A Queen for the Frost Giant (Legends of Rahasia Book 0)

Chapter Twenty-One

When we finally reach the end of our descent, Lord Kazmer demands to be let down. Fell kneels as he holds his arm out for Quinn and me to slide down after the young lord.

"Ground! Ground, precious ground." He falls to his hands and knees, pressing his lips to the snow.

Quinn smirks as she walks behind him, her boots crunching into the earth, her footing steady despite our days' worth of travel. "Careful where you kiss, Lord Kazmer. The snow looks a bit yellow there. Or is it beige?"

Leif springs up, immediately spitting over his shoulder. "Bisho'ur."

The jötunn walks a few steps in front of us, which to us, translates to footprints that could fit mortal houses. The sun bounces off the snow and reflects off his skin, revealing the shimmering patterns of ice etched into his armor. The translucence reveals the barest glimpse of the Northern Lights, brightly colored thread weaving like sinews over his veins where the old magic bleeds into the mortal realm.

"We've gone too far north." The giant says, staring up at the sun, then back down at our positioning. "We've lost our way."

I turn to Quinn, and the legionnaire captain looks equally troubled as she strides over to a pine that's bent over from age. She presses her gloved fingers to the bark, stripping off lichen and diamond-like dew, long since frozen solid. "Helvete, the jötunn's right." She turns those iron-colored eyes to me, like the sky when clouds roll in before the storm. A perpetual gathering of thunder and lightning that even the gods would see and weep over. "We must have lost our way when the princess was indisposed." I blush, refusing to look away. I cannot change what I am, but I can change how I react to moments as these. I am not weak. The captain continues, wiping the frost melt from her hands. "But there's a fishing village in the north. I used to patrol when I was younger, before we all got called back to the keep at Ymir. Their specialty is herring, I believe. That and lutfisk. They call the place Knarr, like the first boats that brought them here."

Lord Kazmer moves to stand beside Quinn, brushing shoulders with the captain. We all stare off into the horizon, at the faint outline of wood and iron, of the places where human hands made the barren waste slightly more habitable. 

How did our kingdom grow so far apart? How did the cities along the Borealis forget that we all came from the same blood, the same seas that bore us here to give us this blessing and curse?

Perhaps we were better made for the seas, and we should never have left it at all.

"Come then." Fell kneels once more, and I'm the first to scramble back up his arm. "Leif. Quinn. It's time to pay a visit to the people of Knarr. Remind them who their queen is."

Quinn turns those storm cloud eyes to me, a smirk at the edge of her lips. "Are you queen just yet then?"

I meet her gaze, resting on my other side, my ribs resting against Lord Kazmer's outstretched arm, no longer afraid of my travel companions. Instead, the opposite, just curious to see what's next. "I will be." I reply. "Just wait and see."

***

As we walk towards Knarr, the village of wood and iron and brine, shadowy silhouettes start appearing in the snow. Some of these architectural feats look purposefully abandoned, the wood eaten away by time and cold until they're rotted to near-nothing. Some of the structures are like half-built pillars in the ground, as though thrown here by an angry jötunn and then quickly forgotten. There's a torch in the ground, still burning with a whimper of blue light despite the wind battering snow around it, a child playing at death.