Of Ice and Shadow

There was a queen.

Really, there was a little girl, but her role forced her to be queen before child.

Ten was not old enough to bear the weight of such a heavy crown. But bear it she did, and it was rumored to be the reason she was so small. The weight of it had stunted her growth.

Her name was Lina, and when Lina was younger she faintly remembered adoring the crown. Begging her mother to wear it, just for a moment.

Oh, it was beautiful. Silver twined around sapphire and diamonds like a cold, winter sky. The crown, for that reason, was nicknamed the ice crown.

If Lina turned her head the right way, she could see the faint indentation of a careless mistake, a beam of light curving in on itself.

The small dent was a result of a four year old Lina attempting to place the cursed thing on her head. Her thin arms couldn’t bear the weight of it for longer than a second- she was lucky it hadn’t fallen on her toes.

Lina wondered what she had seen in the crown. It could feed a kingdom, but the truth was that objects like that feed only on power. Indeed, the diamonds seemed to dull after Lina took the throne. It was just her superstitions, but that didn’t stop Lina’s mind from conjuring terrible lies.

Eventually, she obtained a weak control of her kingdom, a fragile grasp on this strange new world. She ignored the murmurs of a silly little girl, a small queen with no intellect. Naivety, they decided, would be her downfall.

A king across three rivers and countless forests heard these rumors, so he dragged his son to his carriage and they made the journey to the young queen, Lina. The boy, named once by a dead mother but forgotten since then, was called Grayson after his father, Gray.

Still, the boy knew his name. He kept it close to his chest and waited until the day he knew for sure it would not be taken from him.

When they arrived, with gifts to the palace and Queen Lina, the son of the king, Gray’s son, was struck by how small she was compared to the crown. But no one except for him noticed that- they saw only the diamonds and sapphires sitting on her head.

He noticed, though. He saw her.

That night, Queen Lina sat with her maid, who hummed under her breath. “My lady, have you met the king? He arrived just yesterday.”

Queen Lina never really enjoyed this sort of thing, and her eyes drifted to the side, landing squarely on a mirror two times her size.

She had soft brown eyes, and her hair was like hardened amber on wood. You could catch the brown undertones if you looked closer, but it lay under the fair, lighter waves of color.

”I have not,” Lina finally sighed. “Nor have I met his son.”

“He doesn’t have a son,” the maid said timidly. “At least I don’t remember seeing one.”

“Oh?” Lina’s interest was piqued, and the maid hurriedly quieted.

Lina sighed once more as it became apparent that the maid would not converse, settling in a chair that was much too large for her.

The next day, she found King Gray’s son in her royal gardens.

“There you are. I was beginning to wonder if you were a figment of my imagination.”

”Queen,” he said, recognizing her immediately and blurting the first thing that came to mind.

”Prince,” she replied in equal greeting. Her eyebrow raised.

He laughed and shook his head. “Call me by name. I am just a boy, your majesty.”

”And I am just a girl, your highness.”

That was the last time they ever used titles around each other.

For the first time, the queen had met someone who she could trust. She met someone to confide in, and in return, the boy did the same with her. Perhaps she really was naive, in those moments, but when his hand grazed hers all of her carefully built walls crumbled. She was a pillar of ice and snow, but with him she turned to water.

They grew, and their visits lessened, but the tyrant king kept an eye on his army and came often enough to check on Lina’s. He bid his time, waiting, waiting.

Every time they visited, their affection grew. Eventually, it blossomed into love. A consuming, secret love that was explored in coded letters, for in person they kept up a guise of indifference.

Lina changed to a woman, a respected, sometimes condescended, queen. They still whispered naive, but the whispers were of drunk men with little left. Everyone else held their tongue and their breaths, waiting to see if their queen would rise or fall.

King Gray’s son changed, too. He was older, smarter.

They grew together, one and the same. They told each other most everything, and eventually, everything. One night, the two hidden away in the garden, he let the moonlight loosen his tongue.

”Leon,” King Gray’s son said quietly, testing the name for the first time in many years.

”Leon,” Lina repeated, and it sounded like the name had a home in her, made for her mouth only.

”Say it again,” Leon whispered.

And so she did.

Eventually, King Gray stopped bringing his son to visit. Three more years passed, and all of Queen Lina’s letters to him remained unanswered. Doubts filled her mind and heart every time she put a pen to paper and received no reply. It hurt to question their love, for she knew how real it was. Or she thought she did. Over the years, she grew less sure.

Of course, Leon couldn’t answer her letters. His father had been confiscating his mail, and though King Gray couldn’t read their code, he did not let any letters enter his son’s room.

But eventually Leon learned of his father’s intent- to storm Lina’s kingdom and take the queen’s ice crown and palace for himself. The whispers of drunken fools had reached their kingdom. Naive, King Gray thought. It will be easy.

Leon did the only thing his father had taught him to do. He became a shadow, a forgotten boy once more. And he learned things no one would tell King Gray’s son.

He did not act on any of this information, not the ones on recent rebellions, nor the quelled riots against King Gray… until his father, a pale, old man, turned red with the blood of a murdered king.

Assassinated.

King Gray’s son was forced to take the throne. For a long time, the kingdom was unwelcoming. Then they dimly remembered that yes, King Gray had a son- what did they call him? Gray’s son. They called him Grayson, the kings forgotten son, the king’s shadow. But now he was King Leon, and he was not an apple that had fallen far from the tree but a whole other forest.

The first thing Leon did was get his kingdom together.

The second thing he did was go to Lina’s kingdom.

Lina turned away from him at first, hurt still driving into her mind and soul. Eventually she accepted him, but she didn’t want him near her. She didn’t want to touch him, look at him (But so, so did). And maybe he realized this, for he took a step back when they met face to face.

Still, when he explained his father’s death and the truth she changed.

She understood the weight of a crown.

Leon remained at the palace for a fortnight, and soon a third kingdom came to visit them both, led by the eastern king.

That night, there was an assassination attempt on them both.

That morning, Lina’s ice crown turned into steel. That week, Leon’s forgotten name was written in history books.

That month, they wed, joining their smaller kingdoms into one under the guise of an alliance.

There would have been an alliance anyway, for the two had been madly in love for a long time.

And mad they were.

No longer was Lina called a naive queen. No longer was Leon called the dead king’s shadow.

No longer was the third kingdom a mighty force, but a wasteland of death and destruction.

They once wore crowns of ice and glass and shadow, now forged into steel and fury and love.

They were leaders wrapped up in the deadly fire of a final control, and any kingdom who dared to oppose them would burn under their rule.

They were not of shadows and ice any longer.

They would never be so again.