The Genius Mage Was Reincarnated Into A Swordsman Family-Chapter 357: The Queen’s Gaze
My mind wouldn’t settle.
As Kael Stark led me through the Stark district’s crystalline corridors, I kept circling the same thought: What’s happening here? The urgency in that boy’s voice when he interrupted our duel hadn’t been about politics or protocol. It was the sharp, clean fear of someone who’d just received news of a crack in the foundation of their world.
Was it another rift? Like the one I’d just sealed in the valley two days ago? The timing felt too close to be coincidence. Or was this something older, something buried beneath Iskandriel’s glaciers that had nothing to do with the blue tears in reality I’d faced? I had no answers, only the cold certainty that whatever stirred in the Frostfang Peaks had Erion Stark’s son running messages like a soldier in wartime.
I tightened my grip on Greed’s hilt. The sword remained silent, but I felt his awareness humming beneath the surface. He’d sensed it too, the shift in the air when Kael mentioned the Frostfang Peaks. Not panic. Not yet. But the quiet certainty of a storm gathering just beyond the horizon.
"Your dragon will be cared for in the western aerie," Kael said without turning. The boy moved with a stiffness that spoke of forced composure. Fourteen years old, maybe fifteen, but carrying himself like a soldier who’d already seen battles. "Father gave strict orders. No one touches him. Not even the elders who still remember the old songs."
I nodded, though he couldn’t see it. "He won’t cause trouble if no one provokes him."
A flicker of something; amusement? crossed Kael’s face. "After what I just saw in the courtyard? I think ’provoking’ him would be the last thing anyone in Iskandriel considers doing." He hesitated at an archway carved with eight interlocking rings, then added quietly, "Besides... the elders say the northern wastes still echo with wingbeats sometimes. They claim the ice keeps secrets even from us." He caught himself immediately, jaw tightening. "Forget I said that. Father would have my hide if he knew I was gossiping with guests."
Then he was gone, boots clicking against singing ice as he disappeared down a side passage.
Two figures emerged from the archway’s shadows. Tall, clad in armor forged from pale blue ice that seemed to drink the light around it. Neither spoke. One gestured for me to follow; the other fell in behind me, a silent sentinel ensuring I didn’t wander.
We walked in silence through corridors that defied architecture. Walls weren’t static: they flowed like slow rivers, reshaping themselves as we passed. Bridges of solidified light spanned chasms where frozen waterfalls hung motionless in mid-cascade. Iskandriel wasn’t built. It was grown, coaxed from glacier and starlight by hands that understood ice as others understood stone.
After ten minutes of winding passages, we reached a circular chamber dominated by a ring of standing stones. Between them, air shimmered like heat haze over desert sand, but cold. Bitterly, impossibly cold. Frost feathered the stones’ edges despite no visible source of chill.
"A warp gate," I murmured.
The lead guard finally spoke, his voice muffled by his helmet. "It will take you to the palace proper. Step through when the pattern stabilizes. Do not hesitate. Do not look back."
I studied the shimmering air. No runes. No visible mechanics. Just pure, refined ice magic operating on principles Tomas Veil’s scholarly life had only theorized about. Whoever designed this hadn’t just mastered cold, they’d convinced reality itself to bend around their will.
The shimmer resolved into a spiral pattern of interlocking hexagons. I stepped forward without hesitation.
Cold seized me, not the bite of winter wind, but the absolute zero between stars. For one heartbeat, I existed nowhere. Then my boots met solid ice again, and the world snapped back into focus.
I stood in a chamber so vast its ceiling vanished into mist. Pillars of glacier-blue crystal rose like ancient trees, their surfaces alive with slow-moving light. At the room’s center, on a dais of seamless ice, sat the Ice Queen.
She was more beautiful than the rumors suggested. Early forties in appearance, though age meant little to rulers of her caliber. Hair the color of fresh snow fell to her waist, framing a face of sharp, elegant angles. Her eyes, ruby red, burning with quiet intensity, held the same glacial calm I’d seen in Erion Stark, but deeper. Weary. As if she’d been carrying the weight of this city on her shoulders for longer than seemed possible.
And she looked hauntingly familiar.
Helene.
The resemblance struck me like a physical blow. The curve of her jaw, the proud set of her shoulders, even the way she held her chin, it was all there, refined by years of rule. Helene La Mer, the white-haired girl with ruby eyes who’d stood in my grandfather’s annex mansion two years ago, declaring she’d been sent to evaluate me as a potential husband... she was this queen’s daughter. No wonder Helene had carried herself with that unshakable certainty. She’d been raised to rule cities carved from glaciers.
The Queen studied me in return, her gaze missing nothing: the white hair that marked me as changed from the silver-haired prodigy in imperial portraits, the obsidian sword in my grip, the faint tension in my shoulders from my clash with Erion. She saw the man I’d become, not the legend I was supposed to be.
"Klaus Lionhart," she said. Her voice was softer than I expected, not a whisper, but the quiet certainty of snow settling on deep ice. "Grandson of Roman. Shatterer of the Mythril Crystal. Rider of the last Night Dragon."
I inclined my head. "Your Majesty."
A flicker of something, not quite a smile, touched her lips. "You wonder why I haven’t asked about your mission. Why I haven’t demanded to know why the Lionhart heir rides into our city unannounced after dark." She leaned forward slightly, the light within her throne catching the frost-rimed edges of her gown. "The answer is simple. Tonight is not a night for politics."
She gestured toward a doorway behind her throne. Two new guards, these wearing armor etched with constellations, stepped forward.
"You will rest in the Guest Spire," the Queen continued. "Meals will be brought to you. Your needs will be met. But you will not wander the palace... Not tonight." Her ruby eyes held mine, and in their depths I saw not hostility, but a warning. "Iskandriel keeps its own counsel, Klaus Lionhart. Some storms must be weathered alone before outsiders can be told their name."
The guards gestured for me to follow. I bowed once, respectful, not subservient, and turned toward the doorway.
"Klaus," the Queen said as I reached the threshold.
I paused, glancing back.
Her expression had shifted. The regal mask remained, but beneath it, something raw showed through, just for a moment. "My daughter Helene spoke of you once. She said you carried storms in your eyes even then." A beat of silence. "Rest well. We will speak properly at dawn."
The guards led me away without another word. Through winding passages of living ice, up spiraling staircases that seemed to grow beneath my feet, until we reached a chamber carved into the palace’s eastern spire. A single window looked out over the darkened city, its eight districts now mostly extinguished except for the Stark quarter where torches still moved with urgent purpose.
The guards withdrew, sealing the door behind them with a soft click that resonated through the ice.
I sat on the edge of the frost-carved bed, Greed resting across my knees. Outside, Iskandriel slept beneath a sky where the Harbinger Star burned just a little too bright.
Kael’s careless words circled in my mind: The northern wastes still echo with wingbeats. Dragons weren’t extinct here. They’d simply retreated to places too cold, too remote for humans to follow. Another secret this city buried beneath its glaciers.
I flexed my fingers, remembering the impact of Erion’s blade against Greed. He’d held back, of that I was certain. But even restrained, his strength had been unlike anything I’d faced since Sabrina Petrova. And he’d called me "the sword that cuts fate." Not a title I’d earned. A description of what I was.
What was happening in the Frostfang Peaks?
And why did I feel, deep in my bones, that whatever storm was gathering had been waiting for me to arrive?
