A prism of color splashed across the maze-like walls of Halorium's mountain fortress like droplets of blood from a rainbow as the bear-hide drums beat out a systematic message: Runaway avalanche. Clear the walls.

Anyone who'd studied under the militaristic tutelage of General Lyons, the Master General of the Ice Fortress would have been able to decipher the drums' true meaning: Her Royal Highness had escaped.

Again.

Even if it was just a training exercise.

Astrid Salvera grinned something feral, slipping further beneath the dark, furred hood of her white cloak. Above her, on the ramparts, the Iced Guards of Rainier held drumsticks in their golden-plated fists. The sticks were made of an alchemical mixture of ice and diamond, and as the sun shone onto them, the light refracted, each color sending out its own encrypted message as the guards expertly twisted their wrists.

Behind her, the carved pillars of the Halorian Library speckled in lights of green: All clear.

"Well done," Astrid muttered.

She made a mental note to offer congratulations to her Icicles (the term she'd cleverly coined for the young sentinels who fell under her jurisdiction). After all, her Icicles had responded an entire thirty seconds quicker than their last round of this cat-and-mouse game. However, that meant Astrid was only about thirty seconds ahead of them.

She slunk through the doorway of an empty weaver's shop, brushing past the silky blue and silver tapestries that hung from the ceiling. Astrid rolled her eyes. Always the colors of her mother's precious kingdom. She exited out the back onto an abandoned alley. Most civilians of the fortress had already begun their trade work for the day. Only the brightest and most influential of the Rainier Kingdom were allowed to live and work within the fortress walls and, as such, a day's work often began well before dawn with each Halorian trying to outperform the others. So the length of snowy, cobbled alleyway that stretched before her remained unmarred by footprints.

She couldn't very well allow hers to be the first.

With her back pressed into the cold, mountain wall behind her, Astrid skimmed through her mental list of mythical options. She could call on the wind, demand it to lift her on invisible wings to the opposite side of the fortress square. Unfortunately, she hadn't yet mastered the control needed for that and grudgingly admitted it was more likely she'd splatter to the pavement. The palms of her hands warmed as she thought about blasting all the snow away with golden flames.

Too showy. Besides, with her cuff, she would be lucky to wield a bout of smoke.

But the thought of that power sent her blood roaring in her ears, pulsing against the copper armband wrapped around her arm, just above her elbow. She should be used to the pain by now.

Calm down.

Her nails clawed against the copper band, drawing blood, grounding her.

Hold it in.

Astrid breathed deeply, eyes screwed shut against the sudden surge of pressure in her head.

It had never hurt like this.

Her head screamed, a sharp sound that seemed to resonate from the western Ember Sea and sent her hands clasping over her ears. She spun, pressing her forehead against the icy stone, and it was all she could see. Stone. Unyielding rock. Utter Confinement. If she was up on the ramparts, she knew she would be able to see all the way to the small fishing villages at the base of her mountain, and she imagined untethering her anchors and dancing freely upon the sea's waves.

She gritted her teeth. "You are its master," she recited to her confined, cursed power. "It does not master you."

It does not master you.

Astrid's eyes flung open as the weaver's shop she'd just passed through lit up in colors of brightest red, the drums striking up a new incessant pattern: a quick double-tap that echoed among the close stoned walls of the fortress. Astrid tilted her head, interpreting the message: Avalanche spotted. All guards report.

Well, now the real fun could begin.

Her headache eased, the pressure receding to the depths of her stomach, mollified by the rush of adrenaline she was about to exert. The copper band around her arm loosened, and her breaths eased.

The Fortress Square still lay snow-covered before her, empty, for the most part, except for those who were too young to have mastered a trade yet. A few meters away, a pair of boys not much younger than herself came into view, pushing a cart full of books between them. They probably apprenticed at the Halorian Library, and despite the fact that the idea of harming those books sent a regretful pang through her chest, she couldn't have planned its arrival more perfectly herself.

