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BESSA

“Bit drafty, don’t you think? Maybe we should leave it alone. Who needs a castle anyway?”

My sister Mika said this through chattering teeth and blue lips. She had a point. The castle was a symbol of my family, and they hadn’t been... well, they hadn’t been much of anything. Really, it was lucky my blood family hadn’t raised me. Mika’s family had. Otherwise who knew how horrible I would have turned out; scorching black earth and heads on pikes and all that. Let’s just say, my birth parents weren’t a nice bunch.

“We have to open the castle back up, otherwise it will all be for naught,” I reminded her. “It’s the symbol of Frostvale, not of my family, those lunatics.”

“We’re your family.”

“Of course. I meant, my other family. The one I never knew. The castle doesn’t belong to them, and we’re going to change its negative associations.”

“Into ambivalent ones?” she asked, carefully picking her way over a smashed gargoyle that had been thrown from the facade. Someone must have been really mad.

“No, of course not. Into a beacon on the hill. A source of hope for all.”

“Well, anything’s better than before, really.”

“Mika! This castle will no longer be a place of terror. It will be a place where anyone can come to get warm, be heard, eat. All the good things.”

Mika’s eyebrows rose in tandem. “Don’t you think you already have enough headaches dealing with your Council without trying to be beloved?”

“Beloved?” I shot her a wry smile. “I’m just trying to get a half-decent bath around here.”

“You don’t even remember warm baths!” Mika laughed. “I’m your elder, I remember the night of heat and warmth. The night we danced and magic returned, and I swear there were pixies in the village and fresh vegetables that grew right in the dirt. Oh, and there was dirt.”

“Not everything I say needs to lead to a story about that night, you know.”

“You only say that because you weren’t there.”

“I was there. It’s literally my birthday.”

“Yes, but you don’t remember. I’m your elder, and I?—

“Okay, okay, I get your point, and as your queen I command you to stop.”

Bundled in our furs, we walked through the shattered remnants of the castle, the seat of my kingdom. Frostvale.

I waved to the maids overseeing the laundry, scrubbing the sheets with cold, brackish water. Why was I determined to restore it for the people, especially when I wasn’t sure if I could actually pull it off? Mika was right about that; I had enough on my plate without trying to make this into a seat of warmth for all to enjoy. But I wasn’t stopping until this entire castle stood as a symbol of good.

“Fine, tell me again what it was like,” I begged my sister.

“Is this my queen asking?”

“No, your little sister.”

“It was the best night in the world,” Mika said automatically, a smile spread across her face.

“Are you sure you’re remembering right?” I pressed. “You were only two. Maybe you’re recounting the memories of others. That happens,” I told her seriously. “At this point, I almost feel as if I remember it.”

Mika stopped our walk, her arms on my elbows as she stared into my eyes. “How could I forget the best night in the world?” she repeated. “The night you came home to us? You had red and gold hair like fire, and it was so warm out. It smelled... You know? Well, you can’t know, but it smelled mossy and humid, like when the bellows waft the first scents of sourdough into the bakeshop.”

“Yes, I know that smell,” I said. It was the smell that had woken me up my entire life. That’s what happens when you grow up in a bakery.

“You were carried by a unicorn.”

“Maybe it was a horse.”

“Horses don’t have horns, and they don’t shimmer,” Mika said. “The unicorn left you on the windowsill like a mince pie, all bundled in silken blankets. Mom shrieked when she touched silk for the first time, that I definitely remember all on my own, because she denies ever shrieking?—”

“Of course she does, she’s much too dignified for a shriek.”

As my sister spoke, I took the opportunity to send a little warmth into her body, not enough to make her notice, but enough so that her teeth stopped chattering and her lips weren’t blue anymore.

Mika smiled. “Clearly. But she shrieked and grabbed you. The unicorn was paler than moonlight on the ice, and it galloped away before we could touch it. Where its hoofs touched the ground, the flowers bloomed, and the moon became an opal tucked in a black velvet cloth of stars. Everyone stumbled out of their homes, shedding their winter wool, and there were tears. So many tears, and none of them froze on their cheeks.”

That was always my favorite part of the story. People cried for happiness, and it didn’t hurt them. “And?”

