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Not many in Verenthia knew this, but the Ice Queen rarely slept.

Her chambers were carved from moonstone, though most thought it would be frost. Not many were allowed through the doors, and even fewer were allowed to look at her without her veil of ice covering most her face.

She was very particular about whom she spent time with, whom she allowed in her company.

Even hunger had become a chore—she did it once every three days because of the nuisance that it was to have to go through everything they served her to make sure it was safe to eat.

To most, this would indeed sound like a miserable life.

But the Ice Queen hadn’t always been like this.

The moonstone walls of her chambers remembered a very different version of her, a beautiful woman full of laughter and good spirits, who thought a day gone by without laughter was a day wasted.

She thought flowers were sent as thank yous by the stars.

She believed hope had far more power than fear .

She had been as full of life then as she was full of misery now.

And it was all because of the prophecy.

The walls sparked with veins of silver that glowed faintly with their own light.

Other lights made of raw fae magic trapped in glass were mounted on walls.

Tall, arched windows were framed in vines of glass that never wilted, and a great chandelier made of snowflakes was suspended mid-air by a sorcerer spell long ago.

It used to be the queen’s favorite thing to look at before her eyes closed at the end of the day, back then when she slept.

Silken drapes, so pale they looked like melting stars were on the sides of the windows.

The queen’s room was full—with mirrors and bookshelves and ordinary things she’d once thought extraordinary.

A vase of winter roses, freshly plucked from her gardens sat atop a dresser, but she never looked at them anymore.

She noticed the smell, noticed more when it was missing, but she never glanced in their direction now.

Simply because she failed to see the point.

Her bed that she so rarely used was a sculpted canopy of ice-kissed wood, its covers a soft white.

It was… silent in the Ice Queen’s chambers. Everything in there spoke of beauty and… finality . As if time had been paused here long ago.

It made the queen feel stuck in the minutes and hours and days. Especially tonight as she closed her eyes and willed herself not to break yet. Hunger gnawed at her insides worse than the frostfire magic she possessed in abundance.

Tonight was the night she would have to eat.

Such an unpleasant experience .

“Talk to me, Your Majesty,” Vair spoke softly from behind her, watching her standing there in front of the closed windows, looking out at her court.

She had no walls above ground anywhere in her kingdom, only underneath, and most of the Frozen Court was fields and low hills, but she had islands in the Eternal Water, too.

Snow clung to the rooftops and balconies of the buildings like icing sugar. Towers shimmered faintly in the low light, their stone pale. It was always winter in the Frozen Court because the cold was an Ice Fae’s ally.

Far below the queen’s windows, narrow bridges crossed frozen streams, and silver lanterns full of fae magic swayed gently in the cold breeze. Fae walked to and fro—her people, the reason why she lived. Whom she served. The most important thing, she’d always thought—until the prophecy.

“They will be serving me food soon. Make sure it’s safe, Vair,” the queen said, her voice hushed.

But the lynx didn’t leave the room as she’d thought. Instead, he stepped closer, soundlessly, until the queen turned to look at him.

A talking lynx—what a wonder. She was sure most would agree, if they would only be able to hear him.

They couldn’t, though. The lynx had been a gift from the sorcerers, merely a figurine carved out of stone until her magic set the spell in motion.

It had been such a long time now, possibly a few decades since he came into her life, and the queen couldn’t quite remember whether it had been a peace offering or a warning.

The sorcerer who’d given it to her, long dead, said that Vair would speak only to the Ice Queen, with her own voice, and when she willed it. It would never once lie to her, either. No matter the truth, the lynx would always speak it to the queen.

“I will,” the animal said, his voice identical to that of the queen. “But first, I must know what you’re thinking.”

“What I always think,” said the queen and gave in to the distraction that was the lynx’s appearance.

Snow pale fur that shimmered like it had been sprinkled with the dust of crushed diamonds.

Large paws and antler-like tuffs on his ears, eyes that were a silvery white almost identical to the color of the queen’s magic.

She could always will the lynx to stop speaking and he would obey, but lately, she never did.

“The prophecy,” Vair said.

The queen nodded, then reached for the pocket of her cloak to pull out her mirror made of silver and diamonds, chockfull of magic.

“You can’t escape a prophecy, My Queen. You cannot trick or manipulate it. You cannot stop it,” Vair reminded her, as he had a million times before, as that was simply the truth.

