Chapter 11: The Frozen Trophy
The hunters found him just after first light.
They kicked open the hide door, letting in a blade of grey dawn that cut across the frozen dirt floor. Leonid didn’t move. He was curled on his side in the nest of furs, knees drawn up, one arm flung out. His eyes were half-open, the dark brown dulled to the color of old mud, fixed on nothing. His lips were a deep, unnatural blue.
“Told you,” one hunter grunted, his breath smoking in the hut’s cramped air. He was a burly man with a broken nose. “Bleed out or freeze. Saves us the trouble.”
The other, younger, with a nervous twitch in his jaw, stepped closer. He nudged Leonid’s shoulder with his boot. The body shifted stiffly, a single solid piece. “Damn. He’s hard as a timber.”
“Get his feet.”
They grabbed him by the ankles. His head lolled back, throat a ruin of dark, frozen blood and soiled bandages. They dragged him out of the hut, his body carving a rough trough through the frost. It was not a dignified exit. The back of his head bumped over roots and ice. They loaded him onto a wooden sledge used for hauling game, tossing his stiff limbs into place with casual efficiency. He landed with a heavy thud, like a side of meat.
Broken-nose pulled a coarse wool blanket from his pack and threw it over the corpse. It was for practicality, not respect—to keep the snow off during the haul back. “King’ll want to see this,” he said, tying the rope harness to his waist.
The younger one glanced back at the hut. “Should we burn it?”
“Why? Nothing in there but piss and cold. Let’s move.”
They began the long trek back to the palace, the sledge runners hissing over the snow. The forest woke around them, birds calling in the pines, but the men were silent. The weight behind them was just another job.
By noon, Leonid Manoban was laid out on the flagstones of the Great Hall.
A pool of meltwater slowly expanded around him, darkening the grey stone. His clothes were stiff with frost and blood. The court physician, a thin man with ink-stained fingers, had made a cursory examination, peeling back an eyelid, pressing a brass disc to the blue lips. He stepped back, bowing to the dais. “He is gone, Your Majesty. Hypothermia and blood loss. Probably unconscious before the cold took him.”
King Kai stood from his throne. He descended the steps slowly, his heavy fur-trimmed robe brushing the stone. He circled the body, his boots avoiding the water. His expression was one of mild, satisfied interest.
“The runaway slave,” he said, his voice echoing in the vaulted hall. A handful of courtiers lingered near the pillars, watching. “The one with the southern pride.”
He stopped at Leonid’s head. With the toe of his boot, he nudged the chin, turning the face upward. The pale skin was marbled with grey, the prominent veins on the temples like dark river maps on stone. The ethereal beauty was still there, but frozen into a grotesque mask.
“Such a waste of good breeding stock,” Kai mused. He looked toward the physician. “The wounds from the yard?”
“The thigh is deep, but clotted. The neck… that was the grievous one. He reopened it in his flight.”
Kai’s smile was thin. “My son’s handiwork. A lesson learned too late.” He straightened, addressing the guards by the door. “Strip him.”
There was a beat of silence. The physician blinked. “Your Majesty?”
“You heard me. Take every stitch off him. Then prop him up on the queen’s throne.” He glanced at the smaller, ornate silver chair beside his own massive one. “I want the court to see what becomes of disobedience. I want them to see the tools we break.”
The guards moved forward. They used knives to cut away the frozen fabric, the linen and wool peeling off in stiff sheets. They were not gentle. The body was pale and muscular, the defined physique now just a cold sculpture. They handled him like a mannequin, heaving him up onto the dais, bending his stiff limbs to sit him in the silver throne. His head slumped to the side, his dark curls damp against the polished metal. One arm rested on the chair’s arm, the hand curled into a loose, lifeless fist.
It was a obscene parody of rest. A courtier near the back turned away, pressing a hand to her mouth.
“Better,” Kai said, returning to his own throne. He sat, lounging back, and surveyed the hall. “Now. Send for the queen. And my sons. Let them pay their respects.”
Jennie entered the hall from a side passage, Jisoo a half-step behind her. She had known something was wrong the moment the summons came—not to her chambers, but to the formal hall in the middle of the day. The cloying, floral scent of her suppressants wafted around her, a perfumed wall.
Then she saw.
She stopped dead. Her heart, for one impossible second, seemed to freeze solid in her chest. The air left her lungs in a soundless rush.
