Elodie was thankful for the dense fur cloak wrapped around her shoulders. It warmed her and gave her a place to hide while she collected her thoughts. She sat on a wide, wooden bench with her knees up to her chest. The cloak weighed on her shoulders and spilled over the sides, pooling on the ground in little mounds. Her chilled toes curled on the edge of the bench clung tight to the worn wood beneath them. Her gaze lingered on the gray stone walls and hay-strewn floors before glancing out of the room's singular window, where withered leaves speckled the frame.

Beyond the little weeds, she could see the expanse of the Audric castle, with multilayered, brown roofs covered in blankets of winter snow. Buildings in the Audric Valley were stacked on top of one another like little sparrows huddled in a nest for warmth between two twisting mountain passes. Holding the nest was the glen, and past that, the moors of Orsin, all locked in a deep slumber for winter.

The noise of the heavy wooden door dragging along the dirt startled her, and she turned towards the sound with wide eyes. When Lord Emerys and Lord Alden entered, she stumbled onto her aching feet and dipped into a practiced bow. She kept one fist tightly curled around the cloak to keep it affixed over her shivering body while her other hand rested gently behind her thigh.

"That's quite alright," Emerys reassured her, holding up one of his hands. He still wore his riding gloves, and though he had removed his cloak, he bore the prince's brass wolf on his chest. "You're still recovering. Please, sit." Emerys had kind, cerulean eyes that suited him well as the warden commander and the prince's personal guard.

They were not at all like the shrewd, maroon eyes of Alden beside him, who was the prince's minister and bookkeeper. Where Emerys' hair was short and tousled, Alden's wine-colored hair was neat and pulled back with an elaborate braid following the crown of his hair. The minister's astute aura followed him as he paced to stand across from Elodie. "Sit," was all he offered in agreement.

Elodie slunk back to the bench. The room was a coiled snake, squeezing and choking all three of them in its tight grip. The smell of the stable proper couldn't quite reach this room, but little wisps of the acrid scent still tickled her nose as they spoke. Hardly a place for a lady and lords.

Alden pulled a small notepad from his pocket, then looked around the space with the confusion of a lost child. Emerys smiled and offered a pen from within his topcoat. "You're always losing your pens." Alden took the pen with a frown and dark expression. Emerys turned back to Elodie. "Ah ... do you know who you are? Where you are?"

"My name is Lady Elodie Auclair." Her voice was a little hoarse from the cold and sagged from exhaustion, but it had a pleasant calmness to it. Her parents praised her delicate features, but she looked disagreeable here in this space as she tried to keep her dignity intact in front of two of the prince's emissaries. Blood still pasted to her skin like paint, and there was a terrible, lanky quality to the waterfalls of hair that tumbled down her sides and mixed with the brown furs of the cloak.

Even so, she held herself with some pride because although she had been a largely unnoticed wallflower noble, she was still, in fact, and despite what anyone else would tell you, nobility. Her eyes flashed as she said, "And I am in a stable room in the Audric castle."

"And are you ... feeling ... okay?"

Alden's mouth twitched in agitation, and he suggested, "Tell us what happened, Lady Elodie."

Elodie folded her fingers underneath the cloak and looked at them agape. Knowing that the interrogation was coming, she had prepared small responses in her head, but when presented with two esteemed interrogators, her mind went blank with a little pop! sound. It wasn't even fair to blame it on these two being high-titled. Elodie had always been terrible at making conversation. Polite but rarely personable. Where others could spring forth words without hesitation or fear, Elodie second and third and sometimes even fourth guessed herself.

"I'm ... trying to remember it. When I try to picture this morning, it's like ..." She looked towards the window and dreamily said, "Snow." Emerys looked at her patiently. Alden, like death. "It feels like it's buried by something cold and blank."

"Nothing?" Emerys prodded.

Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

Elodie pulled the cloak a little tighter. The air was silent, which let the feelings of frustration, worry, and sympathy fester in the spaces between their words. "Not nothing." Both men leaned forward just an inch. "I started my day at our estate ... I remember leaving, walking through ice. But it felt like I was ... warm. Like I'd just had a long conversation by the fire ..." Her hands sunk to her stomach and picked at the white fabric of her dress. "Eating... I thought I could be full if I could just sink my hands into that poor animal. I think I wanted my hands to stretch and twist, to have tools to ...b-bite it." The dignity in her voice diminished, quieted to a near-whisper, more like she was talking to herself than anyone else in the room. "But how I got there or .... why ..."