The queen smiled and the reflection on her mirror almost startled her. She looked as spent as she felt. Her eyes were nearly empty, even with all the bright blue color in them.

“I don’t plan to try to escape or trick anything, Vair. You think me a fool,” she said.

“Never,” the lynx said, then jumped on his back legs and rested those large front paws on the windowsill next to the queen.

Like that, the top of his strange ears reached her chest, and the queen looked at him again.

Though magics like this didn’t have gender, and he spoke in her voice, she had always felt Vair to be a male, and she could never quite think of him as her.

“I will not attempt to stop the prophecy, Vair,” the queen told him. “I merely plan to survive it.”

They both turned to the windows again, to the dark sky and the moon casting a soft silver glow on the land of Verenthia. It had been a long time since the ice queen had appreciated its beauty.

“How?” the lynx finally asked.

The queen looked down at her mirror, touching the diamonds around the frame, the glass that reflected her appearance, with her fingertips. “This world is full of liars and cheaters, a mess of timelines marked by the royals who’ve ruled over the people. Fairly and unfairly. With and without right.”

It was not the answer he was looking for, so Vair asked, “Will your new plan involve the Midnight King,?”

He’d never much liked that man, that monster wearing the face of a fae.

“Yes…and no,” the queen said. “He’s thought me a fool, weak, since the day he came to me with his proposition, Vair.”

“You’re neither,” said the lynx.

The queen nodded. “And I will outlive him, one way or the other.”

“ How ?” Vair asked again.

“I will speak my name backward into this mirror. That’s how,” she said, and the lynx jumped off the wall, moved back.

“My Queen, you shouldn’t,” he said, and he had rarely looked as panicked as he did now. “That’s ancient magic. Dark magic. It’s the worst sin in all the lands.”

The queen smiled again, though her heart skipped a beat. Vair was right, of course, but… “What’s one more royal sin in these courts, when every throne stands on a long line of graves already?”

“The spell is unstable. It could backfire,” he said.

“It won’t.” The queen was sure of that. She’d been planning this for a while now, and the book hidden underneath her silver worktable on the other side of the room would guarantee that she wouldn’t fail.

The Ice fae had always been friendly with the sorcerers.

Which is why they knew that fae magic was not the most powerful kind in Verenthia, like most believed.

It had more intensity than others, true—but sorcery was wilder.

It didn’t rely on birthright or bloodline.

It bent the rules of the world because it was born from breaking them.

“It’s sorcerer magic, My Queen.”

“It’s still magic, ” she insisted, and she turned her back on the windows to go to her silver desk, to the book with thick grey covers she hid in an illusion only her frostfire could access.

“It’s not the same and you know it,” Vair insisted, and she did. “Sorcery corrupts. Consumes. It leaves marks nothing else can touch, and once it has you, it never lets go.”

The queen sat behind her desk and reached for the book inside her illusion. Her frostfire hummed—such powerful magic at the tips of her fingers, and yet on the face of a prophecy, it meant very little.

At least, it did for others. Not for the Ice Queen, though. Not any longer.

She was done being afraid. She was done cowering back and accepting orders from a man who was a quarter of a ruler she was. She was done watching her court come apart piece by piece.

She was done living like this. Now, she was ready to die .

“I count on it,” the queen told Vair as she went through the pages of the grimoire. “It is my birthright to sit on my throne and rule my kingdom, and only I will decide until when, not a prophecy. I am ready, Vair.”

The snow-white lynx raised his front paws onto the edge of the table to look at the pages of the book, too.

“As you wish, My Queen,” he said as he, too, read the details of the spell. “As long as you understand that nothing is guaranteed. That your frostfire might not survive. That you might perish for good.”

The queen paused, looked at him. Slowly raised her hand to touch his soft fur, and the lynx closed his eyes.

Something about the touch of the Ice Queen. Something about the strength and the gentleness of her hand.

“I do, my pet,” she whispered. “Have faith, for I am not going anywhere. Not until I’ve made sure my people have the court that they deserve.”

“You can marry. You can give birth to the next queen—or king. You can—” Vair said, tried for one last time, but the queen stopped him.

“Hush now, pet. Go check on my food.”

It was an order he couldn’t disobey.

Vair did as he was told, went to the kitchen where the staff had prepared the queen’s dinner, sniffed and analyzed every bread loaf, every grain of rice, and every ounce of liquid, until he made sure it was safe for the queen.

But by the time he returned to her chambers, the queen was already changed—and there was no undoing what she had done.