Behind her, the rhythmic, drilled march of the Iced Guards approached. Across the plaza, a flash of something golden winked at her and then disappeared. Astrid released a satisfied smirk, thanking the Scribes that Matthias had stayed true to his more predictable nature. When the signal flashed once more, Astrid reached into the folds of her cloak. She pulled out a flare—a tubular object the length of her forearm—and yanked on the thread of ignition. She counted out two seconds and then flung the device. It arched beautifully—Matthias would be proud if he weren't too busy scowling to watch—before it struck its mark.

The cart exploded. The sound was atrocious, a high pitched whine that was loud enough to garner the attention of all seven realms. But there was no true fire to accompany it; after all, the magic of old no longer existed, and she was hardly one of the legendary Elementi. Not yet, anyways. Still, a burst of light swallowed the cart, the solar flare providing the final distraction she'd needed in a fortress made primarily of ice and snow.

After all, if the guards allowed it to all melt to the ground, Queen Davina would be far from pleased.

Shouts cried out. The two unfortunate young boys out in the square stumbled about, half-blinded from the flare. Consequently, they paid no attention to Astrid--the hidden princess of Rainier, the princess who didn't exist to the general populace--as she ran by them, leaping over the damaged cart and landing in a crouch on the opposite side. Poor boys. They had almost seen a story worth telling.

She skidded to a stop on the far-side of the square, the traction of her boots sliding across a patch of black ice in her haste. Her footsteps in the snow would be the least of the guards' worries now as they hurried towards the cart to stomp out the flare. A satisfied grin had just taken over her expression when someone fisted fingers into the hood of her cloak and wrenched her backwards.

With an undignified sound, she gagged as the collar of her cloak choked her, but she allowed her limbs to go limp against the hard body behind her.

"Nice of you to show up," Astrid greeted as Captain Matthias Soiree half-dragged her through a series of complicated alleyways and into the hidden tunnel of the royal fortress that Astrid herself had spent years carving into the mountain and out of her mother's fortress. Her great escape.

True to form, she could practically hear Matthias's scowl. When she chanced a glance at him, his squared jaw was so tight that she had a wild thought to touch it to see if it sliced her skin.

"Do you try to make my job exceedingly difficult, or do you just naturally excel at damning your own luck?"

He released his hold on her only after he'd pushed her into a secluded chamber within the secret tunnel and secured the entrance. Despite the many torches hanging from sconces on the wall, a chill clung to the air all the same.

Astrid threw back her furry hood, shaking the snow from it. She shivered once and then reclaimed her inbred grace, eyeing Matthias with a straight-backed, tight-lipped expression. "I believe I gave you strict orders to stay out of my training exercises, Captain."

Matthias's light brows rose, not to be deterred by her formal tone. "Training exercise? You blew up a civilian cart."

Astrid swirled a dismissive hand through her honey-colored hair. It had been braided into a crown atop her head, but pieces were currently falling out, messily framing her face. "Give me some credit, Thias. It was only a solar flare. They can be bought from any traveling peddler's cart. Harmless, in retrospect."

Matthias tossed a dry, clean cloak her way and then turned his back on her, crossing his arms and giving her a semblance of privacy. She began to shrug out of the muddied, white cloak, the wet hems sticking to the armor she wore under it, as Matthias snorted to himself.

"Harmless? You've probably temporarily blinded half the fortress civilians by now with your antics."

Astrid shrugged. "At least nothing was irrevocably damaged."

"You are a ruthless one, Your Royal Highness."

She scowled at the use of her hidden title. There were very few in the entire kingdom who knew of Astrid's true royal birth, and those who did were all prudently under her mother's pressing thumb. Like Matthias, who had practically been bred and born into his role of captain of Astrid's personal guard.

As if she couldn't take care of herself. After all, most everyone else within the fortress walls only knew her as a young prodigy of General Lyons.

From over his muscled shoulder, Matthias threw a pair of thickly lined pants directly into her face with the precision of an arrow to its target. The gesture effectively marred his attempt at proper court etiquette. "If you think I will allow you within ten centimeters--nay, millimeters!--of civilians for the rest of this ungodly, moist season," he began, "you are dumber than those worms that eat their own flesh."

