Page 2 of Lifebound

To beremembered.

“My Queen,” said the companion, and she turned, about to tell him to get out because she was tired. So tired of everything.

But what she saw stopped the words from leaving her lips.

“What is it? Speak, Neron, speak!” her brother demanded of the companion as the queen went closer, eyes on the seer who was shaking and humming and had her eyes squeezed shut. The milky white water was slowly climbing in the air over her bowl like it was being pulled by invisible strings.

Hope bloomed in her chest, but the queen squashed it right away. This had happened before. The seer had come close to finding a link, a clue, a name for the traitor, and if they foundhim,they would find the cure for whatever was done to her son. All they needed to know waswhohad done this.

“She sees, Sire,” the companion said. “She’s close—she sees something!”

Again, the queen closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, chased away the hope.

There, she waited, looking down at the seer as she shook and began to bleed from her eyes, and the water that climbed up over the bowl dropped and rose up again three times.

Her brother was pacing around nervously, and the companion of the seer held his head with his hands, something she’d never seen any of the seer’s companions do before. He looked paler, too, and his skin was covered in sweat.

“More,” the seer whispered, and maybe her ears lied to her, she thought, but then the companion turned to the queen.

“She needs more, Your Highness.”

One thought remained in the queen’s mind—the seer had never needed more before.

She moved, threw her glass of wine on the carpet, grabbed one of the sharp blades from the golden crown on her head, and she went to her son. Took his hand in hers. Cut a clean line across his palm and coated the golden blade with his blood as well as she could. It wasn’t big, merely the size of her hand, but it was full of the prince’s blood now, and he did not have more to give.

When she returned to the seer, she hesitated for a moment. She hesitated because it was her son’s precious blood, and if it didn’t work, she would be furious. If it didn’t work, she would have the seer’s head—she would be too angry to stop herself from giving the order and she knew it.

“Oreya,” her brother said—the name she’d carried her whole life, that her mother had given her. A name she heard so rarely now.

Her fingers opened and she threw the blade into the bowl.

The milky white water swallowed it whole, and the seer began to choke almost immediately.

More blood came out of her closed eyes, and some slipped out of her ears, too. Her hands shook so much they turned to a blur, and more drops of water climbed the air to create a round surface over the bowl, right before her hands.

The queen squeezed her own fingers, tried to stop her heart from beating faster, fromhopingas she watched, unblinking eyes on that surface.

A name. A face. Anything,she thought.

And Reme and Emer must have heard because the white surface of the liquid gained color and within seconds it showed a face.

A face itshouldn’thave showed at all.

The queen stopped—heart and lungs and eyes. Everybody stopped for a good long moment, even the seer. She no longer bled or choked or shook—she just froze.

And then she fell back against the ground, and the water dripped back into the bowl, and the companion was on his knees to hold her head over his lap, and the wide eyes of the queen’s brother locked on hers.

“Impossible,” the queen whispered.

“But you saw it.Isaw it,” Helid said, as shocked as her.

“The Ice Queen.” Again, she whispered the words because she was afraid she’d be laughed at and looked at as a fool if she gave them more voice.

But her brother nodded. “The Ice Queen.”

The queen stepped back and looked down at the floor, but the face that had appeared on that surface of water was right there in the center of her mind—blonde hair, much lighter than hers, blue eyes, pale skin and peony-colored lips.

It was the Ice Queen, the ruler of the Frozen Court that was their neighbor.

---