Roan was on his own now—he had been for a while. “Protect yourself, son,” he whispered. “Live the life you were meant to live.”
He fell to his knees and stopped fighting.
4: Sabria Loren
The Western Kingdom- Circa 510
Sabria Loren, though a princess by birth, was never destined to be a queen. Her eldest living brother, Gill Loren, was born twelve years earlier, and, by rights, was heir to their father’s crown. She’d once had another brother, Ty, born far earlier than both of them, but he’d died tragically before Sabria had appeared, as if by magic, in her mother’s fifty-year-old womb.
But now everything had changed.
The Hundred Years War had crept its way into the Bay of Bounty, the largest trade port in the Four Kingdoms, and now the Crimeans were threatening to withdraw all merchant vessels if a treaty wasn’t established between the west and north.
And that meant trouble for the princess, who’d suddenly gone from beloved daughter to royal bargaining chip.
Sabria slammed a fist into her red silk pillow, hating the tears that sprung from the corners of her eyes. Why does it have to be me? she asked herself for the hundredth time. She stood and stared at her reflection in the mirror, and the answer to her question stared back at her.
Her eighteen-year-old eyes were so bright and blue they seemed to contain the sun-sparkled surface of the ocean. Her hair was so shiny it was as if it had been spun from golden silk. Her features were soft and delicate. She was the prettiest of her female cousins, and thus, she’d been chosen.
Her arranged marriage to Prince Wolfric Gäric was to take place in less than a fortnight. She’d never met him, and knew only that he was ten years older and first in line for the northern throne. Which would make her queen of the north one day. The Ice Queen, she would be called.
Sabria had always loved her beauty, spending mornings in front of the mirror while her maidens combed and braided her hair—but her father relentlessly cautioned her against vanity. Perhaps he was punishing her for it now. Perhaps Wrath was reaching down from the seventh heaven and plucking her up like a grape, only to drop her in the frozen snow of the north.
She hated her beauty now. Wished she’d been born with a crooked nose or crossed eyes or some other imperfection to make her less desirable.
“Please,” she pleaded to the angry god of the western kingdom. “I’ll never look at myself again. I swear it.” To demonstrate the truth of her promise, she flung her satin sheets from her bed and draped them over her mirror. There. It is done, she thought. Surely Wrath will forgive me. Surely Wrath will answer my prayer and save me from my fate.
She flinched at a sturdy knock on her door. Could it be? Had Wrath heard her pleas and responded so quickly?
“Come in,” she said, trying to keep the tremble from her voice.
The door eased open and her father appeared, his short beard full of both salt and pepper these days. “My daughter,” he said, his eyes soft and kind. His voice full of sorrow and regret.
Sabria’s heart melted in a puddle on the floor. Why did her father have to be so good all the time? It only made it harder for her to understand why he was punishing her.
His eyes roved across the room, to the unmade bed, to the covered mirror, and finally, back to her tear-streaked cheeks. “Sabria, the time has come—”
“No,” Sabria said, pleading. She fell to her knees, her hands clenched together in supplication. To him. To Wrath.
“I’m sorry,” he said, and it only made things harder that she could tell he meant it. “We have no choice. Your marriage to the northern prince will solidify our alliance. For the first time in almost one hundred years, we could have a sliver of peace with the north. Trade with the Crimeans will resume. Knight’s End will prosper. We all have a role to play, Sabria, and this is yours.”
How does he do that? Sabria wondered. King Loren could make her feel guilty even when sending her to the last place in the Four Kingdoms she’d ever want to go.
She fought back tears. Unthreaded her hands. Stood. Lifted her chin, playing the role of the proud, courageous princess. She nodded, afraid to speak the truth in her heart. “I will be ready shortly,” she said, forcing the words between locked teeth.
“You are the best of us,” her father said, kissing her on both cheeks before departing.
When the door closed, Sabria’s legs lost all strength and she slumped to the floor once more. Her prayer was too late, her fate sealed.
