Winter's Heir by Amber Argyle

Author:Amber Argyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: coming of age, dark fantasy, epic fantasy, fae, action and adventure, romantic fantasy, myths and legends, paranormal and urban, sword and sordery
Publisher: Amber Argyle

Elice stood on the balcony, looking out at the city drenched in the gold of the rising sun. In her hand she clutched the pendants hanging from her neck. Thanjavar was beautiful, she realized. The people were not full of darkness, but neither were they full of light. They had a mix of both, and the one they nurtured was the one that shone through.

She heard steps behind her and turned to find Cinder with a white dress gathered in her arms. The interlocking patterns of the clans were stitched in gold on the hem. “You know how much I hate white!” Elice joked, trying to lighten the mood like Adar would have, but the words tasted like dust in her mouth.

“You are a princess of winter,” Cinder replied. “You should look it.”

“What fabric?”

“Silk.” She helped Elice slip the dress over her head. It fluttered around her ankles like a spider web and felt as light as sunrays. She paused before the nightstand to take the half-beaver carving and tuck it firmly into her pocket. When she finished tying her gold-embroidered belt, Cinder had returned with a chest. She set it on a table and opened it. Inside were glittering jewels set in gold.

Elice pulled out a headdress of gold woven in the interlocking knots of the clanlands. There was a large, oval opal for her forehead. Elice fingered the headdress, realizing how much it resembled the one she’d left in the Winter Queendom, though this one was even more delicate.

“How did you know?” Elice asked.

Cinder shrugged. “I didn’t.”

Then Elice recognized the opal. She’d seen it in the jeweler’s shop the day Adar had taken her to the market. She lifted the headdress and settled it onto her head. Cinder left Elice’s hair long and wavy, with gold and jewels dangling from it. Once Cinder finished, Elice wandered over to a mirror. She certainly looked like a princess.

A knock sounded at the door in the other room. “It’s time to go, Princess,” called a voice she didn’t recognize.

Elice started and backed away, then rushed into the bathroom and vomited the light supper she’d eaten earlier. When she’d spit the last of the bitter bile into the bowl, she rested her head on the cool marble tiles.

Cinder stood at the door. “Elice?”

She closed her eyes. “There are more days in a month than people I have actually spoken to. Now Nelay wants to present me before some crowd. She will use me as bait to trap my mother. And I don’t know if she will hurt me.” Perhaps more painful than all of that was Adar’s betrayal. So painful that Elice couldn’t even find the words to say it.

Cinder’s feet made padding sounds as she entered the room. She knelt next to Elice and gently placed her hand on Elice’s side. “When my grandmother was seventeen, she was taken as a slave by the Idarans and sold into a brothel. It should have broken her—she was meant to be broken. But she never forgot who she was, and she didn’t let me forget, either.

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