When I pulled open the door, I found him standing in the hall, clouds of breath puffing from his blue lips. He held a plate with a single piece of bread on it, and it made my heart squeeze.
“Get in here,” I said. “You’re freezing.”
“I thought you might be hungry.” My stomach rumbled sharply, and yet I didn’t quite feel like eating. Stress had that effect on me.
I sat on the bed with the plate of bread in my lap and the blanket over my shoulders. “What I really want more than bread is for you to get warm next to me. You’ve been out in the cold all day, haven’t you?”
“You need to keep the fire going.” Aeron crossed to the hearth. “I don’t want you freezing in here by yourself.”
“I don’t understand how everything changed so fast,” I said. “Just a few weeks ago, we were eating entire banquets, and now it’s all blizzards and food rations.”
He knelt, trying to stoke the fire again. “Torin didn’t want to marry until it was absolutely necessary. If Ava had sat on the throne, we’d be enjoying spring right now. Torin had been promised money that we were supposed to use to buy food. The humans offered him an enormous sum for filming the trials, but the contract also required an actual wedding. Without the wedding itself, they’re not paying him. The granaries are empty. The livestock have been slaughtered. I’ve been visiting house after house today. The young and old are getting sick without heat and the right nutrition. People are eating all of their farm animals. The chickens are freezing to death, not laying eggs. Nothing has grown in Faerie for years. We were down to our last rations when Torin disappeared.”
A weight pressed on my chest. Someone needed to take control here. “What is Orla doing?”
“Refusing to take the throne. She’s certain Torin will be back any day now. And I don’t know if she’s wrong. She’s unfailingly loyal, and Torin never wanted her on the throne. He thought she was too weak, and that the magic would kill her.”
He turned back to me. “We are not in good shape. We don’t have any more time to spare. And I know Torin wouldn’t be allowing this to happen if he had any control whatsoever. If he could be here, he would. I’m just worried that he’s…” Aeron trailed off for a moment. “That he’s trapped or something. ”
Worry twisted in my gut. If Torin was in trouble, Ava must be, too.
I slid the plate of bread onto a bedside table. “What is the dragon I keep seeing?”
He crossed to the bed. “It’s the curse the demons placed on us long ago. When the frost encroaches, dark magic takes over. The dragon is circling like a vulture, waiting to eat the dead, to feed off our destruction. Our kingdom hasn’t seen them in centuries, but I think they’re attracted to misery and desperation.”
When he sat down across from me, I pulled the blanket off myself, and I wrapped it around both of us until we were cocooned in wool. He took my cold hands in his and rubbed them together, then breathed on them.
When he looked up at me again, his golden hair hung before his eyes, and his cheeks were pink with the cold. Even with the chaos around us, he still had that perfect rakish charm.
“I don’t understand what happened,” he said. “I keep piecing together what I saw, trying to make sense of it. Moria had come up here to speak to Ava but wouldn’t allow me anywhere in earshot. Ava ran down to the throne room to speak to Torin. And then I saw him touch her, and ice spread over her body. But I don’t understand why Torin would freeze her with his magic. I suppose it was an accident, but I’ve never known him to lose control of his magic before.”
A disturbing memory threaded through my mind, a tidbit of a conversation I’d overheard.
“How much do you trust Torin?” I asked .
“Honestly, I trust him with my life. I’ve known him since we were little.”
I shifted closer to him.
“I don’t trust Moria,” I began. “Ava didn’t trust her, either, but whatever Moria said to Ava, it was believable enough to make her upset. I didn’t hear the whole conversation, but I heard a little. Moria accused Torin of killing her sister. I think Moria’s sister might have been the person whose diary we found. She was Torin’s girlfriend or lover or something.”
Aeron stared at me. “Milisandia. That’s what Moria said? Milisandia went missing. But it’s treasonous to accuse a king of an unlawful murder. And of course, Torin is not a murderer. He kills lawfully.”