The Kingdom Under The Ice

The river cracked open beneath my feet, as if it recognized its queen returning.

I should have fallen through. The ice was thin, black in the moonlight, already spiderwebbed from the power rolling off my mark. Kael shouted my name and grabbed for my hand, but his fingers passed right through light.

Because the ice wasn't breaking. It was opening.

Like a door.

A perfect, glowing circle spread out from where my bare feet stood, melting without heat, revealing not dark water underneath, but light. Bright, silver-blue light, pouring up from below like a second moon had been buried in the riverbed.

"What -" I started, but Lyra cut me off, her voice shaking for the first time since she woke.

_Home. Oh, Goddess, Stella, we are home._

Kael fell to his knees at the edge of the circle, his head bowed so low his forehead touched the snow. The six guard wolves above on the bank did the same, whining high and low.

"My Queen," Kael whispered, and this time he wasn't talking to me. He was talking to the light.

The light rose. It wrapped around my ankles, warm as bath water, and pulled. Not hard. Like a hand inviting me down.

I looked at Kael. "What is this?"

"The Veil was not just a wall," he said, his voice choked. "It was a lid. Your mother sealed the entire White Kingdom under the river to hide it from Magnus. She put herself as the lock."

My mother.

Elara.

The fang necklace around my neck burned cold against my skin.

I stepped down.

The moment my foot passed through the circle, the river disappeared.

I was not falling. I was standing on air, then on light, then on a floor made of what looked like solid moonlight. Above me, the circle of ice sealed shut with a soft _thunk_, cutting off the night sky, cutting off Kael. I was alone.

No. Not alone.

I was in a city.

A city made of ice and light and bone.

It stretched in every direction, bigger than any pack territory I had ever seen. Towers of clear ice spiraled up into darkness, connected by bridges of frozen silver. There were houses, but no doors. There were streets, but no footprints. Everything was lit from within by those same blue flowers I had seen on the path, but here they were as big as trees.

And it was silent. So silent I could hear my own heartbeat.

"Lyra?" I whispered, and my voice echoed a hundred times.

_They are all sleeping,_ Lyra answered, and she sounded like she was crying. _After the massacre. Elara put them to sleep to save them. The whole kingdom._

Massacre. The word my adopted mother used to scare me as a pup. _The night the White Wolves were hunted._

I walked forward. My bare feet made no sound on the light floor. As I passed, the blue flower-trees turned their heads toward me, blooming brighter.

In the center of the city, on a raised platform of ice, was a throne.

It was not made of gold or stone. It was made of interwoven antlers and bones - wolf bones, huge, ancient. And on it, sat a woman.

My breath stopped.

She looked exactly like me. But older. Maybe thirty-five. Her hair was pure white, long enough to pool around the throne and down the steps. Her skin was as pale as snow. Her eyes were closed. Her hands rested on the arms of the throne, and in her hands, she held two things: in her left, a broken crown of ice. In her right, a baby blanket, white fur, stained brown with old blood.

Ice covered her. Not like frost. Like she had been encased, deliberately, in a clear coffin of ice that preserved her perfectly.

Elara.

My real mother.

I ran. I didn't know when I started running, but suddenly I was at the steps of the throne, my hands on the ice that covered her knees, shaking her.

"Mother?" My voice cracked like a child's. "Mother?"

For twenty-one years I had called another woman Mother. For twenty-one years I had thought I was wolfless, unwanted. And here was the woman who had bled to give me a wolf that could shake mountains, frozen like a statue to keep a kingdom alive.

The ice under my hands began to melt. The mark on my shoulder flared, and the fang necklace pulsed in time with my heart.

_Wake her,_ Lyra commanded, but gently. _We are the only ones who can. White calls to White._

I placed both palms on the ice over her heart and closed my eyes.

"I don't know how," I sobbed. "Lyra, I don't know how -"

_Say her name. Say your name. Remember._

I pressed my forehead to the ice. It was so cold it burned.

"Elara White," I whispered. "My name is Stella White. Your daughter. Your blood. Your Queen has come home. Wake up."

Nothing.

Then -

A crack.

A single, hairline crack ran from under my left hand, up across her chest, across her throat, across her beautiful, frozen face.

Then another. And another.

The ice exploded outward, not with force, but with light. I was thrown back down the steps, shielding my eyes.

When the light faded, the woman on the throne gasped.

A real, ragged, human gasp, as if she had been holding her breath for twenty-one years.

Her silver eyes - my silver eyes - snapped open.

She looked straight at me, lying in a heap at the foot of her throne, wearing only Kael's oversized coat, hair half black half silver, mark glowing.

And she said, in a voice that was exactly like mine but layered with power that made the entire city of light tremble:

"Stella? My little star? You took your time."

Above us, through the ice roof, I heard Kael howl. Not a wolf howl. A man's broken sob of relief.

Elara was alive.

And she was looking at me not with motherly love, but with terror.

"Listen to me quickly," she said, grabbing my wrists, her nails suddenly claws, her grip iron. "Before it wakes up. You should not have come back. The thing that killed me - Magnus didn't kill me, Stella. He trapped me here to keep it asleep. And now you have woken us both."

Behind her throne, in the shadows of the ice palace, something huge opened two eyes the color of blood.

And smiled with my father's face.