Her nose wrinkled in distaste at his less than desirable word choice. "So, tonight's nightly rendezvous is out of the question, then?"

He failed to respond to her sarcasm or to her deceptively charming smile.

In fact, she'd been told by Matthias on more than one occasion that she was more intimidating than charming, even on her best days.

Matthias clipped his heels before turning to face her once more. Thank the Scribes she had just finished pulling the pants over the curve of her hips. The lines of his face stood out as starkly as a shouted warning. Astrid held her breath, pushing against the surge of power that had risen in her gut instinctually against the danger that was sure to come from that look of his. 

Mathias's muddied eyes narrowed as he undoubtedly noticed the way her pupils dilated. "The queen requests your presence."

Her intestines knotted. "At least let me address my sentinels first," she argued. "They performed well despite your insubordinate interference--"

"Princess!" The title snapped from his tongue. She paused, watching him with weary blue eyes that were rumored to be as clear as crystal. "She's brought out the book."

Astrid's chapped lips fumbled shut, her already pale cheeks bleeding free of what little color the brisk wind had risen to her face. Her headache returned tenfold, pounding against her skull, raging against the confinements of her internal skeleton. She fisted her hands at her sides to better hold her fraying edges together. When they no longer shook, she donned her confidence and pushed past Matthias, leading the way up towards Queen's Davina's tower.

It does not master you.

O O O

The royal fortress was built into the peak of Mount Halum, its protective walls a concentric maze within the mountain rock itself, fortified by the same icicle alchemical mixture as the guards' drumsticks. Outside the fortress lived the small cities and towns that belonged to Halorium, all accessible from the fortress by forest paths that were kept clear of snow on a daily basis by the paupers who'd come up from small, meager trade villages in hopes of getting closer to the intellect of Rainier's capital.

Astrid tilted her neck westward as she made her way up the tight, spiraling steps towards the northernmost tower, wondering if the power that had nearly crippled her earlier had been a fluke or a prophetic warning of a cryptic disaster foretold by Queen Davina's storybook.

She supposed she was about to find out.

The higher she climbed the wrought-iron staircase, the colder she felt. Halorians would claim that the temperature had to do with the rising altitude and the general chill of the mountain air that constantly lay trapped beneath the low, atmospheric clouds and the tall peak of Rainier, but Astrid held the strong belief that the fortress grew colder whenever her mother was nearest. It trailed her sweeping cloak like fingers, nipping at her ankles and fogging her breath. From behind her, she could just detect Matthias's trailing steps. She rolled her eyes with no one to see her because, even though Matthias was never out of reach, he somehow found a way to be out of sight, even on this twirling, chilling pathway up.

Which was truly a feat as the narrow confinements offered little space to hide.

Astrid sighed dramatically, pitching her voice just low enough so it would echo off the walls, and began to sing tunelessly:

"Fire was the dragon's stone;

Power that broke both brick and bone.

Wind and Air for protection's sake,

Helped hold up the Aerie's gate.

Light chose the warrior Fey,

sun and moon's invincible sway.

Elven Folk with their love and peace

Found a home in Elvish niche.

Secrets lived within their black,

So Scribes took on ink well's slack.
But Authors held a mind for control,

And bade the others halfway whole."

She felt a little better when Matthias cursed her under his breath.

Queen Davina was never more still than when she stood in the center of the circular tower with her stories laid around her like shrines to a forgotten god. Some of the stories were bound in their entirety; black, brown, or red leather that creased and wrinkled with age, turning in on itself in defiance against time. Those ancestral histories adorned the left side of the room. But the newer additions, the stories her mother had gathered and collected herself, were simply pages, bits of a history the queen had deemed worthy of archiving.

Astrid half expected that her mother had torn them out of books and burned the rest she deemed unimportant.

Built into the dark stone walls of the mountain itself were a series of small, rectangular niches. Astrid had been seven when she had made the mistake of reaching for one of the older books displayed there. She remembered the leather of its binding had smelled anciently welcoming. Unable to reach it, she'd called out to it, and it had leapt from its niche, straight into her awaiting hands. She'd made it a quarter of a way down the staircase when the book had slipped from her grasp and tumbled down ten steps. It had hit with a puff of a dust and a smack as painful as the hand with which the queen used to slap her afterwards.

