Aud moved to offer the king a glass, paused, smiled, and handed it to me first. My hand shook as I gripped the stem, splashing wine on my sleeve. The wrongness of what we were doing overwhelmed me then, leaving me lightheaded. Those other stories flickered through my mind like dark birds.
I had to be resolute. If I did not go through with our plot, I would be trapped forever, slowly losing more and more of myself, while Hrafnsvik and all the other villages watched their animals die and their shovels break against their frozen farmland.
My fingers white against the glass, I took a sip, and as I did so, I brushed my hair back. A habitual gesture, to keep it out of the drink—my hair, of course, is forever flopping all over the place. But I also brushed the veil Wendell had made for me, loosening a single pearl. The pearl landed in the wine with an insubstantial splash, and dissolved.
I should have felt relief. That was it—my part was done. I had only to pass the poisoned wine to my betrothed. To wait for him to sag forward in convulsions, for the queen and her son and whatever other allies they had among the courtiers to spring forward and finish him. Wendell was already moving—he strolled along the edge of the crowd, moving closer to the thrones as if to improve his view. He would grab me as the king died, and we would flee with Aud and the others in the ensuing chaos.
And yet there I sat, still holding the wine.
Finn and Aslaug began to look worried. Aud alone was at ease, a warm smile still hovering on her lips. But it was not her usual smile, I knew, which was cool and brisk; this smile was a performance.
I leaned forward under the pretense of offering Aud a grateful kiss. She mirrored me, calmly pressing her cheek to mine, though I felt her stiffen slightly with disquiet.
“I can’t do it,” I murmured. My thoughts blurred together, and I had to dig my nails into my palms to keep myself from slipping through time again. “It’s not how it’s supposed to end.”
I believe I babbled something else, about stories or patterns or I don’t know what, for my memory is patchy. I know that Aud kissed me, and I felt her lips trembling. I held her eyes with mine, trying to convey to her that I wished her to tell me what to do, to help me. But she only stared back in baffled silence. And why wouldn’t she? She had planned this whole intricate scheme out with Wendell, and now here I was, threatening to bring it crashing down upon us.
Aud quickly mastered herself, hiding her shock under polite surprise. “Her Highness’s praise is far too kind.”
The entire incident—my hesitation; Aud’s embrace—had lasted only seconds. The king was still smiling, perfectly unsuspecting as he murmured to one of his courtiers. He turned to me, holding out his graceful hand—the nails very white and narrower at the tips, as if they would form points if left untrimmed—to accept the wine.
Aud’s gaze bored into me. I could see she hadn’t understood a word I’d said—unsurprising, given my nonsensical prattling. No doubt she thought I’d gone mad. And perhaps I had, shut away so long in that winter world, encased in enchantments like layers of dreams. Yet in that moment I knew—I knew—that if I went through with our plot, it would be to the ruin of us all. I had no evidence to support this, and yet the conviction had its roots in reason, somehow; not in anything specific, but in my accumulated knowledge of the Folk, the resonance of hundreds of stories. This murder was discordant; a snapped string.
I made some motion with the wineglass—I don’t know what it was. Probably I would have dropped the glass, shattering it, or perhaps in my agitation I was motivated enough for drama and would have hurled it away. But at that slight motion, Aud sprang forward, knocking the glass from my hand.
The surprise of it launched me to my feet, an inarticulate cry on my lips—it was as if I had awakened from slumber, and a great terror at what I had been about to do rose within me. The king stared at me, then at Aud, then at the wine soaking into the ice. It bubbled and frothed, and then a tendril of smoke went up, as if in the wine there had lurked a flame, now snuffed out.
A murmur of horror went up among the courtiers.
“Forgive me, Your Highness,” Aud said with her usual cool calm. “But as Her Highness moved the glass into the light, I noticed that the wine had turned an odd colour—I know our vintage well. I believe the glass itself was lined with poison. No doubt a foul plot hatched by allies of the former queen.” She paused as if to process a shock, yet I saw the wheels turning in her mind. “It is fortunate that your betrothed is mortal—no doubt her blood is too warm to have been affected.”
Aud gave me a brief, sharp look, and I collapsed back into my throne, still staring at her. She hadn’t understood my hesitation—I could see that written plainly on her face. But far from thinking me mad, she had trusted me wholeheartedly, and she had acted, twisting the story into a new shape. An inarticulate sound rose within me, close to a sob.
And yet—it almost didn’t work.
The king looked from Aud to the spilled wine, still smoking, then his gaze swept over the assembled courtiers and guests, whose shock quickly turned to terror. As one, they shuffled away from him, bumping into one another. I didn’t blame them—the king’s expression was contorted, and all the sunlight and playful rainbows had dissolved in a swirl of ice crystals. He looked at me, and I knew my shock showed plainly on my face, while my mouth hung open in an idiotic way—unintentional, but in retrospect, it was the best possible alibi I could have given him. His face softened, and he squeezed my hand.
“There, there, my love,” he said. “I’m quite unharmed. You needn’t worry.”
Then it all began to unravel. There came a series of screams, and a drab, black-haired faerie woman was hauled through the gathering and thrown at the king’s feet.
“The traitor queen, Your Highness,” one of her captors declared. “She has disguised herself!”
The king made a sharp gesture, and suddenly the huddled faerie was drab no more, but unspeakably beautiful, all sharp lines and frost-glittering skin and white hair that flowed all the way to the ground. At her side she carried a sword, nearly as tall as she and wonderfully incriminating. It struck me that the two faeries who had dragged the queen before the king should not have been able to identify her through her glamour, if the king could not, and I also noted the way their outraged tones contrasted with how they kept swallowing and darting looks at the king. But he did not spare them a glance. His gaze never strayed from the queen.
“I thought I had killed you, my darling,” he murmured to the queen in a voice that was almost a caress. I cowered away from him, not caring how I looked.
“You thought, you thought,” she spat. Her voice was as lovely as her face, even in her fury. “Your power is matched only by your stupidity, my husband. Twice now I have played you for the fool. I shall rise and play you a third time.”
I could not help admiring her self-possession, though her threat struck me as unlikely, particularly as there were suddenly a great many hands upon the queen, striking and shoving her, stripping her of her sword and handing it to the king.
By this time, a number of Folk were running for the doors. Some of the king’s guards were mowing them down with their ice swords, though it was impossible to know if their flight was the result of guilt or simple panic. Guests were screaming, and there came the intermittent noise of clashing weaponry. It was chaos—that part of the plan, at least, had come off.