"Terrin? Are you still down here?'' Nitiri's voice echoed down the hallway. Terrin groaned inwardly as his body jerked him off the floor.

“Yes, Your Highness, I'm here.”

“Damond! Where are you?” she shouted, obviously annoyed.

A few minutes passed, then Nitiri emerged from the dark tunnel, yawning and scowling. Damond led her in with annoyance mirroring her own.

“I need you to dust the entire castle,” Nitiri said nonchalantly as she handed Terrin a feather duster with a wooden handle.

Kai glared at her as Terrin stiffly shut the cell door behind him. Terrin thought the job was ridiculous and repulsive.

I’m not a maid!

“I am short on loyal staff at the moment, and you have to do everything I say, so you are a very convenient replacement.”

Nitiri’s smug smile irked him. He wished he could scream, “Why should I?” Unfortunately, he had no choice in the matter. His head nodded for him, and his feet marched off to obey her.

This is so surreal. I was kidnapped by an evil sorceress and taken to an ice palace thousands of miles away from home with the threat of death looming above my head, and here I am doing the dusting.

If he could have stomped down the hallway, he would have. He soon discovered the castle was much larger than he had guessed. The spider started him in the servants’ quarters. The first room he walked into was occupied. A chambermaid and the kitchen boy had crept away from work to steal a few intimate moments and decided to use the room assuming no one would disturb them. Normally, if he had walked in on such an awkward scene, he would have apologized and left swiftly. The spider, however, had no problem with embarrassment. To Terrin’s horror, his body walked right in and started dusting, ignoring their flabbergasted cries and hasty dash to cover their undergarments. Terrin had never felt so mortified

The next room he barged into contained a kitchen servant changing out of a dress. To his great relief, she hadn’t gotten all the way out of it. After an hour, he had walked in on a man answering the call of nature, a woman writing a love letter, a suicide attempt, a payoff, and two sleeping maids. Additionally, he somehow picked up a stray kitten, which insisted on meowing at his heels for the rest of his trek through the castle.

Good thing the spider blocks pain, Terrin thought. He had at least ten or eleven objects chucked at him, ranging from a pillow to a chamber pot, since he started the task. Without the spider’s control of his nerves, he would’ve been badly battered. Even though that was a positive aspect, he couldn’t help but think of what other purpose the quality would entail.

An assassin without pain and a dedication to a mission would be an extremely dangerous opponent.

He finally finished the last of the rooms, and his legs led him up the grand staircase to the second floor. There were mostly guest rooms up there—all empty. He didn’t run into any problems, and he started to get bored. Tables, chairs, and beds of every color imaginable matched the grand rugs and dressers in each room. They all blurred together in a dreary chain. He thought they would never end.

At the end of the hall stood a staircase winding upward to one of the castle towers. Terrin’s legs led him into the stairwell and up the circular incline. It started to widen as he went further until it was broad enough for two people to stand side by side. Small windows covered in frost dimly illuminated the steep stairs in front of him. His breath came out in white clouds. The ceiling stopped sloping up and instead flattened out. His body stooped under it and came to a trap door in the ceiling made of sturdy wood. He pushed it back and climbed into a large room. He almost tripped, as a pile of books covered the floor, like they had been cast aside recklessly. The room had no real walls, just large glass panes connected to occasional thick blue columns and flanked by large silk curtains.

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Delicate icy crystals spread across the glass from the pillars and roof. There were six columns around the room, creating a hexagon. Each was carved with swirling indents, starting at the bottom and twisting around the stone until they reached the top.

The ceiling housed a detailed painting of the four winds; each was depicted as one of the four divine creators of Incari. The North Wind was an old man, representing the god of wisdom and knowledge. He looked hard and cold with steely gray eyes and a long pale beard. The East Wind embodied harmony and love. He appeared to be mid-laugh and looked a lot like Prince Kai. The South Wind was adorned in flowers and had long blonde hair and blue eyes. Her arms were open, and life seemed to flow from her.

The goddess of change and chaos. She looks like Snow, he thought sadly.

The last was the West Wind, or the god of conflict, which gave the land of Bastil its name. He was depicted as a dark-haired little boy who resembled Terrin two weeks before. All the winds were blowing over a detailed map of Incari, which covered the entire ceiling. Towns, geographical features, landmarks, ruins, and castles were labeled with remarkable detail.

Terrin resisted the spider’s orders to dust without meaning to. He was fascinated with the painting and probably would’ve stared at it for hours, but the view from the windows drew him away. He walked closer until it felt like the pane was all that was keeping him from a thousand-foot drop. His breath fogged up the cold glass as he viewed the glimmering fields of ice against the uninhabited snow-capped mountains in the farthest reaches of the North. He walked over to the south-facing window to see miles of dark, snow-tipped trees stretching all the way to the distant green mountains bordering Amora and Reagn. To the east, he could see leagues of ocean, flat as a sheet of parchment save for the occasional blip on the surface. The crests of those tiny waves shimmered in the setting sunlight. The spider ordered his limbs to dust, but he didn't want to. Finally, it forced him.

I could look at this view forever, he thought as he turned away.

A huge four-poster bed with blue satin sheets and a feather down blanket sat in the middle of the large room, surrounded by couches and matching chairs. The blankets on the bed were still rumpled from their last use, which was odd, as the beds in the castle were always made from his observations. A small table with an even smaller chair sat close to the west wall with open books strewn about it. It almost looked as if someone was studying. However, the books were covered in a thin layer of dust, like they had been there for a long time. A large wardrobe stood ajar, facing the left side of the bed. A marble statue stood in front of each pillar; Terrin realized they were statues of the kings of old when he dusted them. A large cedar chest sat at the foot of the bed, and a pale blue rug lay on the right side, ready to be stepped on each morning and night. Terrin could immediately tell its worth due to the color and thickness.

His fascination with the view and the painting almost made Terrin miss the odd balcony in between. A ladder built into one of the columns made it accessible. Bookshelves lined its walls and met the ceiling. The entire place was rather eerie. It was like the occupant had suddenly vanished, and not even the maids dared to disturb the remains.

Terrin thought back to something odd Elurrra had told him in the woods on their way to Amora. The silence between them that particular day had bothered him, as she frequently looked lost in thought, and a worried frown almost always accompanied her ponderings. To strike up conversation, he had asked her how Nitiri managed to ensnare her with the spider.

“I hid from her in my wardrobe,” she said. “It was silly to think she would not find me there. I thought the winds would protect me, though.”

He hadn’t understood what she meant and pestered her to explain, but she simply smiled and told him one day she would show him. At the time, he hadn’t had a clue what she was talking about, but now it all made sense.

This is Snow’s room.