Page 31 of Shadow Throne King

“Three days from now. We won’t be close enough to the Lakeshore Palace to alert anyone there, but my men will ride out that night, straight for Maki’s camp. We’ll reach it before Your Imperial Majesty reaches the Lakeshore Palace.”

Tallu nodded, letting his chin dip low enough that it was considered an official order in the complicated language of gesture the imperials spoke.

That night, when Naî woke me, her voice a singsong on an arctic wind that wrested me from my slumber, I looked at Tallu, frozen next to me. His features were still tense, even in sleep, adding years that hadn’t been there when I had first met him. We were too young to feel this old, and I reached over, brushing hair off his forehead.

Naî sat on her pillow, her legs crossed, wearing a robe for modesty.

“Are you ready?” she asked sharply.

I shook my head. “Tallu is aware. Not consciously, but he knows something is going on. We need to wake him and explain it, now. Here. Where no one else can hear us.”

Naî considered me. Finally, she dipped her chin, her stark white hair falling forward. Her prismatic eyes looked up at me, fangs resting on her lower lip.

“Fine. Do so.”

I gaped at her. “Do what?”

“Wake him.” Naî’s face went slightly savage, her amusement crinkling her eyes, turning them into mirrors. “Wake him, because I will not. So you must do so, or you let our work here be a torture to him.”

Eight

“Why do that?” I turned back to Tallu, his expression frozen in a frown.

“I have no love for him. For any of these humans. It costs me nothing for him to spend a night in agony. I still get the training from you that I want, no matter his state.” Naî’s words were no less of a threat said in her young voice, her small face twisted up in amusement.

“That is cruel.” I couldn’t look away from Tallu, his expression twisted. The idea of leaving him in torment was impossible. “He has fed you and cared for you. And you made a show of choosing him at the celebration.”

“I am thelastice dragon because of his house,” Naî said. “You take the gift of training I have given you and demand more largesse.”

“It would take too much magic for me to free him. I don’t have that much yet.” I dragged my gaze away from Tallu, focusing on her.

“When you speak to animals, does it take too much magic to speak to a whale, leaving you unable to speak to birds?” She pointed at me, her fingertip sharpening into a talon.

“That’s different. Speaking to animals is just… communicating. I see how difficult it is for the electro mages to do their magic. It tires them out. They run out of power.” I thought about Commander Fimo, careless in his overuse of his electro magic, so confident that no one would ever be able to best him as long as he used it before they could strike a blow.

“You still do not believe me when I tell you how to perform ice magic. This will show you.” Her long, taloned finger, scaled like her fully formed body, pointed to Tallu. “Wake him or suffer the consequences.”

I gaped, my jaw working for a moment, before I turned to Tallu. Helplessly, I thought of the handful of snow I had been able to make. That was not enough. That level of magic was not enough.

“Ice is its own language. Call to it, animal speaker.” Naî crossed her legs, leaning forward over her knees, her eyes fixed on me.

Swallowing, I turned back to Tallu, then closed my eyes. I couldn’t do this with the guilt beating in my heart, the anxiety running through my veins.

Fine. I would try. And when I failed, I would make her fix it.

“Let him go,” I said. My voice was desperate, and I thought about how I would talk to Asahi or Sagam or even Nohe. Sharper, more of an order. “Let him go.”

The sharp increase in cold showed what the ice thought of my orders.

Naî had said that cold was a friend I could call on when I needed help, a friend whose call I would answer, but whose call would I answer now? Who did I trust in this place where I couldn’t even trust myself?

An image of my sister came into my head. If Eonaî called me now, I would go to her in an instant. As soon as I thought that, I knew it was a lie.

My eyes strayed to Tallu, lying next to me, his frozen body so still. If Eonaî, the only person who knew me better than myself, came to me right now and said she needed me to come with her, I could not leave Tallu alone. I could not abandon him to the fate we’d agreed to end together.

Angrily, I turned away, glaring at Naî. “Let himgo.”

“Make me.” Her words were implacable, as unyielding as the ice. In the north, a stray chunk of ice floating in the water could destroy a ship, could kill men before they could even breathe to scream.Thatwas what Naî was, inside the body of a child.