CHAPTER EIGHT

  The Price of a Choice

  The cold here had teeth.

  It bit through fur and silk and skin, straight into bone. Elowen’s fingers throbbed around the reins; she was no longer sure if the stinging in her eyes was from the wind or from the urge to cry.

  Ahead, the northern fortress rose out of the white like a slab of black iron. Thick stone walls, smoke smeared against the sky, banners snapping in a wind that felt almost offended by their presence. As they drew closer, she saw shapes moving in the courtyard—warriors training barefoot on packed snow, bare arms slick with frost, exhaling clouds of steam as if it were nothing.

  Barefoot.

  Elowen’s boots and layered skirts suddenly felt ridiculous. Her silks from Central might as well have been spun sugar. She hunched closer to her horse’s neck, trying to steal some of its heat.

  Roderic rode beside her, back straight, cloak dusted with snow as if it had politely chosen to rest there. His hands did not shake on the reins. He might as well have been riding through a summer garden.

  She hated how effortless he made it look.

  The gates groaned open. They entered to a rush of heat from a massive fire pit at the center of the courtyard. The air smelled of smoke, iron, and something gamey roasting over open flame. Shields lined the walls like watching eyes. Northerners paused in their work to stare—measuring, weighing, not bothering to hide it.

  So this was the first trial: being looked at like she didn’t belong.

  Elowen straightened in the saddle, even as her fingers screamed. She was not going to shrink now, not after everything that had dragged her to this frozen edge of the world.

  They dismounted under a sky sliding toward dusk. Northerners moved around them with brisk, economical force, barely sparing Elowen a second glance now that the measuring was done. Roderic handed off his reins and spoke briefly with a guard—too briefly. His jaw was set.

  “The council is convening now,” he told her. “Wait in the chamber. I’ll come to you after.”

  Before she could ask anything, he was already striding toward the inner keep, cloak snapping behind him.

  ___

  The wait stretched, slow and heavy, until it felt longer than the ride north itself.

  When the door finally opened and clicked shut again, the sound was softer than she expected—too gentle for a man who rarely entered a room quietly.

  Elowen stayed by the hearth, palms wrapped around a mug of pine tea gone cold. She didn’t look up. She didn’t need to. His presence altered the air—disciplined stillness, tightly reined.

  Snow slid from his cloak in slow drops. He removed his gloves with precise, tense movements and set them on the table.

  Her stomach sank.

  “What did they say?” Her voice wasn’t soft, just quiet.

  Roderic raked a hand through his hair. Too raw a gesture for him. Too unguarded. He paced once, stopped, changed his mind, paced again. Only then did he face her.

  “They insist you stand the Ice Trials.”

  Her fingers tightened around the mug until her knuckles ached. “So they can laugh while I freeze?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “So they can justify believing in you.”

  That caught her off guard.

  He exhaled hard, jaw flexing as he searched for words he didn’t want to give voice to. “Elowen, they’re not doing this out of cruelty. They’re doing it because they’re afraid. Because a prophecy like this—your existence—reshapes the world. Alliances. Borders. Power.”

  She lowered her gaze, guarding the fear behind it.

  Roderic saw it; his stance softened by a fraction. “They think Central is using you. They think my father is using you. And they’re not wrong to be wary.”

  She huffed a sharp, humorless breath. “And the trials fix that?”

  “For them, it proves what you’re made of. It proves you understand their values.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “And what values are those?”

  Stolen novel; please report.

  “Endurance,” he said evenly. “Control. Standing when running would be easier.”

  She looked away as the words cut through her guard.

  Because that was exactly what she’d always done—run.

  Roderic continued, slower, deliberate. “If you pass the trials, the North backs you. Fully. They defend you. They trust you. They believe.”

  “And if I fail?”

  A beat. “Then they’ll decide you were never part of the prophecy at all. It’s what they want to believe. Easier for everyone if you’re… nothing.”

  Elowen pressed a hand to her stomach. “So I’m damned either way.”

  “No,” Roderic said, but without conviction. He stepped closer. Close enough that the air warmed between them. Close enough she had to fight the instinct to retreat. “Prophecy confuses everyone. No one understands it.”

  He paused.

  “But the role entrusted to us?” His voice lowered. “That I understand.”

  Her chest tightened. Of course he did.

  His whole life had been shaped by that word.

  Hers had been shaped by running from people who shouted it at her while offering nothing in return.

  “My crown was placed on me before I could walk,” Roderic said quietly. “Duty wasn’t something I wanted. It was given. And if I pretended it wasn’t mine, someone else would pay the price.”

  Her gaze dropped to her hands—scarred, callused. Reminders of chains, hunger, desperation. Her throat tightened with something ugly and ashamed.

  What does he know of that kind of suffering?

  And immediately she hated herself for the thought.

  Because Roderic did know suffering—different from hers, but suffering all the same.

  “You may not want the prophecy,” he said. “You may not want what comes with it. I understand that.”

  She almost told him he couldn’t possibly understand.

  He had always known his place, what was expected of him.

  She barely knew where she stood.

  But the worst part was knowing he wasn’t wrong.