Then she spotted it, a sliver of silver peeking out from beneath the shadow of her bed. A knife. It wasn’t particularly sharp, nor particularly long. The blade was primarily used by her chambermaid to repair clothing. She must’ve dropped it, lost it beneath the bed skirt. Long forgotten.
On hands and knees, Sabria crawled across the floor. Her hand shot out and she seized the knife’s handle between trembling fingers. She could do it so easily. Bring the blade up. Rake it across her face. Anywhere would do. She could even make it look like an accident, like she’d tripped and fallen and sliced her face on a sharp corner of her dressing table. Her beauty marred, her face the home to a long, bright scar…no lord or prince of the north would want her. Prince Wolfric Gäric would have to choose someone else. One of her female nieces, Sai or Gaia.
If Wrath wouldn’t answer her prayers, if her father wouldn’t listen, she would save herself.
Yes.
She raised the blade, the edge level with her eyes. Tightened her grip, until her fingers ached. Drew the blade closer, until it was touching her cheek, the cold metal drawing gooseflesh from her arms and the back of her neck. Took a deep breath, steadying her nerves.
“Do it,” she whispered. Then louder: “DO IT!”
The blade bit into her skin and she gasped, dropping the knife to the floor with a clatter. Warmth rose from her flesh and, shocked, she reached up to touch her face. Her fingers came away scarlet with blood.
She fought to her feet and rushed to the dressing table, flinging back the sheet she’d draped over the mirror.
Her heart beat steadily in her chest as she stared at herself. I’m pathetic, she thought. I’m so addicted to my own beauty I won’t destroy it to save myself.
For the truth was as plain as day on her cheek: a tiny cut, smeared with a spot of blood from where she’d touched her skin with her finger. It was nothing, no deeper a wound than a cut from the edge of a parchment scroll. By the time she’d made the journey to the northern stronghold in Castle Hill, the cut would be fully healed, her beauty restored.
Her door burst open and Sabria swung around to find her mother, Queen Mira Loren, staring at her. Her pearlescent blue eyes darted around the room, as if searching for something. “You’re not hurt?” she said.
Sabria shook her head, her vision blurring. I’m only hurt where you cannot see.
“I was coming to help you prepare and I heard a scream,” her mother said. She took a step forward. Even as she approached her seventieth name day, Mira Loren’s beauty was impossible to deny. Beneath the wrinkles that had crept in over the last ten years was a woman who had once turned heads as often as her only daughter. Instead of turning gray, her sun-kissed hair had become as white as the snowcapped mountains to the north, somehow serving to enhance her beauty even more.
Sabria’s mother frowned, her eyes narrowing as she finally noticed the spot of blood on her daughter’s face. “What happened?” She reached up and brushed away the clotting blood with the back of her thumb.
“I…I…” The tears rose like dew on the grass on a cool winter’s night, dripping down her cheeks, stinging the miniscule cut.
“Oh, child,” her mother said, pulling her into an embrace. “Oh, sweet child of mine.”
At any other time, Sabria would’ve been angered to be called a child when she was a woman grown, but not now. Now she felt like a child, lost and scared and needing the warmth of her mother’s arms to protect her.
“I don’t want to go,” she sob
bed, her tears wetting the collar of her mother’s white purity dress.
“I know, dear. I know,” her mother whispered. “But it is your duty to our people.”
Sabria stiffened. She’d been looking for comfort, not more of this. She squirmed out of her mother’s grip, backing away until she sank onto the bed.
“You will save countless lives by making this sacrifice,” her mother said.
Sabria hated that it made her feel guilty again. She hated that her life wasn’t being considered. She hated that being born to a king and a queen meant she had duties and responsibilities that were out of her control.
She hated herself for her own weakness and fear.
And, in that moment, she vowed never to return to the west.
