Aimery bobbed his head. “Records indicate a daughter, age nine. We have not been able to locate her, but a search is underway. He has also two sisters, two nephews, and one niece. All live in Sector GM-12.”
“No wife?”
“Dead five months past, of regolith poisoning.”
The prisoner watched the queen, desperation pooling in his eyes.
The court began to stir, their vibrant clothes shifting and fluttering. This trial had gone on too long. They were growing bored.
Levana leaned against the back of her throne. “You are hereby found guilty of trespassing and attempted theft against the crown. This crime is punishable by immediate death.”
The man shuddered, but his face remained pleading, hopeful. It always seemed to take them a few seconds to comprehend such a sentence.
“Your family members will each receive a dozen public lashings, to remind everyone in your sector that they cannot possibly comprehend the inner workings of our government and that I will not tolerate my decisions being questioned again.”
The man’s head started to droop, his jaw going slack.
“Your daughter, when she is found, will be given as a gift to one of the court’s families. There, she will be taught the obedience and humility that one can assume she has not learned beneath your tutelage.”
“No, please. Let her live with her aunts. She hasn’t done anything!”
“Aimery, you may proceed.”
“Please!”
“Your Queen has spoken,” said Thaumaturge Aimery. Though he didn’t raise his voice, it rumbled through the throne room into the ears of the lower-ranking thaumaturges, the guards, the court, the waiting servants, and the queen—the only judge and jury. His voice was suffocating. “Her word is final.”
Aimery drew a knife from one of his bell-shaped sleeves and held the handle out to the prisoner, whose eyes had gone wide with hysteria.
The room grew colder. Winter noticed that her breaths were turning to fogged ice crystals. She shivered and squeezed her arms tight against her body.
The prisoner took the knife handle. His hand was steady. The rest of him was trembling.
“Please. My little girl—I’m all she has. Please. My Queen. Your Majesty!”
He raised the blade to his throat.
This was when Winter looked away. When she always looked away. She watched her own fingers burrow into her dress, her fingernails scraping at the fabric until she could feel the sting on her thighs. She watched the ice climb over her wrists, toward her elbows. Where the ice touched, her flesh went numb.
She imagined lashing out at the queen with those ice-solid fists. She imagined her hands shattering into a thousand icicle shards.
It was at her shoulders now. Her neck.
Even over the popping and cracking of the ice, she heard the cut of flesh. The burble of blood. A muffled gag. The hard slump of the body.
Bile squirmed up Winter’s throat. The cold had stolen into her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut, reminding herself to be calm, to breathe. She could hear Jacin’s steady voice in her head, his hands gripping her shoulders. It isn’t real, Princess. It’s only an illusion.
Usually it helped, even just the memory of him coaxing her through the panic. But this time, it seemed to prompt the ice on. Encompassing her rib cage. Gnawing into her stomach. Hardening over her heart. Freezing her from the inside out.
Listen to my voice.
Jacin wasn’t there.
Stay with me.
Jacin was gone.
It’s all in your head.
She heard the clomping of the guards’ boots as they approached the body. The corpse being slid toward the ledge. The shove. Moments later, the splash down below.
The court applauded with quiet politeness.
Winter felt her toes snap off. One. By. One.
She was almost too numb to notice.
“Very good,” said Queen Levana. “Thaumaturge Tavaler, see to it that the rest of the sentencing is duly carried out.”
“Yes, My Queen.”
Winter forced her eyes open. The ice had made its way up her throat now, was climbing over her jawline. There were tears freezing inside their ducts. There was saliva crystallizing on her tongue.
In the center of the room, a servant was cleaning the blood from the tiles. Aimery was rubbing his knife with a cloth. He met Winter’s gaze and his smile was searing. “I am afraid the princess has no stomach for these proceedings.”
The nobles in the audience tittered—Winter’s disgust of the trials was a source of merriment to most of Levana’s court.
She heard the rustle of her stepmother’s gown as the queen turned to peer down at her, but Winter couldn’t look up. She was a girl made of ice and glass. Her teeth were brittle, her lungs too easily shattered.
“Yes,” said Levana. “I often forget she’s here at all. You’re about as useless as a rag doll, aren’t you, Winter?”
The audience chuckled again, louder now, as if the queen had given permission to mock the young princess. But Winter couldn’t respond, not to the queen, not to the laughter. She kept her gaze pinned on the thaumaturge, trying to hide her panic.
“Oh no, she isn’t quite as useless as that,” Aimery said, still smiling. As Winter stared, a thin crimson line drew itself across his throat, blood bubbling up from the wound. “The prettiest girl on all of Luna? She will make some member of this court a very happy bride someday, I should think.”
“The prettiest girl, Aimery?” Levana’s light tone almost concealed the snarl beneath.
Aimery seamlessly slipped into a bow. “Prettiest only, My Queen. But no mortal could compare with your perfection.”
The court was quick to agree, offering a hundred compliments at once, though Winter could still feel the leering gazes of more than one noble attached to her.
Aimery took a step toward the throne and his severed head tipped off, thunking against the marble and rolling, rolling, rolling, until it stopped right at Winter’s frozen feet.
Still smiling.
She whimpered, but the sound was buried beneath the snow in her throat.
It’s all in your head.
“Silence,” said Levana, once she’d had her share of praise. “Are we finished?”
Finally, the ice found her eyes and Winter had no choice but to shut them against Aimery’s headless apparition, enclosing herself in cold and darkness.
She would die here and not complain. She would be buried beneath this avalanche of lifelessness. She would never have to witness another murder again.
“There is one more prisoner still to be tried, My Queen.” Aimery’s voice echoed in the cold hollowness of Winter’s head. “Sir Jacin Clay, royal guard, pilot, and assigned protector of Thaumaturge Sybil Mira.”
Winter gasped and the ice shattered, a million sharp glittering bits exploding across the throne room and skidding across the floor. No one else heard them. No one else noticed.
Aimery, head very much attached, was watching her again, as if he’d been waiting to see her reaction. His smirk was subtle as he returned his attention to the queen.
“Ah, yes,” said Levana. “Bring him in.”