Lucy's POV
Time didn't just slow in the dark it curdled. It became a thick, soupy thing measured in heartbeats and shivers. Each thump of the distant Solstice drums from the ballroom above felt like a nail hammering home my reality. Trapped. Forgotten. A nobody.
My hand throbbed in time with the music, a sick counter-rhythm. The cut from the wine glass had crusted over, a sticky testament to Lady Vivian's petty cruelty. I pressed my forehead against the cool wood of the shelf, the scent of dust and old paper filling my nose. Five years. Five years of running, hiding, folding myself into the smallest, most invisible version of a person I could become. And for what? To die of thirst in a cleaning closet because a noblewoman had a bruised ego?
The hollow ache in my stomach wasn't just from missing dinner. It was the old, familiar void where my pack used to be. The Winter Solstice had taken them. Now it seemed determined to take me, too, in a far more pathetic fashion. Grandma would never know what happened to me. She'd just stop getting my visits, then my payments, and then… I shut down the thought violently. That way lay a panic that would choke me.
Get a grip, Lucy. Think.
But there was nothing to think about. The door was magically sealed. No windows. Just shelves of spare linens and cleaning solvents. A mop bucket in the corner. My kingdom.
I was so deep in my own spiraling dread that the sound of the lock disengaging didn't register at first. It was the light that did it a thin, vertical sliver cutting through the darkness, widening. I flinched back, raising a hand against the sudden intrusion. Had Vivian come back to gloat? To deliver another "lesson"?
The silhouette that filled the doorway was too tall, too broad-shouldered to be Vivian. It was unmistakably, imposingly male. My heart, which had been dragging itself through mud, suddenly shot into a frantic gallop. A guard? Coming to drag me somewhere worse?
Then he stepped forward, and the dim hall light caught the sharp planes of his face, the frost-pale hair, the eyes that seemed to glow with their own cold light.
Alpha King Stellan Voss.
My brain short-circuited. Of all the possibilities, this was not one. This was a hallucination born of hunger and fear. The Ice King didn't wander service corridors. He didn't check on locked-up servants. He ruled from a distance, a figure of terrifying, impersonal power.
But he was here. Real. His gaze swept the room, analytical and swift, landing on me huddled on the floor. His expression was one of profound irritation, a man interrupted from more important matters. Yet, when his eyes dropped to my blood-crusted hand, then to the undeniable tear streaks on my face, something flickered in that icy demeanor. Annoyance tempered by… responsibility?
"Are you alright?"
His voice was lower, closer than I'd ever heard it. It wasn't the commanding boom from the ballroom, but a quieter, rougher rumble that vibrated in the small space. It didn't sound like concern for me, Lucy the person. It sounded like concern for a breach of order. A king finding a flaw in his palace's machinery.
I couldn't speak. My mouth was desert-dry. I just stared, my mind a white-noise scream. Why is he here? What does he want? Is this part of their plan?
"I was making rounds," he said, the explanation curt, almost dismissive. He didn't owe me one. "A guard mentioned someone had been sealed in here for a 'lesson.' That is not palace protocol."
Protocol. That's what this was about. Not justice. Not kindness. Order. The great, cold machine of the monarchy had a rule against magical imprisonment of staff, and a cog was out of place. He was here to fix the cog.
He held out his hand. A king's hand. Strong, long-fingered, with the faint silvery scars of old battles across the knuckles. It was a gesture so absurdly out of context I almost laughed. Or screamed. "Come on. Let's get you out of here."
My instincts, honed over five years of survival, shrieked. Don't touch him. Don't get closer. Kings are danger. This whole palace is danger. I scrambled to my feet on my own, my legs protesting, my knees popping. "I… I can get out myself, Your Majesty." The title felt like ash on my tongue.
He dropped his hand, unsurprised by the refusal. But he didn't move to leave. He was a man used to occupying space, and he filled the doorway, a barrier between me and escape. "What's your name?"
A test. A simple, terrifying test. "Lucy. Lucy Hart, Your Majesty. I work for Investigator Webb." The lie of my name, the half-truth of my job. Would he see through it? Could he sense the red threads of my deception, even if he couldn't see them?
"Lucy." He said it like he was filing it away. A data point. "Why did Lady Cross have you locked in here?"
The real answer screamed in my skull. Because I heard her and your right-hand man plotting to drug you, bind you, and steal your kingdom! That answer would get me killed faster than any seal spell. I swallowed, my throat clicking. "I… spilled some wine. She was angry."
I waited for the tell-tale prickle of my own power, the red threads that would betray my half-truth. But nothing came. The lie was too close to the truth I had spilled wine, she was angry. The critical part was just… omitted. My ability was frustratingly literal sometimes.
He watched me, and I felt that gaze like a physical weight. He knew I was holding back. I could see the calculation in his eyes was this servant girl worth the effort of interrogation? Apparently not. He simply sighed, a short, frustrated exhale. "Vivian's temper is legendary. But this is excessive." He glanced toward the hallway, where the distant drums were building to a crescendo. "The final countdown is about to begin. You should be with the other staff if you wish to see it."
I didn't wish it. I wished the Solstice would be swallowed by the earth. But this was my dismissal. My escape. Numbly, I nodded, my eyes fixed on the open door behind him, that beautiful, glorious rectangle of freedom. "Thank you, Your Majesty."
I took a shaky step forward. He moved aside, a mountain conceding a path to an ant.
Relief, sweet and dizzying, flooded me. I was going to walk out. I was going to go home, to my tiny apartment, to my grandmother's worried voice. This nightmare was over.
I passed him, close enough to catch the scent of frost and something darker, like storm-touched pine. One step into the hallway. Two.
The attack didn't come from the front.
It came from the shadows that lived in the hallway, shadows I'd foolishly assumed were empty.