A ship carried Sabria across the calm, still waters of the Bay of Bounty. Since she was a little girl, she’d dreamed of sailing on the open sea, seeing the world—and not just the Four Kingdoms. She longed to see Crimea and whatever was beyond, too. She used to sit with her father, gazing out the tower windows, watching the sun fall, fall, fall, and finally, splash into the ocean in a cornucopia of colors. He would say, “Sabria, the world is a wonderful, but scary place.” To which she would respond, “I’m not scared, Father.”
This wasn’t the way she’d dreamed of seeing the world, as a treaty-bride forced to sail north. And despite her childhood bravado, she was scared. More scared than she’d ever been.
Her brother Gill, heir to their father’s throne, had come as her escort, along with a retinue of guards. Standing beside her, his long blond locks blowing in the salty breeze, Gill spoke of the future, of the beautiful alliance that brother and sister would forge between the west and the north. His words were shadows, and Sabria found herself unable to do more than nod, refusing to tear her gaze from the western coastline, where the impenetrable walls of Knight’s End shone in the orange light of the dying day.
It was a view she knew she might never see again.
Once, she and her brother had been close, despite their ten-year age difference. Gill had been a dashing young princeling with enough energy to keep up with her youth, giving her “horse rides” on his shoulders and always letting her win at Knights ’n Trolls. But everything had changed the day her father let Gill sit on the throne. He’d been skinny then, a reedy stalk with arms and legs, and did little to fill the royal seat. Except with his ego, which grew ten sizes that day. “I will be king one day,” he declared. Not a fact. Not an opinion. A promise. When Sabria had asked if she could sit on the throne, her father solemnly said, “Nay. For Wrath will know the falsehood of your claim and punish you.”
A rush of bitterness at the memory filled Sabria’s mouth as she leaned on the ship’s railing, watching Knight’s End move farther and farther away. Regardless of whether she’d sat on the throne that day, Wrath had decided to punish her.
The ship jolted to a stop, and Sabria finally turned away from her home. A flurry of activity greeted them, men on the ship tossing lines across to dockworkers waiting to catch them, lashing the royal vessel to enormous wooden posts.
On the rough timber platform, a platoon of northern kingsguard waited, their armor shadowy and dull gray on one side and shiny and silver on the other. Sabria felt like the armor looked, torn in two halves, destined to be half a person from this day forward.
A long plank was stretched from the ship to the dock, and Sabria was urged to disembark. A hand on her shoulder stopped her.
“May Wrath shine on the north with you as its queen,” Gill said.
“May Wrath forever bless the west,” Sabria said automatically, forcing the formality past the lump in her throat.
Her brother hugged her stiffly, and turned away. A future king didn’t linger with heartfelt goodbyes.
Sabria blinked quickly, drying her eyes, and then faced the north. Beyond the docks, enormous metal spires rose like giant arrowheads along the coastline, stretching all the way to the western edge of the Mournful Mountains. Each spire was connected by hammered sheets of metal, the rectangular plates bearing the northern sigil—the golden shield, cracked but not broken. Never broken. Atop the metal wall were vigilant archers, prepared to fire upon an invading army from the west. She knew that beyond the iron defenses was the largest northern city, Blackstone, a series of castles with an ill reputation for sin and violence.
She reached up to brush a stray lock of hair away from her cheek, and her knuckles grazed the thin scab that had already formed where she’d cut her skin. At least she still had her beauty. Perhaps that would be enough to earn her the favor of her husband-to-be, and some semblance of happiness in the frozen north.
Steeling herself, she traversed the plank, accepting a hand offered by one of the dockworkers. The timber platform creaked under her feet as choppy waves brushed against it. One man stepped forward from the northern platoon, and a chill shuddered beneath her skin.
He was unlike any man she’d ever seen before—his skin white and smooth like painted glass; his eyes devoid of color; his fingernails long and filed to points, attached to long, thin fingers—and yet she immediately knew him by reputation alone.
The Ice Lord.
One of the sinmarked.