Leonid was posed on her throne. Naked. Pale as the winter moon. His body was a masterpiece of death, every cut, every bruise, the brutal gash at his throat on full display. The meltwater from his hair dripped slowly onto the shoulder of her chair.
A high, thin ringing started in her ears. She felt Jisoo’s fingers brush her elbow, a fleeting touch of warning.
“Ah, my queen,” Kai’s voice boomed, too loud, too cheerful. “Come. See the end of your pet’s folly.”
She forced her feet to move. One step. Then another. The click of her heels on the stone was the only sound. She walked toward the dais, her eyes locked on Leonid’s face. She searched for any sign of breath, any flicker in those dull eyes. There was nothing. Only the profound, absolute stillness of extinguished things.
She reached the foot of the dais. The smell of blood and wet stone and cold flesh cut through her perfume.
“A fitting display, don’t you think?” Kai said, leaning toward her. “A reminder to all of the order of things.”
Jennie’s throat worked. She swallowed acid. “You had him stripped.” Her voice was a ghost of itself.
“Of course. Let them see the animal, not the trappings. It clarifies the mind.”
From the main doors, Prince Taehyung sauntered in, his brother Minho trailing with a less certain step. Taehyung’s sharp eyes took in the scene, a smirk tugging at his lips. He bowed to his father, ignoring his mother completely.
“The runaway is caught, I see,” Taehyung said, climbing the dais. He stood before Leonid’s corpse, looking down at it with clinical disdain. “I told you he wouldn’t make the river. Southerners are weak to true cold.”
He reached out and flicked Leonid’s limp, curled finger with his own. “Stiff.”
“Taehyung,” Jennie whispered. It was barely audible.
He glanced at her, his dark eyes bored. “What, mother? He was a slave. He disobeyed. This is what happens.” He turned back to his father. “Should have let me kill him cleanly in the yard. Would have been more sport.”
Kai chuckled. “Patience, son. This way, the lesson lasts.”
The king’s gaze returned to Jennie. It hardened. “You will sit.”
She looked at him, uncomprehending.
“You will sit on your throne,” he repeated, each word a dropped stone. “The feast tonight will proceed. You will sit beside him. You will eat, you will drink, you will converse with our guests. You will show the court that the crown is unmoved by the loss of a tool. That we are not sentimental.”
The horror of it unspooled inside her, cold and vast. She looked at her silver chair, at the dead man propped in it. She would have to climb the dais, squeeze into the space beside that cold flesh, feel its presence against her arm for hours.
“Kai…” she began, a plea she hated herself for making.
“Do not,” he cut in, his voice dropping to a dangerous, intimate register only she could hear. “You let this creature into your bed. You allowed his scent to whisper in this court. His defiance is your shame. You will wear it tonight. You will own it. Or I will have him moved to your chambers instead, and you can keep him as a companion there.”
The threat was unmistakable. A corpse in her private rooms, a perpetual, rotting guest.
Jennie’s jaw clenched. The muscles in her neck stood out like cords. She felt the eyes of her sons, the courtiers, the guards. She was a queen in a cage of her own making, every bar forged by her choices, her needs, her whispered, secret love.
She lifted the skirts of her gown. She climbed the three steps to the dais.
The space on the throne was narrow. She had to turn sideways to sit, her hip pressing against Leonid’s icy thigh. The cold leached through her heavy layers instantly, a shock that made her breath catch. She arranged herself, back straight, facing forward. She did not look at him.
But she felt him. The solid, terrible weight of his shoulder against hers. The drip, drip, drip of water from his hair onto the back of her gown. The scent of the forest and his blood, faint beneath her suppressants, a ghost at the edge of her perception.
Kai smiled, a true smile of triumph. “Good. See? Order is restored.”
He gestured, and servants began scurrying to prepare the hall for the evening’s feast. Tables were dragged in. Tapestries adjusted. The courtiers drifted away, their whispers a hissing undertone.
Jennie sat. She stared at the far wall, at a tapestry depicting some long-ago battle. She held herself so still she might have been frozen too. Inside, behind the wall of perfume and regal poise, a scream was building, a raw, silent thing that scrabbled at the base of her skull.
The sun moved across the high windows. The pool of meltwater on the floor finally stopped growing. The feast was hours away.
And she remained, enthroned with her dead love, a monument to the king’s absolute, chilling power.