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

by Meg Smitherman

What most historians routinely fail to understand or, for that matter, convey, is that Queen Elma I of Rothen was neither hero, nor traitor, nor figure of legend. She was simply a woman.

“Now, now,” he said, his voice a low growl. “Don’t go and try to flee on me, snow rabbit. I’ll catch you in a second and rip out your throat with my teeth.”

In the face of death, alone and helpless, there were no kings or queens. Only people, fragile bones and pumping hearts, blood beneath paper-thin skin.

“I want you

inside me when you do it. I’ve always wondered what it would feel like, to die at the height of pleasure.”

“Look at you,” he breathed. “It’s like you’re carved from ice, frigid and perfect. There are so many things I’d rather do to that body than carve it up, but… you being who you are…” a predatory gleam lit his eyes.

Elma tilted her chin up, grudgingly, and met his gaze. His eyes were strikingly blue, like mountain waterfalls after a snap freeze.

“To the Queen!” “May she rot,” Rune murmured, his breath hot in her ear, before drifting back into shadow.

“you adore my japes. One day you’ll outright laugh at something I say and hate yourself for it.” His eyes shone. “I can’t wait.”

The crown was nothing to Elma but a cage.

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.”

“The offer stands,” he said, keeping up with her easily, their gaits evenly matched. “I’m not above fucking my enemies. And you could use a distraction.”

Because she yearned to kill this man, but with every passing day, he embedded deeper within her like a thorn. She could not extract him.

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.

A figure stood in the doorway, dressed all in black. Rune. And dangling from his outstretched hand, his fingers tangled in its white hair, was the dripping head of the enemy assassin.

“Spar with me,” Elma repeated. “Nothing lewd. Swords. Sparring.” A slow grin spread across his face, fingers flexing on the pommel of his sword. “Your Majesty, I thought you’d never ask.”

But I urge you to remember, Queen of Rothen, that you are alive only because I allow it.”

Very well, then. If the heavens would not show her a sign, or illuminate the path to tread, then she would find it herself.

He makes me laugh, she thought, unlacing the sides of her overdress before pulling it over her head. No one else makes me laugh.

For a moment they were frozen in time, gazing at one another in mirrored wonder, as if discovering each other at long last. And then they collided.

Twisting her fingers in her assassin’s hair, Elma held him firmly at the nape, her lips brushing his as she spoke. “I need you to make me come.”

“God, you’re soaking,” he murmured, dragging his teeth along her thigh where he’d kissed her. “Sweet, depraved creature. I’ve never met anyone with such bloodlust.”

ordered you to make me come,” she said, surprising herself by how steady her voice sounded, even with three fingers deep inside her. “Not tease me.”

How all she wanted to do, just then, was tumble into bed with him and see if she could make him beg.

He cocked an eyebrow. “Say anything about what? How good you taste? The sound you make when you come? How much I want to kill whoever’s outside your door and lay you out on the bed just so I can hear that sound again?” He smiled serenely. “I won’t say a word.”

revile the idea of that sweet, wet pussy going forever unplowed.”

She glanced at Rune sidelong. “I am anything but yours.”

He grinned, but something tugged on the corners of it, weighing it down. “If it makes you feel any better, Majesty, I am nothing if not yours.”

“I want you to lose yourself in me,” she breathed.

His gaze held hers like a gentle embrace. “I already have,” he said.

Only a Volta, she thought, heart slamming in her ribs, finds life at the edge of death.

He was a star, and she was the night, yearning for his light.

“Rune,” she said, unable to look away from him, his mouth, the obvious lust in his eyes.

“That’s my name,” he murmured.

“If you don’t remove my breeches in the next two seconds,” Rune said, voice shaking slightly, “I’m going to die.”

“I’m going to come if you’re not careful,” Rune said after a few moments, his voice hoarse and utterly wrung out.

Slödafucker or not, she was Elma Volta, queen to her last breath.

He smiled. “And I am honored to die as your weapon.”

Then he kissed her through the bars, soft and quiet. And while only their fingers and their lips touched, Elma ached and burned for him like a sun. Her fingers were stars in the night, his mouth a beacon of homecoming.

Elma wanted to tell him. Her heart ached to say it. I love you, I love you, I love you. “I’ll see you,” she said instead, drinking in that last sight of him, his wan smile, the curl of sweaty hair at his ears, the cocky tilt of his head, even now. “I’ll see you in the after.” He raised one hand in farewell. “In the after.”

Would she feel her head separating from her shoulders? Would she see blood spreading out below her, the last seconds of consciousness blessing her with one final glimpse of violence?

She loved Rune. She would gladly die just to give him one more second of that world. One more second of cold air on his cheeks, one more second of snow, one more second of glorious breath in his lungs.

“Well, you can’t just… die,” Elma sobbed, not caring that she sounded like a petulant child. “I love you.”

“And I love you,” he murmured, so quiet, as if it were a secret they held between them, a gentle spring flower untouched by the frost.

Whether it was Godwin’s cruelty, his hatred for his own niece, his desire for war, or perhaps his rotten heart itself — whatever it was, the Rime Ice had deemed him unworthy.

She laughed, pulling him to her and wrapping her arms around his neck. “I mean, you idiot, that I would like to marry you.”

“Marry me,” she said, kissing his ear. “Join our kingdoms. Be my king. Spend every day at my side and every night in my bed, for the rest of your life. You’ll be far from home, but—”

“Home? What do I care about home? I could never see Slödava again and die happy, just for the chance to spend a week of nights in your bed. Even for one night, really. I mean, all you’d have to do was ask. Want me to declare war on my mother? I’ll do it.”

“Just marry me.” “Then I’m yours,” said Rune, meeting her gaze with his bright blue one. “I always have been.”

Rune’s hands were vivid and warm, his mouth spoke love, and she was a blooming flower in his embrace.