She told her advisor, Tero, her story half a day ago about how her father had abused her, how her mother was complicit, how all their advisors seemed to know; it was all true. Every word. But what she didn’t tell Tero was that she would have killed her parents, as well as all their advisors, anyway--her trauma was not the source of her strength. Her strength came from within. She was of frost and ice. Her pain made the royal executions all the more pleasurable to order and watch as it was carried out. She, on the other hand, was something more.

 She knew Tero well. She knew all the cousins well. And all of them connected back to Syrio on the King’s Hoverstone. She knew he was passing notes to the man, describing her mental state. It was bold. But stupid. She kept him around to mislead the crown. The truth was that she’d left many old thoughts and feelings behind as soon as she learned that she could do magic.

 Magic, now there was something Tero would have loved to know a bout. He never would, though. Not until whatever his allegiance was, was known beyond doubt. It was funny, really, the more she thought about it; what would he think, were he to find out he’d been deceived so easily by a young winter queen.

 A queen.

 That was who she was, deep down. She knew it. She believed many of her people knew it, too. But Tero, duplicitous though he could be, at times spoke truth. She would not take the Hoverland with just an army from Frostfight. The hoverstones were too many and too large. She would need help from the Flatlands. But she was so high above the Flatlands as to be almost forgotten by them; perhaps talked about in taverns, men saying, thank Fates I don’t live up there.

 Though a good strategy would dictate and attack from above and below, along with several Houses on her side in-between, the trick was rallying them to service. There was only one way to do this. She would need to show them true power. She would need a dragon.

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 She walked through Castle Frostfight, walls of smooth ice on each side, party translucent. She could see beds within bedchambers, fires within fireplaces; in one room she passed, an old man at a desk, pouring over texts thousands of years old. Theirs was the best library in Hoverland and she welcomed scribes from all over to study and learn.

 But not everything was available to them. She had her own private library. It was locked away behind a solid wall, stone, one of the few that made up the original castle’s architecture. She walked there now.

 There was a torch in a tin sconce stuck out at an odd angle. She glanced over her shoulder. There was no one there; she felt no warmth. It was a secret among royals, she’d learned from her books--Tregar’s lineage somehow sensed flesh and blood, the temperature, the heat. It wasn’t explained. Simply notated.

 She nodded to herself, reached up and flicked the sconce with a blue fingernail. It rang lightly, a solid tone. Then the wall moved, with dust dropping around her, small particles of ice like sparks in torch fire.

 The room beyond was similarly constructed out of stone, which is what hid the library away from the others for so long. She wondered if Tero sought out this library for the sake of his cousins. Well, if so, he would fail. It took a Tregar to open it. It took ice-burn.

 A book lay open across a small desk in the center of the room. She went and sat behind it. Ran a hand over the crinkled parchment page. She didn’t know how old the book was or where it had come from. All she knew was that it was called, A Desire for Dragonfire, and told of the age of dragons, their deeds, how they lived, and where they were once found. She would soon find what she needed to get her egg to hatch.

 She was a patient reader.