Astrid tore herself from the memory, glancing around the Keep to prolong the moment when she'd have to address her mother. She trailed the thin band of gold that ran beneath the shelves. The contrast between the dark walls, the glass coverings of the niches, and the gilded banner was like looking into the galaxy and seeing her mother's name written there.

Queen. Majesty. Saviour.

Pretentious Ice Queen.

That was Astrid's favorite.

"Daughter."

Queen Davina Salvera's voice was the sound a snowflake made when it drifted from the skies: innocently silent yet, if left to gather, could become catastrophic

Astrid gathered a breath before she raised her head to meet Queen Davina's gaze. Her mother's eyes were depthless, the same icy blue as a frozen lake that had been fractured into jagged pieces by a weight too heavy for it to bear.

Astrid dropped into a quick curtsy. "Mother."

"Leave us be, Captain Soiree."

The door of the Keep dragged across the floor behind her as Matthias shut it at his queen's request, locking him on the opposite side. It was in these moments when Astrid found herself missing his insufferable, sullen presence the most.

With a silence that filled the room like a hovering storm cloud, her mother ran a long, thin finger along the willow-bark epitaph that jutted up from the center of the floor. At least, that's what her mother called it: an epitaph, as if it were built to be an inscription to the dead. Astrid eyed the elaborate wooden structure, forcing her limbs still even though the slumbering power within her reared its mighty head, scented the heavy book atop the epitaph, and roared. Astrid's bones jolted at the sudden surge as her mother spoke into the stillness.

"Care to explain this?"

Her magic pulled her two steps closer to the epitaph and its storybook.

The Fables of Monverta.

It was folded part-way open. Whereas the books of the Halorian Library smelled like dried roses pressed between two pages, this storybook gave off an odor that was more akin to the Icicles' barracks if they had torched the place with a bottle of sweat and whiskey. Still, the power within her breathed and pulled at her navel. Her spine stretched painfully closer, and Astrid saw the indecipherable symbols and letters that wrote themselves onto the page. An invisible hand that held a well of ink that suspiciously resembled the rustic color of blood.

The Fables of Monverta wasn't her favorite book to look at; though, it was also fair to say that it wasn't the worst. After all, with the book being the last surviving artifact of magic after the Purge, and her being the only known person alive with magic in her veins, they should share a strong kinship. But the sight of the words inscribing themselves into its pages always toppled Astrid straight over the precipice that she always perched her confidence on and down into a dizzying mass of language and power that drowned her.

Because she knew she had been found unworthy.

Besides, the worst thing she'd ever seen was Matthias attempting to woo an Archivist of the Halorian Library.

"Well?"

Astrid looked back at her mother. "I am afraid I don't know what you mean." Her words walked along a tightrope connected to her mother. "These words are the same Scribal symbols that have been appearing for weeks."

A low hum vibrated up Queen Davina's throat, her scarlet lips tight across her unlined face. Her mother was beautiful in a way that Astrid knew she was not, but it was a beauty akin to the intricacy of swordsmanship. All the shapes and lines that made up her mother could be wielded as a weapon: the strands of her black hair pulled taut against her scalp, the sharp lines of her collarbone exposed by the low-cut of her fur-lined gown. Astrid tried not to swallow as her mother's eyes crawled over her, palms placed flat against the epitaph. Her nails clipped against the wood.

"Master Lambert sent a formal complaint this morning. He claimed someone set a cart of his books on fire."

The elements trapped within her squirmed in a way that felt distinctly self-righteous. Astrid kept her face blank. "How odd," she said with practiced innocence, "Perhaps I should lend my cuff to the person responsible to help douse their flames." She idly rolled up the sleeves of her cloak and revealed the copper band of metal wrapped just above her elbow.

Queen Davina eyed it. "Indeed."

For a moment, neither one of them blinked. It allowed Astrid to feel the critical assessment being performed on her. She knew what her mother would see: the copper cuff sealed to her arm, unbroken, still intact. Her shaking hands would be proof enough that she hadn't released any of her elemental magic, especially not on something as trivial as blowing up a book cart.

