The Sovereign Of Ancient Winters

*EARTH REALM, THE 213TH WANNING*

The snow does not forget.

It holds what falls on it, refuses to let frost bury the evidence, and at the high ravines above Valleria pass, it had been holding its secret for less than an hour before a black crow settled on the rock above the carnage and simply watched.

It did not fly closer. It simply lingered from a safe distance. Whatever had happened here was already finished.

Six hours earlier, in a hall carved from eternal ice that never melted, Lady Ashura Maeve had been mid-council when the doors opened without permission.

"If you do not mind, Strongfoot, you may take your leave at once." Her words came clean and cold, leaving no room to argue with them.

"My Lady, I'm afraid this matter requires your utmost attention."

Talia's voice was final despite the tremor no one else in the hall would have caught.

She held her position at the foot of the ice throne, one knee to the floor, one hand resting on her hilt, eyes fixed on the ground rather than on her Sovereign's face.

The cold radiating up through the stone met the cold already running through her blood, and still she didn't move.

Maeve stopped mid-sentence. The murmurs of her court died with her, all at once, as though someone had simply switched them off.

She turned her stare on her kneeling subject, the way a predator turns toward something it hasn't decided yet whether to bother with.

For anyone to interrupt a Sovereign mid-council was unthinkable. By rights, Talia's head should already have been on a pike, raised high enough for every kingdom on the horizon to read as a warning.

But Talia did not interrupt without cause. Five hundred years of service had taught Maeve that much, and it was the only reason the woman kneeling before her still had a neck to keep her head attached to.

"Leave us." Meave's tone didn't raise too loud, but the command behind them was absolute, and every noble in the hall was gone before the echo finished, none of them foolish enough to look back.

Maeve descended from the throne herself, her scepter striking each frost-worn step, the sound carrying farther than her voice ever needed to.

"Forgive the interruption, my Lady." Talia pleaded, head still lowered. "I shall accept whatever punishment that follows afterwards."

"Rise, Strongfoot." She stopped an arm's length away, close enough that Talia could feel the cold radiating off her like heat off a flame, except in reverse. "Whatever you've brought me, I trust it's worth the liberty you've just taken."

Talia rose quietly.

"It is grim, my Lady. A vampire's corpse, found at the high ravines of Valleria pass." Talia met her eyes and held them. "One of Lord Corvus's own. A noble."

Maeve's grip tightened on the scepter until the metal groaned. "A noble? That is worse than grim, Strongfoot. Are you certain of this claim?"

Talia drew a sealed bronze container from her satchel and held it out without a word. Her hand didn't shake. Her jaw, set tight enough to ache, said everything her hand didn't.

Maeve turned the container over once, unhurried, and broke the seal with care, as if it might bite. The sigil pressed into the wax told her everything before she'd even unrolled the parchment inside:

Lord Corvus Enderlin, Vampire King of the Southern Kingdom.

She read it in silence. Whatever crossed her face, she didn't let it linger long enough to name.

"A trade agreement. Gold, spice, perfume, dye, wild silk and amber, bound from the Southern Kingdom to the Western Empire." Her eyes moved fast, cataloguing. "A truce. A gesture of friendship between Druskvia and Nidavellir."

"My Lady?"

"Now this is beyond grim, Strongfoot." The words came out carved from something colder than her usual cold. "Lord Olav Baldur, that obstinate Dwarf of a king is trouble even among Sovereigns. He had always wanted a reason to march on someone since the day he took that Iron throne. Now he no longer need to invent one. We've handed it to him in a platter of gold."

"The Vampire noble still had the scroll clutched in her hand when we found her." Talia's voice dropped lower. "My Lady, the ravine wasn't a killing. It was a scene of massacre. Whoever did it left nothing behind to trace. No trail. No witness."

"Then perhaps that was the entire point of it." Maeve rolled the scroll shut, her mind already three moves ahead of the conversation. "Someone wants it to look as though we robbed Corvus's shipment ourselves. Our trade routes are the safest in the realm, a road minded by a Sovereign's own word. That makes this a very convenient flaw to find in me, Strongfoot. And a very clean frame, if it holds."

"They may not care whether it holds, my Lady. The other nations already despise us. It would take very little to make the accusation stick regardless of the truth beneath it."

"When was this discovered?"

"The night before." Talia answered. "Before first light touched the snow, the land was already soaked through with blood, body parts found lying meters away from their main body, too mangled to recognize as people anymore. Only the noble with the scroll still had her body intact, like whoever did it left her as a final message. My Lady, it's only a matter of time before Lord Corvus comes to our doorstep demanding answers we don't have."

"I rule the seven kingdoms of this realm, Strongfoot. And I am their presiding Sovereign." Maeve said it as much to steady her own nerves as to remind her handmaiden of it. "It's beneath me to attack my own subordinates, let alone stoop too low to petty theft of gold and minerals. I have no need of either."

A sigh escaped her lips without her meaning to. Talia could read the frustration written in her face, plain as day.

"I know precisely how many enemies curse my name before they sleep and pray for my downfall come morning." Maeve's jaw tightened. "But a frame this precise, this deliberate, that is not the work of nations who merely dislike me. Do we have anything resembling a name?"

"Not yet, my Lady. Only that it wasn't the work of any beast or bloodline we know. No claw, no blade. As if the air itself closed a fist around them."

Something settled cold behind Maeve's eyes, recognition rather than surprise.

"Sorcery," she said, quiet enough that it sounded like she was confirming it to herself rather than to Talia. "That is the only answer that fits what you've described."

She exhaled, long and controlled.

"And this is a spectacularly poor time for it. The Demon-kin are already stirring at the far North, and Sovereign Malaek is doing nothing to discourage them. I do not have room in this season for one more war I didn't choose."

"Shall I begin the investigation myself, my Lady?"

"No."

Maeve was already turning toward the doors at the rear of the hall. "I'll see the scene of massacre myself. Let me check out what or who had the courage to soil the lands of a Sovereign. Has anyone touched it?"

"Only the scroll, my Lady. I took it before anyone else could disturb the site. The ravine remains untouched, awaiting your word."

"Good." She didn't slow her stride. "Whoever did this, ally or enemy, I will have their name before this is finished. I swear to it. And they will regret ever soiling a Sovereign's land." She paused only long enough to add, "Send word to General Indra. The march on Eldora proceeds regardless of what today gives us."

"Yes, my Lady."

"And my messenger falcon?"

"Argus is yet to return from the peaks, my Lady."

"I trust she's in good hands. The sooner it delivers my me