Mika sucked in a breath, her corset stays making her grimace. “Vegetables. They grew like feral creatures, all jagged edges and wild vines. I think it’s because they knew in their little cells they only had one night, and they wanted to make the most of it.”

“Carrots?”

“Sweet as first ice.”

My mouth began to water. “Peas?”

“Little orbs of spring.”

“Radishes, beans, cabbage?”

“Fresher than imagination.”

I sighed and left my sister’s embrace to stand at a broken window. It looked over the valley of Frostvale into the frozen river below where the nearest village stood. Our village, Honeywood Haven.

It was where our parents kept their bakeshop and the communal ovens hot. Where the only fresh food we ate before or since the night of magic—the night of my birth—was grown deep in the earth using some farming method that made very little sense to anyone who didn’t oversee it. The yields were low, and the vegetables, everyone agreed who lived through the night of warmth, tasted exactly as they were grown: as if they had never seen the sun.

For a hundred years, magic had been gone from all seven kingdoms that made up the Ilex Isles, but for that one night in Frostvale, my perpetually frozen kingdom, magic returned.

“Mika, that’s it,” I cried, inspiration suddenly hitting me. “That’s what we’re going to do.”

“What?” my sister asked, watching me suspiciously.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before. It’s part of my story. How could I have not seen it?”

“I really have no idea what you’re talking about. At this point, you could tell me you’re flying to the moon, and I’d go along with it.”

“We’re going to have another night like that. For my coronation.” It was perfect. My arrival heralded the night of magic and warmth. Why couldn’t my coronation be its rebirth? Forget the stupid prophecy about my stupid twin brother. He was gone and I wasn’t. I was here.

“Ha! Going to the moon might be easier.”

I whirled around to face her, and I could feel the heat of my eyes already boring into hers, excitement swirling around me. “No, it won’t. We’re going to have a party with fresh vegetables and a feast so big it will make the night of warmth look like a regular Tuesday.”

Mika put a cold hand to my forehead. “Good Gelid. You were barely queen for a month before the delusions of grandeur set in. Is that a record? I’ll go check the library. I know most of the books didn’t survive the war, but a few did.”

Warily, I looked in both directions of the corridor. Maids and groomsmen who had served both my biological father and brother before their untimely ends tidied up the Great Hall. Our voices were no doubt bouncing off the stone walls and echoing for all to hear. For what I had to tell my beautiful, pragmatic sister—not even mine by blood, but more mine than my actual relatives—I needed the cold of the forest to muffle my secrets.

Except for her memories of the night of warmth, Mika didn’t bide by flights of fancy. She would have to see to believe. Luckily, she trusted me as much as I trusted her. “Come,” I said, and she followed.

Our breaths froze in front of us the moment we got outside, fur and thick damask barely enough to keep away the frostbite. The edges of the horizon wove a tapestry of gray, lighter at the horizon line where the sun slowly sunk away. The trees looked like stiff robed giants of men, their arms frozen above their heads at odd angles. Wind couldn’t even make them creak or shift, their casing of ice was so thick around their trunks. Forever upfront, frozen in time and place.

Ice crunched under our boots and tried to grow along the bottoms of our gowns, but I plunged us deeper to where the silence would hold our secrets.

Finally, I stopped in the middle of a copse of trees where I hoped the larch needles would muffle and protect our words.

Pulling back my fur-lined hood, I gently touched my neck with two fingers, cooing softly, and waited. Gently, my scarf began to move.

Mika’s face performed a rapid set of maneuvers as she went from confused to shocked to absolutely thrilled. Her hand shook as she reached out to stroke my cloak, stopping inches away. “It can’t be… Bessa? Is that what I think it is?”

I nodded and guided her hand closer to make her actually touch the fur. I could see the heat seeping up her arm.

“Oh gods, that was you in the castle who made me feel… warm.”

“Not just me. I couldn’t have done it without her.” Only nobility was allowed to wear ermine in Frostvale, which worked out well for me, since my ermine fox scarf wasn’t a fashion accessory. It was a living, breathing fire fox. And my familiar.

My magical familiar.

“Meet Eska,” I said beaming.