  His eyes lifted to hers. “Duty isn’t about wanting, Elowen. It’s about choosing.”

  She flinched inwardly.

  Because yes—she wanted to hide.

  From the prophecy.

  From the trials.

  From the weight of mattering.

  “I’m not hiding,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure she believed herself.

  “You’re afraid,” Roderic said gently. “That isn’t shameful. But fear doesn’t erase what you’re facing.”

  Her jaw tightened.

  She’d carried more than her share for as long as she could remember.

  For Theron. For Lucan. For survival.

  But this was different, shapeless and terrifying.

  This wasn’t bread. This was nations.

  “I never asked for any of this,” she murmured.

  “I know,” Roderic said. “But it came to you.”

  The words hollowed her ribs.

  She stared into the fire until the flames blurred.

  The room dissolving into warm night air and dusty alley shadows. Theron’s hands—warm, steady—gripped hers as she trembled.

  Teary eyed. Wild-haired. Terrified after fleeing a drunken trader.

  Theron tilted her chin with one gentle knuckle. “Hey.”

  Her tears burned. “I’m not brave like you.”

  “Brave isn’t being fearless, El.” He waved a lost curl away. “It’s fear walking.”

  She sniffed, angry at herself. “Why walk at all?”

  “Because Lucan’s counting on us. And we are not going to starve. Not today, not tomorrow.”

  He squeezed her hands, fierce in that quiet way only he could manage.

  “This isn’t the end, El. I’ll get us out of this. I’ll make it better—for him, for you, for all of us. We just have to survive today.”

  His eyes sharpened, steady and sure.

  “And that—that’s why we keep going, El. Stronger than fear.”

  Brought back to the present, she wrapped her arms around her middle, a single tear slipping free at the memory.

  A truth she hadn’t known she’d been starving for settled in her chest. She didn’t fully understand what was being asked of her now—but she hoped, fiercely, that Theron would have been proud.

  She’d try to be brave. She’d try to make things better. If such a thing could be done.

  Roderic saw the shift in her face.

  His eyes softened—wariness, hope.

  Elowen turned to him. Her voice didn’t shake.

  “I’ll do it.”

  Roderic went very still. A soldier’s stillness. But his eyes betrayed by the flicker—fear for her, pride in her, relief he didn’t let himself exhale until now.

  He bowed his head a fraction. “Then I’ll train you myself.”

  A laugh ghosted out of her—thin, real. “Of course you will.”

  He finally breathed. “Elowen… these trials will cut deep.”

  “So has everything else,” she murmured to herself, mostly. “At least this time, I’m walking because I choose to.”

  Roderic turned, quiet resolve in his eyes. “We start at dawn.”

  ___

  Dawn in the North was not so much a change in light as a change in temperature—from killing cold to merely savage.

  Elowen’s breath puffed pale in front of her as she stepped out into the courtyard, coat clutched tight. Her nose already ached. The sky was a washed-out grey, the kind that made it impossible to tell what time it actually was.

  Roderic waited near the gate, as composed as he’d been the day before, as if sleep and warmth were luxuries he’d never needed.

  He tossed her a staff. The wood was cold enough to sting.

  “Three miles,” he said.

  She stared at him. “Three—what?”

  “Three miles around the outer wall,” he repeated. “If you can’t finish this run, you won’t survive the Frost Stand.”

  No lecture. No gentle easing into it. Just that.

  She wanted to argue. To point out that she’d spent the last years stealing, not sprinting. That her toes still curled at the memory of the word ice.

  Instead, she gritted her teeth and followed him as he started off at a steady jog.

  The first stretch wasn’t so bad. The air sawed at her lungs, but her body remembered movement, remembered long nights of running from guards with Theron at her heels.

  By the second stretch, her thighs were burning. The ground felt treacherous, slick in patches where snow had been trodden down to hidden ice. Her breath rasped, each inhale a needle.

  Roderic kept the same pace, just a few strides ahead. Not looking back. Not slowing. Trusting—or assuming—that she would follow.

  By the third stretch, her vision blurred at the edges. The fortress wall, the snow, the grey sky—all smeared into one long, unfriendly horizon.

  Her foot slipped. Her knees hit the ground hard enough to send pain shooting up her legs. Hands in snow, breath gone, she stayed there, staring at the white.

  Maybe this was stupid. Maybe she was stupid. A thief who’d been very good at running away now voluntarily running toward frostbite.

  Behind her ribs, something old and familiar whispered: You don’t have to prove anything. Just stay down. No one will expect more.

  Bootsteps crunched ahead of her, then stopped. She didn’t have to look up to know it was him.

  “Trials begin in six weeks,” Roderic said. His voice was calm. No mockery. No pity. Just fact. “Get up, Elowen.”

  Her fingers curled in the snow. She could feel the tremor in her arms, the screaming protest in her legs.

  Six weeks. An eternity, and not enough.

  She pushed herself upright. One breath. Then another.

  Her body shook. Her heart pounded. The wall inside her—that tight, bitter thing—pressed against her ribs.

  She stood anyway.

  “Again,” she said, more to herself than to him.

  And she ran.