The Frost Queen's Blade (The Iceblood Duet, #1)

by Meg Smitherman

Elma was about to be the highest power in Rothen. She would be their mother, their war chief, their protector, their judge, and their jury. In her hands, she held a power unwanted, writhing in its eagerness to undo her. She had never wanted to be queen.

“Isn’t that what it means to be a monarch? That we’re selected, ordained perhaps by the gods, to feed and house and protect a kingdom full of people? Otherwise, what are we but despots, power-hungry inbreds with coffers of gold?”

“Am I not to touch my own kin?” Lady Devereaux demanded. “No,” came Rune’s low voice from the shadows.

Rune smiled, slow like honey. “Are you having fun, Your Majesty?” he purred. “I wonder how many other women at court grow excited at the sight of blood. Your pulse is thrumming like a snow rabbit’s. You’re hungry.”

He had sharpened in her vision as if everything around her was only a dream, and he was the only thing that mattered. As if he were a sun and she were a pale flower in early spring. As if she were a snowfall and he, the mountaintop she yearned to fall on. I’m going mad, she thought, saying nothing.

She would find her bodyguard and stay by his side. He would not die without her permission.

She ached to be soft again. She yearned to open up like a bloom, to trust, to be vulnerable.

You’ll miss him like a vital organ. And there’s nothing you can do about it.

“You have a very romantic view of things.” “On the contrary,” he replied. “But I happen to be in company that brings it out of me.”

And while dying at your hand would be my greatest privilege,

“I beg you,” Rune said to his mother, “at least refrain from harming my ego until after we’ve eaten.”

You could puncture me full of holes, Your Majesty, and I’d only beg for more.”

This was what it felt like, then, to bloom unharmed in a frozen wasteland. This was softness and trust.