It was difficult to keep the smirk from her face.

"So, the Monverta's disturbances have nothing to do with your frivolity around my fortress?"

Astrid was wise enough to know when to keep silent. The book's restlessness did seem to coincide with the restlessness of her own magic. After all, hadn't she felt a similar disturbance that morning? She glanced at the pages again, the symbols scrawling themselves over and over again into the parchment. The same one seemed to appear the most frequently: voíxili.

"You understand, daughter, that your power must be conserved, used only for the survival of this book. Without it, all hope will cease to exist in our kingdom. Without it, the elements will become nothing but a myth, and we will be lost."

She tore her eyes away from the ancient inscriptions. "Yes, mother."

The queen's eyes narrowed, but a lone finger slid down the length of the book's binding in such an intimate gesture, it sent a shiver down Astrid's spine. "Place your hand upon the book, daughter. It hungers."

Knowing what was to come next, Astrid steeled herself and slowly lowered her hand upon the open pages. Her magic bellowed, thrashing from where it churned in her stomach so quickly that it nearly sent Astrid's brain into a blizzard's whiteout. It tore up her torso, to her chest, and down her arms, crashing through her fingertips into the pages beneath. The Monverta warmed beneath her hand as it sucked the elemental threads from Astrid. Her fingertips grew numb, then her wrist. The only source of heat on her came from her copper cuff, which burned so hotly against her skin, she knew she'd have a burn there the next time the Scribes took it off for their lessons.

Astrid kept her eyes wide. No matter how many times she'd fed the book with her power, tears threatened to fall all the same.

Her spine tingled unpleasantly, and then unbearably until, with a muffled gasp, Astrid's hand fell from the book. She sagged against the epitaph but caught herself with nothing but the strength of her will. Gathering the remnants of her strength, she straightened, cradling her hypothermic hand beneath the folds of her robe.

"Your power remains weak," Queen Davina purred. "It can only be as strong as the person who wields it."

Well, her power had been plenty strong enough to burrow tunnels underneath her mother's entire fortress. It just wasn't strong enough for this. She knew her expression was flinty at best when she lengthened her neck to look over the epitaph at her mother.

Pretentious Ice Queen.

A flicker that could resemble a grin cut across the Queen's lips. "That is a look of your father's making."

It didn't have the sting of an insult. It never did. Yet Astrid's reflexes flinched regardless, but this was the Keep of her mother's calm. It was a pity Queen Davina's calm was somehow more frightening than her wildest rages. Especially where mention of Astrid's father was concerned. Her mother's pale finger ran down the spine again, the touch of a woman to her lover. In response, the book's words stilled, satiated by Astrid's own power, which now slumbered gently behind her navel once more.

Astrid bit her tongue and locked her jaw, choking on the outrage that always threatened to consume her in these moments.

She would unlock that book. Some day. Not to appease her mother, but to free Astrid from her.

"You are safe now, dear one," Queen Davina murmured to the book.

Astrid spun on her heel and quietly slipped out of the Keep, her duty to the Crown finished for the day.

Matthias met her at the top of the staircase. Wordlessly, he grabbed hold of her elbow to steady her. They both knew the drill by now, had practiced it for years, so he fell into step easily at her right side and helped her down the forty-two steps of the tight staircase until Astrid regained enough of her composure to complete the rest of the journey on her own. After all, it would not do well for the servants of the fortress to constantly see her stumbling about, nearly falling unconscious on her feet, after every meeting with their queen. Rumors would undoubtedly run wild throughout all the crevices of the mountain and all the way to the enemy lands of Soleita.

And Astrid very well couldn't allow that.

It wasn't until she was back in her chambers, falling into a restless sleep, that the ancient Scribal word Astrid had deciphered in the Monverta came back to her: voíxili.

The rough translation appeared in her head in the sudden way dreams often reveal a secret.

Help.

Her mother's book had been calling out for help.

Astrid shut her eyes. One day soon, she promised, I will find the one who can and end it all. 

_ _ _ 

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