Frozen Reign by Kathryn Purdie

Author:Kathryn Purdie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-10-17T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

THE NEXT DAY I ASKED EVERY SERVANT IN MY PATH TO TELL Madame Valois I’d like to speak with her, since they were disinclined to show me which of the castle’s four hundred and forty rooms belonged to the king’s niece. Delphine didn’t seek me out. I prayed she was busy imploring her uncle and godfather to save Madame Perle or stall the execution. Perhaps her influence was at least enough to grant me a visit to the dungeons. One visit might be long enough for Madame Perle to crack me open and release my power.

My gut squirmed with doubts again. What if I remained broken? I needed an alternate plan in case I couldn’t be Estengarde’s grande voyant and Riaznin’s Sovereign Auraseer. But as the hours ticked by, I couldn’t think of anything, not even a way to help Anton achieve the alliance we’d traveled here for. Feliks’s ultimatum gnawed at the back of my mind. We had little more than three weeks before we reached the deadline he gave me.

With nothing more to do but anxiously bide our time until Delphine’s ball tomorrow, Genevie and I spent the day with Anton in his vast guest chambers. His great bed with red feather plumes atop the canopy took up only a small fraction of the space. The rest of the room was filled with tastefully arranged groupings of velvet and mahogany furniture. The room I shared with Genevie was a closet by comparison.

Seated at a desk, Anton dipped his quill in an inkwell, busying himself by drafting the alliance treaty. I stood at a nearby window, nervously picking at my nails. He kept sending me sympathetic glances. I’d broken the news to him this morning about Madame Perle.

“Une amande needs an E in the middle,” Genevie said, pointing out a passage on his paper, “or else you are talking about an almond and not making amends.”

Anton gave a self-deprecating groan and scratched out the word. “Perhaps you should write the treaty, or I might walk away from Estengarde with a stuffed picnic basket and nothing more.”

She drew up a chair. “You write it as best you can, and I will help you refine the language in a clean draft.”

I drifted closer, watching them for a moment. My pulse quickened as another solution sprang to mind. “What if you negotiated the imprisoned Auraseers’ lives as one of the terms in your alliance treaty? Perhaps the king will be satisfied if they are banished to Riaznin.”

Anton sighed and reached out to clasp my hand. “We can’t solve another nation’s injustices when we haven’t even conquered our own,” he said gently. I remembered what he’d told me in his tent a few days ago: I won’t be able to defeat Esten prejudices, as well.

Genevie looked up at me. “Even if the king is persuadable, banishing the Auraseers to another nation would never satisfy Floquart.” Her arms folded over her stomach when she said his name. “He will say banishment insults the king’s regime and diminishes the people’s faith that the monarchy can handle its own problems.

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