Both men were silent; only Alden scratched a pen across his paper. Then he said, "Are you hungry now?"

"No." Small fractals of ice raced up her fingernails along her arms. She was again grateful for the obfuscating cloak, but she could feel the lines moving against her skin, fracturing and seeping upwards. Little leylines that froze and stung. The prince's two custodians looked pensive but furrowed their brows in curiosity. That ... surprised her. Anger, judgment- those emotions she expected. This inspection she had not. "What? What is it?"

"Your eyes..." Emerys trailed off as he stepped back, his wrist limply resting on one of two swords sheathed at his side.

Alden ordered her to "Calm down." His expression was intense, eyes deepening somehow, filled with little lances of stars as they bore into her. "And tell us how long you've known you were an orator."

Her mind went blank. Her jaw opened to retort, to say something wry, but her mouth felt dry and empty. As she gaped, the little fractals of ice moved like lightning. They raced up her neck and traced along her jawline. Pinpricks sparked on her cheeks. She jerked from the sudden sensation, squeaking in harmony with the wooden bench that got pushed back into the wall. The fur cloak flared open with an invisible wind, allowing everyone present to see that as soon as the leylines of magic connected with the bottom lids of her eyes, they faded, ebbing and melting into little drops of water that dripped off her chin onto the dirt below. Then, all that was left as a reminder was the slight sting from the cold winter air on her damp skin.

A calm voice inside said I can protect you. Encased in ice, no harm will come to you.

Alden gazed at her with an expression that read, I won't repeat myself. Words burbled out of Elodie. "I- I don't know what's happening any more than you do." Denial washed over her, and a geyser of anger followed. Red, sticky feelings bloomed in her chest, and her thin lips wavered. "That's not possible."

"It's improbable but not impossible," Alden corrected.

Emerys tried to massage his counterpart's message, "There have always been nine orators, but ... there are no rules saying there can't be a new one. Even if it's never happened before," Emerys lifted his hand off his sheathed dominant sword hilt and stepped towards Elodie, willing the earth to settle beneath her feet again. "It sounds like this is as much news to you as it is to us."

Elodie nodded weakly. Now, the heat from her anger simmered into her cheeks as embarrassment.

Alden curtly asked, "What we are both asking- for the safety of the Audric family and the valley- is what are you going to do with this power, Lady Elodie?" Both red and blue eyes watched her, burning with a guarded curiosity like tiny starlights eclipsed by a dark cloud. "An orator without oversight is at best an unknown quality and at worst danger to the crown."

She tried to move her mouth and lips to say something in return, but nothing came out. For nearly two decades, she had viewed herself as utterly unworthy of mention. Power? What kind of joke was that?

Emerys sighed and kicked a boot in the dirt, knocking some slight bits of ice off of his heel. "It's a lot to ask anyone that, Alden." The starlight still glinted in his eyes, but the kindness returned in his voice and his smile. "Elodie isn't on trial- and you promised you'd be on your best behavior."

Now, it was Alden's turn for a light dusting of pink on his face. Perhaps that was another reason Emerys was the castle's warden-commander; to her knowledge, he was the only person alive to tame Alden's legendary impatience.

Satisfied with that, the blue-haired warden commander's gaze softened further. "I apologize on behalf of the crown for the behavior my companion and I have shown to a noble lady such as yourself. We're insistent because we must tell Prince Braum, and he will expect every detail." The inevitability in his voice was firm. "But I'd prefer you help us do so. I don't think you're a threat, at least not intentionally, Lady Elodie. I'd like to give you time to gather yourself and your thoughts. Is that what you'd like?"

He pressed the tips of his fingers together, and Elodie felt like she was being rolled around in the palm of his hand. His radiating kindness combined with his iron firmness made him like a chess player navigating moves four steps in advance. She supposed that was why people in the bear's court called him the Iron Warden.

Elodie pulled the cloak back over herself. "Yes, thank you, Lord Emerys. I ..." Her voice came out muffled as she pulled the cloak nearly over her cheeks to hide them. "I'd like to be cooperative."

Checkmate. Alden pointed with his pen at her. "If you can reproduce even that small oration- preferably a small oration, to show him, that would be ideal."

"Ah, good point!" Emerys perked up, losing every ounce of his seriousness with a fox-like expression. "Prince Braum will believe us, of course, but seeing saves a lot of explanation."

Exhaustion overcame her at the thought of trying to recreate the effect. Her expression was so pitiful and read so clearly that both men put a hand to their faces as though they could hide behind it.

Emerys cleared his throat and said, "Thank you for your cooperation."