Alador could smell it on her. That scent of anxiety that washed through her bones and leaked through her pores. The thought was astonishing, maybe all he’d ever known were stories of her, but it was hard reconciling the woman he thought he’d known with the woman before him.
“Do I make you nervous, queen?”
Her lips tugged into an even deeper frown. Blue eyes as clear as cut sapphires blazed back at him. “No, you do not.”
Her words were sharp, but she hugged her arms to her chest, and he knew that she lied. She was nervous of him. But why?
“Yes, you are,” he pressed. “I can sense it.”
Her tiny nostrils flared with annoyance and it was so unbelievably cute that for a moment he felt the tug of a smile twitch at his cheeks. It was such a centauress mannerism that’d reminded him oddly of home.
“You can sense it,” she scoffed, “is that so. How?”
Deciding to test her, he took a step closer, and she immediately backed up, her large eyes growing wide with nerves as he did.
He stopped moving. “Because I can smell it on you.”
Rosebud shaped lips pinched into a tight, thin line. “You can smell it on me? Well, that is perverse. What else can you smell, horse?”
Normally, if anyone called him a horse, his hackles would rise. He was no more a horse than a horse was a man. And yet, his stomach didn’t tighten with anger, but instead flopped almost painfully down to his knees.
She had teased him.
Even after how he’d acted last night and this morning. Why?
The smile that’d only ghosted across his lips seconds ago now blazed to life. “Horse am I?”
And for just a second laughter danced through her blue, blue eyes. But was squelched only moments later.
Alador found himself oddly fascinated by her mercurial shifts in mood.
Clearing his throat at that strange, and not wholly unwelcome thought, he shook his head. “Though I am part animal, I am a man. However, the animal side of me is much more sensitive to smell and scent than that of a human.”
There was an immediate softening of her features. She studied him then, her eyes roaming along the contours of his body, as though mapping him in her mind and he found himself oddly pleased by the thought.
What did she think when she looked upon him?
Interbreed relations were rare, most Kingdomners preferred to stick like with like, but on occasion it did happen.
He had a cousin—Chester—who’d gone and hitched his hand to a mortal woman of Earth named Kym. Last he’d heard they were still as deliriously happy as they’d ever been and were now expecting their first foal sometime in the spring.
Shaking his head, he tried to twist that strange thought loose. But the hooks of that idea had already wormed itself deep inside his head as for a brief moment he’d imagined the queen heavy with his child.
He clamped down on the denial struggling to break free of his tongue.
His flesh tingled when her gaze alighted, and stayed on his chest for several long heartbeats. But then those fathomless blue eyes of hers as deep as the very ocean, turned back to him.
“Why did your people enter into an agreement with me? Why not the Under Goblin? Why choose me?”
He let her questions hang in the air for a while as he thought how best to answer it. Of all the questions she could have asked, he’d not expected this one.
Alador tried to think of a time when he’d encountered another woman like her, one
without artifice or trickery, and apart from his sister, he could think of none.
The queen was unique; she simply was who she was. She did not flirt with him, or bat her lashes at him to get her answers. She asked and waited, hoping he would answer truthfully.
Her candor was refreshing.
A centauress would have flirted first, and if that hadn’t gotten her her way, she’d have resorted to violence next. The queen merely stood before him waiting patiently.
Very few creatures outside of his own kind knew that centaurs didn’t merely rely on the information they saw, but information they felt—their natural instincts—to help them make an informed decision.
The queen had always come across as cold and distant, but honorable. In her own way.
“Because we knew you’d uphold your end of the treaty.”
“Has that never been in doubt?”
He shook his head. “Not with you. No.”
She blinked, and he could almost swear that his answer had startled her, though he wasn’t sure why it should have.
A long line of maidservants came bustling in then, carrying large platters overflowing with plates of food and drink.
None of them spared a glance for their queen or her guest, they simply set the foods down, lit several candles that sputtered with those same strange variegated flames and marched right back out, leaving only the sounds of their melodic conversation in their wake.
Taking a deep breath, the queen stepped to the side and spread her arm. “Join me for breakfast, centaur.”
She’d tried to frame it as a command, but he heard the telltale quiver of the question hidden inside it.
Looking at his bowl of mostly uneaten fruit there were only two choices to make. Politely decline. Grab his food and leave. Or...or he could choose to accept her invitation and possibly learn more of her motives and why the three of them had been brought here to begin with.
Inhaling deeply, he nodded, turned and followed her to the large table, leaving the bowl behind as a snack for later.
The queen sat at the head of the table, casually reaching for food as she served herself.
Immediately Alador realized there was a problem. In his centaur form he’d not be able to sit down on the chair. But if he sat on the floor his head would barely reach the tabletop. However if he stood at the table he’d force her to have to crane her neck whenever she looked up at him.
Amongst his kind there was no need for tables, they ate where they stood.
Moving his chair back, he decided the only option he could choose was to stand and eat.
Glancing sidelong at him when he moved his chair out of the way, the queen frowned and then nibbled on the bottom of her full lip with straight, white teeth.
Strong looking teeth.
Teeth like hers would be a sign of a good breeder within his herd. Take away her human legs, and the queen was more than simply pretty.
His heart pounded.
And then it pounded even harder when she stood, stepped back, and with a simple flick of her wrist, caused the chairs to vanish and the tabletop to rest upon the ground.
Without looking up at him, she tucked her robes beneath her legs and sat, reaching for her plate of food as though nothing had just occurred out of the ordinary.
He clenched his jaw, understanding that though she didn’t want him making a big deal about what she’d just done, it’d been a very big deal.
