The glacial shell of The Cradle was both a marvel and a message. Its diamond-bright facets caught the rising sun, turning the fortress into a beacon of impossible, frozen power visible for leagues in the clear mountain air.
It announced not just defense, but a perversion a human stronghold wearing the skin of Ice Country's own magic.
The message was received.
A week after the heir's first kick, the lookout's horn blew a new sequence: two short blasts, one long. Not an attack. An approach.
From the north, a procession emerged from the glacier's edge. It was not a war party. It moved with a slow, ceremonial precision that was more threatening than any charge. Twenty elite Frost-Song warriors formed a square escort. In their center, carried on a palanquin of pale, carved wood and blue silk, was a figure of chilling elegance.
Queen Sylas of the Frost-Song Clan had come to see the paradox for herself.
Nicolas stood on the glacis rampart, Lyra at his side, her hand resting on the now unmistakable swell of her pregnancy.
Kaela stood a step behind, her hackles raised, a low growl vibrating in her chest. Valerius stood apart, his head bowed, his presence a living symbol of the transfer of power.
"She wears no armor," Lyra observed, her voice low. "Only court robes and her pride. This is a royal assessment, not a siege."
"Let her look," Nicolas said, his eyes fixed on the approaching queen. "Let her see what her Hand now serves."
The procession halted a hundred yards from the ice-clad gates. The palanquin was set down. The silk curtains parted, and Queen Sylas stepped out.
She was breathtaking. Her fur was the pure white of fresh snowfall, long and silken. She wore layered robes of silver and the faintest blue, cut to accentuate a slender, powerful frame. A delicate circlet of intertwined ice-crystals sat upon her brow.
Her eyes were the pale, piercing blue of a winter sky, and they swept over The Cradle's walls with a cold, analytical fury before settling on the figures atop the rampart. They lingered on Valerius, and a flicker of betrayal, quickly mastered, tightened the skin around her eyes.
"I would speak with the human who steals my artisans!" Her voice rang out, clear and sharp as breaking icicles, carrying effortlessly on the thin air.
Nicolas did not shout. He simply turned and walked down the inner steps, through the newly reinforced gates that groaned open just wide enough. He emerged alone, stopping twenty paces from the queen's guard.
The contrast was stark: the pristine, aristocratic cat-queen and her polished retinue, and Nicolas, clad in dark, practical leathers, standing before a fortress of stolen magic.
"I do not steal," Nicolas replied, his voice calm, carrying a weight of authority that seemed to push against her crystalline tone. "I acquire. Valerius saw a greater purpose. He chose it."
"A greater purpose than serving his queen and his people?" Sylas's tail gave a single, irritated twitch.
"A greater purpose than freezing border villages for sport," Nicolas countered, his gaze unwavering. "His art now guards the future of a kingdom. What did it guard for you? Your vanity?"
A hiss rose from her warriors. Sylas's eyes narrowed to slits. "You speak boldly for a man standing on a melting block of his own hubris. I have three hundred warriors who can reduce your pretty ice-castle to slurry."
"And you would lose every one of them," Nicolas said, taking a single step forward. The queen's guard tensed. "You have seen what I did to your best sorcerer with a handful of fighters. Imagine what I will do with his power now turned fully to my defense. Your warriors will shatter against my walls, and their frozen bodies will make my foundations stronger."
He let the threat hang, then his voice dropped, becoming almost conversational. "But you did not come for a war you are no longer sure you can win, Queen Sylas. You came to see what kind of man could do such a thing. You came to measure the threat."
Sylas was silent for a long moment, her icy gaze dissecting him. "What is it you want, human? This scrap of mountain?"
"I want what every ruler wants," Nicolas said. "Security. Prosperity. Legacy." He glanced back towards the rampart, where Lyra stood silhouetted against the sky, her posture regal, her condition obvious. "The Ice Country's incessant raids are a nuisance. They threaten my people. They threaten my heir. Make them stop."
"Or?" she challenged.
"Or I will make them stop," he said, and the finality in his voice was more terrifying than any shout. "Not by defending this valley. By marching into your glacial valley, Queen Sylas. By using your own sorcerer's magic to freeze your throne room around you. And by offering you the same choice I offered Valerius. Serve in my court, or become a decoration in it."
The audacity of the threat left her speechless. No one, not even rival cat-lords, spoke to her this way. Yet, the evidence was before her: her own magic encasing his fortress, her greatest sorcerer standing silently in submission. The calculation in her eyes was visible the cost of war against an unknown, deeply personal power.
"You ask for a cessation of hostilities," she said finally, her voice tighter. "What do you offer in this… bargain?"
"I offer your sorcerer's life, which is already mine to give," Nicolas said, his smile thin and cold. "I offer you the chance to avoid a war that would bleed your clan dry for no gain. And I offer you the opportunity to be on the winning side of history, instead of a frozen footnote."
He let that sink in, then delivered the masterstroke, the true reason he had come out to parley. "Send a tribute. Not of gold or gems. A tribute of… understanding. Fifty of your people. Not warriors. Crafters, weavers, healers. Those who can build and create, not just destroy. Let them live here, under my law, and learn the strength of this kingdom. In return, your borders with my territory will be at peace. Refuse, and the next time you see these walls, they will be advancing."
Queen Sylas stared at him, her aristocratic face a mask of conflicted fury and pragmatic dread. He was not just demanding peace; he was demanding a piece of her culture, a down payment on future assimilation. It was a more profound defeat than any lost battle.
She looked once more at the glacial walls, at Valerius's bowed head, at the pregnant elf queen watching from above. She saw a power that operated on a level she could not yet grasp, one that turned her own strengths against her.
"You will have your… tribute," she spat the word as if it were poison. "But mark me, human. The Frost-Song does not forget."
"I am counting on it," Nicolas said, turning his back on her, a gesture of supreme contempt and confidence. As he walked back through the gates of The Cradle, he knew this was not an end, but a beginning.
He had not just defended his home; he had commanded a queen. He had turned an enemy into a reluctant tributary.
And soon, he would have fifty new subjects from the Ice Country, their lives and skills another thread to be woven into the growing, unbreakable fabric of his will.
The cradle was secure. Now, he could look beyond its walls. The Mist Country, with its bird-people and aerial scouts, was next. His kingdom needed eyes in the sky.