Sorry, My Love: The Adventures of Lovers-Chapter 45: Queen of Ice and Death

The castle towered above the ice like a crown of stony spire, every tower a splinter of frosted breath, every wall a testament to the cold that ruled Martha's heart. The snow they trod was dry and crunched beneath their feet like bones of the dead as they ascended the curved stairs, their breaths misting in the air, disappearing into the howling winds that wept around the frosty spires. Its walls were smooth with a cold cruel light, unfriendly and hard, as if the castle itself was trying to keep out unwanted visitors.

The old man's hand shook, grasping at the cold, frozen railing as he panted with short, trembling breaths. He looked up into Martha's face, his ward, his child now a giant colossus of ice and power. Her hard, faraway eyes were locked on the summit of her creation, her mouth thin, harsh and unyielding. She did not embrace now at his arm for warmth, for guidance. She did not need him anymore.

"Martha," he breathed, his voice splitting like cracked ice. "This castle. So lovely and treacherous. You shouldn't—"

She halted, her head angled to one side, her gaze flashing like a scattering of fragmented glass.

"Shouldn't?" Her voice struck through the breeze, icicle-sharp like the splinters adhering to the castle's serrated rooftops. "You forget where you belong, old man. You raised me, yes, but do not try to give me orders."

He hesitated, his fingers tightening around the frozen rail. "I only wish to protect you, child. This power. it is a curse as much as a gift."

Martha's jaws were forced together. She turned, hair blown back by the gale, snow-white, her cloak flowing around her like the spread wings of some monstrous, cold bird. She climbed the stairs, boots scraping on the ice with a cracking noise, every step a assertion of mastery. The old man's gasps became more agitated, chest rising and falling with the effort, heart a stumbling, threshing thing before her authority.

They arrived at the hall of the great hall, its ribbed and arched roof like the humped chest cavity of a slaughtered animal, walls radiating with crystalline veins of ice, their surfaces presenting twisted reflections of the forms which passed. At the center of the hall stood a throne – a jutting, towering piece of frost and crystal, whose arms curled like frozen branches of a dead tree, whose seat broad and cold, a suitable seat for a queen born of frost and death.

Martha stood before it, her eyes narrowing, her fingers curving as if savoring the cold air. She moved toward the throne and touched its armrest, her fingers sending a chill of frost into the air, the air creaking with the hiss of freezing. She turned to him, her eyes on the old man who had halted at the door, his face waning, his breathing light.

"You frighten me," she told him, her voice echoing down the corridor. It was not a question.

He gulped, his Adam's apple rising and falling in his thin, wrinkled throat. "I. I am afraid of what you have become."

She smiled, her lips stretching to show teeth as cold and as keen as pieces of ice. "And what is that?"

"A monster," he whispered, his words no more than a wisp of frozen air. "An ice queen of death."

The smile disappeared. The air turned chill, the ice climbing walls, closing in close, whispering against his ankles, sliding up his legs like dead men's fingers.

"A monster?" she repeated, her own voice a smooth, cold hiss. She moved closer, her eyes locked on his, her breath frosting the air in front of him. "Maybe I am. But I'm a queen too. And you owe me nothing."

The old man's eyes flew wide open as the frost crept into his chest, the ice snapping and crunching against his ribs, freezing the blood in his veins, encasing his lungs in an icy prison. His lips formed words, his breath fogging for the final time as the ice crept into his face, freezing his final breath into the air.

Martha moved aside, her cloak whipping at the frosty floor, her feet clanking in the silent hall. She made her way up the stairs to her throne, glancing back for a moment before the ice closed over the old man, his frozen form shattering, cracking, and then falling to the ground in a heap of shining shards. She sat, her back rigid, her head high, her eyes hard and far away like the storm outside.

From the darkness, a woman emerged – broad-shouldered, armored, tall and her hold firm around the hilt of a huge jagged ice sword. She knelt at the throne, her head bowed, her whitening hair falling down her face like a shroud of snow.

"My Queen," the knight declared, her voice firm in spite of the biting wind. "Phoebie, at your service. I've waited a very long time for this day."

Martha gazed down, her mouth twisting in a weak smile. "Stand up, Phoebie."

Phoebie stood up, standing before Martha with sword in front of her, the blade shining with the ice that coated all of the hall. She met Martha's gaze, her face set, her jaw working.

"I have walked the world outside of this wasteland," Martha insisted, her voice ringing through the hall. "A world of mountains and of trees, of fire and life. Zambhi, it is called."

Phoebie's hold on her sword tightened, her face twisting. "Should I have the knights prepared, my queen?"

Martha slumped back, her fingers beating against the arm of her throne, her eyes flashing cold, unspoken wrath. "Yes. Prepare them. We shall demonstrate to them the full force of ice."

Phoebie bowed her head, the ice in her hair glinting like a coronet of blades. "As you will, my queen."

She twirled, cloak billowing behind her as she emerged out of the hall, her footsteps echoing through the icy corridors. The cold grew darker, the ice hardening, the wails of the dead ringing through the night. And Martha, sitting alone in her throne, closed her eyes, her hands tightening about the icy armrests, her heart as unyielding and frozen as the castle she had built over the skeleton of her shattered past.