Chapter 2: Fire and Ice - Part Two.

Victor:

My uncle and Auntie Kathrine have asked me to walk with them in the garden, so here I am, obliging their request. The roses are in full bloom this time of the year with red and pink petals opening towards the warm and bright rays of the sun.

I have a feeling this conversation won't go in my favor, but I walk next to them anyway, enjoying my last day of freedom before I am stuck for the fay for a month.

"Don't be an ass to the girl," my uncle says as we keep walking along the gravel path of the rose garden.

"You were impolite to our guest?" Auntie asks dramatically, her blue eyes looking up at me with disapproval while the sun shines along the smoothness of her large gold braids.

"I was not impolite." I glare at auntie. "She was the rude one." I defend myself in front of her. She raised me well, I don't want her disappointed in me. "And uncle, girl?" I turn my attention to him. "She's not a girl, but some sort of wild thing." I add.

"She has been hand picked by me. You will read the report I gave you on her, and you will respect her as your equal. Just because she doesn't kiss your ass, it doesn't make her any less," my uncle tells me, his tone never disrespectful or rude.

I suddenly feel schooled. He is right, but she was rude to me when I showed her to her room. She left me at the door without anything to go greet Alex. That was very disrespectful in my opinion, but I keep those thoughts to myself.

"Uncle, if I commit suicide on this mission, blame yourself," I tell my uncle with a heavy sigh.

"She's one of the good ones, don't forget that." My uncle gives me a confident look.

Not only do I have to spend the next month with her, I now have to read everything my uncle has on her. Wonderful. This just keeps getting better and better. All I need to know is that she is unmannered and a Siberian Northerner. The end.

"Sure, as long as she does her job." I grumble, doing my best to forget how she strolled past me up at the stairs, ignored me, and scowled at me yesterday.

"Victor darling, her father is a good friend of ours. We have kept an eye on her since she was five." Auntie starts, and I know this will be a lecture. "Trust us when we say this – she will do the job right, but lower yourself from the pedestal you put yourself on. You hate the women of the palace because they are fake." Auntie keeps going, her posture like aways, perfect as she walks. I snap my head down at her. I forget how exceptionally observant she is. "She may not be as proper, but she is real." She turns her head to me, locking her eyes with mine.

Real or not, she is annoying and arrogant.

Elizabeth:

King Eliazar is sitting at this throne while me and Victor stand on each side of his, keeping our distance from each other. He gives me an occasional glare, his blue eyes judging me, but I do my best not to scowl at him in the presence of the king.

"The first two nights we are sleeping in the woods, so be prepared for that." Victor says, as if it is something that should scare me.

"I have spent two months sleeping in caves, I think I will manage." I glare at him.

Not that I have enjoyed it, and there were small hotels along the way here, but I thought it would build endurance for the upcoming mission, so I slept in the woods and caves. It was also for the safety of everyone around me – Morana, the woman who claims to be my real mother, has started visiting me in my dreams a month ago. In the process of trying to ger her out, my power gets out of control. I am hopeful, she has got the message that I do not want to speak with her and never bother me again.

The prince looks down at me, sighs with frustration, and then looks up at his uncle to do something about my attitude towards him, but his uncle ignores his childish pleading. Victor is not getting my respect until he stops looking at me like I am stupid. Just because I don't curtsy or wear fancy dresses, it doesn't make me any lesser.

"Wonderful," he mumbles under his breath, and I squint my eyes at him, the desire to wrap my fingers around his pretty neck and squeeze really hard taking over quickly.

The chances of him becoming a popsicle somewhere along the way is increasing with every passing moment, but father has taught me to control my impulses and my mouth by first taking a very slow deep breath, letting it out, focusing on something pleasant, and then speaking or acting, so that is what I do. That helps a little bit, but if he keeps looking at me like I am a nuisance, I will remind him that he looks like a pompous ass.

The wonderful thing about this situation is that he can't do anything about me being a shit to him, he needs me for this to work. I can call him anything I want, but I was raised better than that.

The main reason I am here is because I am the strongest ice fay on the Earth realm. I am also partially a god of death and rebirth, but that is something that only I know. Mara, the goddess of ice, death, and rebirth knows as well. But she is also the one who left me to die alone in the middle of winter when I was just one day old. She called herself my mother when she told me the truth – her truth, but I want nothing of what she has to offer.

Because I control the cold so well, and the egg we are going to retrieve is the one of a fire dragon, it is crucial there is someone like me, who has enough power to hide the heat signature of the egg. They call it an egg, but it is a magical capsule that keeps the child sleeping without aging him until it is time to awaken.

"Lizzy, be nice to him." Eliazar winks at me, and Victor rolls his eyes with a groan of frustration.

"Only if he is nice to me." I cross my arms under my chest.

"He will behave." Eliazar laughs at Victor's twitching jaw.

Victor rubs his temples from his uncle's remarks, but doesn't say anything. Instead, he takes a deep breath in and glares at me again, his blond locks falling out of place from the rubbing. He's kind of cute when he is not being a prick.