The words on the border patrol report blurred and swam before Thorne's eyes, transforming from "unusual tracks" and "possible incursion" into meaningless black scribbles. The parchment might as well have been blank. His study, usually a sanctuary of order and control, felt stifling, the walls leaning in, the fire too hot.
All he could see, burned onto the back of his eyelids, was a pair of wide, silver-grey eyes. They were the colour of a winter storm at dawn, and in their depths swirled a pain so profound, so achingly familiar, it seemed to echo the hollow, frozen cavern his own heart had become. It was the look of someone who had lost everything and was braced to lose it all over again.
He slammed the parchment down on his desk, the sound cracking through the room like ice on a lake. "Ryder."
His captain, who had been meticulously and obviously pretending to examine a detailed map of the Southern Frostspine passes, looked up without a hint of surprise. "Sire?"
"The servant girl." Thorne's voice was too rough. He cleared his throat, striving for the detached tone of a king making a routine inquiry. "The one from the stairs. And the garden. The mute one." He couldn't bring himself to say the name first. It felt too revealing.
Ryder leaned back against the map table, crossing his arms. His expression was neutral, but his eyes, always too perceptive, held a softness. "Nova."
Nova. Thorne let the name sit in the air between them. It felt strange on his tongue short, celestial, burning. Yet, it also felt unsettlingly familiar, like a half-remembered lyric from a lullaby he'd forgotten he knew. "Nova," he repeated, testing the weight of it. "How long did you say she's been here?"
"Eight years, give or take." Ryder's voice was carefully even. "Came as a scrawny, shell-shocked teenager right after the… after the Moonstone tragedy. Been here ever since. Quiet. Does her work. Never causes a lick of trouble." He paused. "One of the most reliable workers in the palace, if you ask the stewards."
Eight years. The number was a relentless hammer, pounding against his skull. It aligned with the timeline of his own life with sinister precision: his brutal, grief-stricken ascent to a throne he'd never wanted alone, his most catastrophic failure, the day he'd let an entire kingdom burn. And now, this… this inexplicable, gravitational pull toward a woman who had been a ghost in his own home for nearly a decade. Was it guilt? Some twisted echo of his failure to protect, now focusing on a single, fragile soul?
"Why is she mute?" The question was out, raw and unvarnished, before he could coat it in regal detachment. It was the question that had been gnawing at him since he'd first truly seen her.
Ryder shrugged, a gesture that was too casual for the intensity of the conversation. "No one knows. She just doesn't speak. Never has, not since she arrived. Some of the simpler folk say she's touched in the head, that the tragedy broke her mind." His gaze sharpened, locking onto Thorne's. "I don't believe that for a second. I think she understands everything that's said to her and around her. I think the silence is a choice. Or a cage."
A cage. The word resonated. Thorne stood abruptly, the chair scraping harshly against stone. He needed to move. He strode to the tall, arched window that overlooked the inner training yards. Below, the world was orderly: guards drilled in perfect unison, servants moved with purpose, smoke rose in straight lines from chimneys. A kingdom functioning under his cold, precise command.
But his mind's eye painted a different, more vivid picture: a girl kneeling in the damp earth of the garden, her small, capable hands working diligently amongst the roots, her head bowing so low her chin nearly touched her chest as he and Seraphina passed by. He had felt it then a jolt, a disorienting lurch in his equilibrium, as if he'd stepped onto ground that wasn't there. And in the dim hallway, when his hand had pressed over her heart… that explosion of golden light. It hadn't been fatigue or trick of the eye. It had been real. Ryder had seen it too; his friend's subsequent silence on the matter was proof enough.
"Is she watched?" Thorne asked, his back to the room, his voice low.
"She's a servant," Ryder replied, a hint of confusion in his tone. "They're all watched, in a way. The stewards ensure the work is done."
"Not like that." Thorne turned, and the expression on his face made Ryder straighten up. "Is she safe? Does anyone… cause her trouble?"
The question hung in the air, absurd in its specificity. The Ice King did not involve himself with the interpersonal dramas of the serving staff. His concern was the security of the realm, not the welfare of one silent girl. Ryder's eyebrows climbed toward his hairline. This was beyond unusual; it was a seismic shift in the bedrock of Thorne's character.
"She keeps to herself," Ryder said slowly, choosing his words with care. "The others mostly ignore her. She's… a non-presence. Which, in that world, can be its own kind of protection." He hesitated, the memory clearly surfacing. "But after the incident in the garden, when she went missing…"
Thorne's focus sharpened to a laser point. "Yes?"
"Lady Seraphina asked about her. Specifically. Wanted to know who she was, how long she'd been here." Ryder's mouth tightened. "Called her a 'broken tool.' Said broken tools should be discarded. It seemed… overly interested. Personal, almost."
A cold that had nothing to do with his inherent ice magic seeped into Thorne's veins, chilling him from the inside out. Seraphina's charming smile, her witty conversation, her flattering attention suddenly it all seemed layered, calculated, a performance. And Nova, with her fearful, storm-cloud eyes and her silent, trembling lips, seemed like the most vulnerable, exposed creature in his entire kingdom. A tiny, fragile bird on a branch, with a shadow circling overhead.
The feeling that surged in response was primal, possessive, and utterly beyond politics. It was the wolf in him, the alpha, roaring to life with a single, clear directive: Protect. Mine.
It was irrational. She was a servant. He was a king. There were alliances to consider, a powerful guest to host, border threats to analyze.
But the bond that maddening, glorious, terrifying cord of light and heat that had ignited in his chest insisted otherwise. It thrummed with a low, persistent urgency. Mine. In danger.
"Keep an eye on her," Thorne ordered, the command leaving no room for debate. "Discreetly. I want to know if anyone approaches her, if she leaves the palace grounds, if she so much as looks distressed. Report to me. Directly."
Ryder simply nodded, his own expression now grave. He understood the subtext. This wasn't just about a servant. "Of course, Sire."
As his friend left, Thorne remained at the window, but he no longer saw the orderly yards. He saw a labyrinth of stone corridors and a thousand hidden corners where a silent girl could vanish. He was the Alpha King, on the brink of a crucial festival, hosting a potential ally who made his instincts prickle with warning, and facing vague, ominous threats on his border.
Yet, the central problem consuming him was not a matter of state, but of the heart. He needed to see her again. To look into those eyes and decipher the storm within them. To understand why the sight of her cracked the permafrost around his soul, and why the thought of that cold, beautiful shadow named Seraphina near her made his wolf snarl with a protective rage he hadn't felt in eight long years.
The mystery of Nova was no longer a passing curiosity. It had become an obsession, the first crack in the Ice King's façade, and he had no idea if solving it would save his kingdom or shatter it completely.