Sitting slightly to the left of her, he couldn’t rip his gaze off her as she brought a ripened snowberry to her lips and sucked it down. The bright, dark juices immediately staining her porcelain fingers a bloody red.
Without conscious thought, he reached out and latched a hand around her wrist.
Delicate brow lifting, she stared down at his hand. When she looked up at him, the words he’d desperately needed to say finally came pouring out.
“I apologize for this morning. I wasn’t in my right mind and—”
When she looked at him, his heart stuttered. Goddess she was lovely, a mixture of fierce woman and innocence that stirred his insides and turned them to putty.
“We were both tired, and it was nothing. I am only glad you came and helped when you did.”
His nostrils flared as he reluctantly forced himself to release her. Her skin had been so soft, far softer than he’d imagined. He’d always thought she’d be as hard and unyielding as her ice, and while there’d been a chill to her flesh that seeped through his own...the touch of her had been far from unpleasant. In fact, his blood still tingled from the contact.
So many thoughts swirled through his head. But the one that really mattered couldn’t seem to leave the tip of his tongue.
Opening his mouth, he tried once more to ask her...he wasn’t even sure what.
Why his people had vilified her when she seemed to be anything but?
Why she seemed to care about them?
Why she’d kept herself secluded and alone for so long?
But just like before, the questions were glued to his lips. So instead he asked another, one he knew she’d not answer as she hadn’t bothered to do it yesterday, but one he had to know.
“Why are you here? Why are we here?”
For several long tense minutes she said nothing. Wouldn’t even look at him. All she could do was bring one berry to her mouth, chew on it thoughtfully, swallow, and then repeat the process all over again.
Alador tried to make sense of her. But she thoroughly confused him. Her silence was as cold and indifferent as he’d always assumed her to be, and yet her continued acts of kindness baffled his long held belief of her, making him question everything he thought he’d known about the Ice Queen.
“I’ve gone over that question myself. A million times,” she admitted softly, so quietly that he’d almost missed it entirely.
“What?” he asked startled, not because he’d not heard her, but because he hadn’t actually expected an answer.
Finally, she looked back up at him. Her blue eyes striking in the paleness of her face, her smooth skin gleamed like freshly fallen snow twinkling in the sunlight, and this close to her he saw that even her lips which he’d thought to be just a pale shade of pink before were actually traced with a thin thread of palest blue along her cupid’s bow.
Goddess she was beautiful.
His heart thumped powerfully in his chest.
Clearing his throat, he reached for a pitcher of juice, and kept his eyes firmly on the platters of food before them. He’d thought after yesterday his peculiar awareness of her might wan, that maybe he’d been delirious and tired and it’d been nothing more than that.
His tail flicked. And though he told himself not to look back at her, he found himself doing it all the same.
Thinning her lips, she shook her head as a pained expression flitted briefly across her brow.
“Last night I stood in the snow. You watched me,” she said it without preamble, and again there was no artifice to it. It wasn’t a coy question asking for more, simply a fact.
And he didn’t know how to answer.
“I...uh. I did not know—that is to say...”
Her smile was soft.
“It’s okay, male. You’re curious about me. About who I am. Are you not? It is why you continue to ask me why you’re here.”
He clenched his jaw, in a few words she’d gotten to the heart of the matter. Licking his front teeth, he simply nodded once. No more, no less.
Picking up a leg of meat, she held it in her hand. In less than a minute the leg that’d been succulent with juices and fat, froze. Turning blue at the tip of the leg bone.
Frowning prettily, her eyes never looked up at him as she said, “The truth is, centaur, this is all my fault.”
He knew that wasn’t true. He believed that with every fiber of his being now. Not after what they’d done last night. Not after her continued acts of kindness. She’d not been the one to grab him, it’d been the Under Goblin.
Just thinking about that ani
mal caused an ache to spread through Alador’s chest. He rubbed his thumb across it, wincing at the fiery pain and wondering what’d just happened, but as quickly as it’d come on, it disappeared.
There was dark magick in this place, he felt it lingering everywhere.
Sighing, she set the now frozen hunk of meat down on her plate that she’d not touched yet. “I know what you’re thinking, that it hadn’t simply been me. And while that’s the truth of it, there’s more to the story.”
“Can you read minds?” He touched the tip of his forehead.
“No.” She dusted off her hands, folding them elegantly on her lap. “But it’s what I would have thought were the situation reversed. This is my fault because of what I did the night I chose to make Glaciem my home. I did not know that land belonged to the Goblin. In fact, I’d never heard of him before. No doubt, that bit of wounded pride was the seed that rooted all those years ago. Culminating in what he’s now done.”
“And that is?”
Heavy flakes of snow fell languidly down around her shoulders from nothingness. And it was odd, because he should have been frozen being surrounded by so much ice, but he felt fine.
Whatever she was doing, she was keeping that sting from him.
“That you are to remain trapped within this labyrinth of snow for a month’s time or until I discover where he’s hidden the key to our release.”
A test then. To take back the Goblin’s lands.
It seemed petty and pointless.
But then, centaurs were rational creatures and this type of mean-mindedness was beneath his kind. If vengeance was to be had it would be met face to face, not by using innocent pawns to further their agenda.
“Ours? So you’re trapped as well.”
Her cerulean gaze pierced his. “Yes, it would seem so.”
“And yet you still have your magic. You should be able to leave, no?”
“I have some magic.” She shrugged. “But nothing at all like what I typically have. I could kill those ice demons, but I can hardly control the elements outside the door, and no matter how much I will it, I cannot leave.”
He heard the sadness in her words and he frowned, feeling her emotions on a visceral level. Her sadness was now his. He didn’t like seeing her this way. He hadn’t seen her laugh or smile often, but when he had, it was as though the sun had finally come out after years of darkness.