Queen of Frozen War: A Mermaid Reverse Harem Romance (Royal Lies Book 3) by Aleera Anaya Ceres

Author:Aleera Anaya Ceres [Ceres, Aleera Anaya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-10-27T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-five

Ytgar

The sight of my grandmother nearly brought me tumbling from my mount and bowing down in the silt. What had once been a mighty queen, someone I’d looked up to in my youth, someone strong and powerful was a fragment of that before my eyes.

Her long white hair had been shorn from her head entirely so that only wisps of hair remained. Her eyes were wide and slightly haunted, but it was her body that worried me the most. Clad in a simple nightshift, I could see the frail body beneath. Not muscular like the Iolish should be, but thin and covered in lacerations. As if she’d been starved and tortured.

Silver eyes met my own. My grandmother looked down on me, and her expression changed. Weakness was gone, like it was something that didn’t exist in her vocabulary. And it was then that I knew that she wasn’t strong at all but had always pretended for me. So that I could find strength in her.

Seeing her put that strength into place now made every single terrible thing I’d ever said or thought of her vanish within a single instant. She was strong. She was fierce. And she was showing it now as she straightened her posture, even as the guard shoved her forward. Her hands were bound behind her back, so she stumbled but righted herself just as the guard left.

My grandmother floated before the face of Queen Alexxandria’s wyvern, looking like the queen that she was.

“I see the fear in your eyes, Ice Prince. Will you surrender to me now? Will you bow?”

I tore my eyes away from my grandmother for a split second to train my glare on Alexxandria. She looked so smug atop her beast, wearing the crown of my family as if it belonged on her filthy head.

The rage inside me was an ice storm looking to kill, but also desperate to survive.

“Well?” she prompted.

I looked to my grandmother again, feeling everything within me weaken, because I knew what was coming, even if I didn’t want to accept it. I knew what would happen next, and whose death it would bring.

I looked into those eyes. They were the eyes of my father, they were my eyes, and I’d never realized how alike we were until this moment.

It was those eyes that screamed at me as she stared. “Do not bow down. Do not surrender.”

My hands trembled and I tightened them on both sword and reins so no one could see the fear that was thrumming so wildly in me, out of me, around me.

“Bow,” Alexxandria commanded. “Or your grandmother dies.”

My heart skipped beats, and my breath caught painfully. The scales were carefully balanced now. If I bowed to save my grandmother, the symbol of strength and resistance we’d worked so hard to build for our army would crumble. It would make me a traitor to them and our cause. But if I didn’t, my grandmother would die.

I couldn’t have more family around me dying. I couldn’t.

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