Sabria had never met one of the marked before, for they simply did not exist in the western world. According to her father, the marks born by those like the man standing before her were placed there by a mysterious Evil, the same Evil that had descended on the hearts of rulers in the east, north, and south. The sinmarked were bringers of death, bearers of unnatural power, enemies to Wrath. If one of their kind was discovered in the west, they were promptly executed, their bodies burned to ash and scattered in several locations, so they couldn’t reform.
Now one of the sinmarked was standing before her, beckoning her toward him.
Though her feet were like lead, Sabria forced them forward, until she was close enough to touch the Ice Lord, if she wished. He towered over her, a thin tree with narrow, snow-covered branches. She’d heard of the power contained in his touch. The power to turn flesh and bone into ice, which would crack as easily as sun-dried clay.
He could touch her now, and this nightmare would all be over.
Instead, he said, “Princess Sabria, you are most welcome in the north.” Though his words were kind, his tone was not, a sound akin to icicles being scraped across stone.
“Thank you,” she said, her own voice whisper-thin.
“This way.” He gestured for her to move into the protective circle of armored guards.
With no other choice, Sabria obeyed, turning back at the last moment to wave to her brother. Her hand fell limply to her side—the ship was already gliding toward the west, Gill’s back facing her. She’d already been forgotten.
Blackstone was ten times the size of Knight’s End. They passed several castles, rising on each side of the general hustle and bustle of the city. Compared to Knight’s End, the walls were higher and thicker, the roads longer and wider, the residents more numerous than the salt in the sea.
If they ever decided to invade Knight’s End with a full force…, Sabria thought. She didn’t know if they could defend themselves. That doesn’t matter, she reminded herself. That is why I am here. For the first time, she understood how important her marriage alliance was. For the first time, she stopped thinking about herself.
She shivered, and not from the thought—from the cold. Though she’d been given a thick woolen cloak upon arrival at the docks, the air in the north seemed to penetrate cloth and skin, needling its frigid chill into the very marrow of her bones. And she wasn’t even that far north yet, she knew. It wasn’t even snowing, aside from an occasional errant flake that descended from above, landing on her cheek with a cool splash.
It was only going to get colder.
The people of Blackstone stared at her as she passed, craning their necks to catch a glimpse through the blockade of guards. The looks they gave her were full of narrowed eyes and sneers. One man even spat in her gen
eral direction.
“Pay them no mind,” a voice said. A girl who appeared to be around her own age caught up to her, matching her strides. She was shorter than Sabria, and broader in the shoulders and hips. Next to Sabria’s graceful steps, her trod was heavy and disgruntled, like she was trudging through snow, even though the streets were clear. She wore a thick, black cloak rimmed with some kind of animal fur. Her cheeks were flushed and her breath misted out in ghostly vapors.
“It’s hard to ignore people who hate you,” Sabria said. She wasn’t used to this. As a princess of the west, she’d been adored. On the many occasions when she’d visited the commoners of Knight’s End to conduct her Day of Service, they’d sprinkled the cobblestone streets with flower petals.
“No it’s not,” the strange girl said. “You just pretend they don’t exist, and then they don’t.” She jutted out her broad, square chin, her green eyes fierce and defiant.
Sabria couldn’t help the laugh that slipped out. Several guardsmen shot her sharp glares and she slapped a hand over her mouth. “Who are you?”
“What? You don’t recognize the renowned beauty of a princess of the north? I’m Zelda Gäric, of course.”
Wrath be good, Sabria thought. She’d been speaking to her betrothed’s sister and didn’t even realize it. Prior to the marriage alliance being finalized, her father had insisted she be tutored in northern history, including the royal line of succession. She knew as much as a westerner could know about Gäric lineage, from the very first Gäric to breach the western coast, a Crimean explorer named Heinrich, to Zelda’s father, King Wilhelm Gäric, the Undefeated King.
And she knew about Princess Zelda, who was considered strange even amongst her own family, rumored to have been discovered walking in circles and talking to herself on more than one occasion. Sometimes she would go days on end without leaving her chambers, or attending court.