Chapter Twenty-Six
The Measure of a Princess
Three weeks later…
With our usual posse of Frey’s men, Tyr galloped through Snowdon as I sat on the steed held tight to my husband’s front, watched the city go by and realized I was wrong.
Bellebryn was not the most beautiful place I’d ever seen.
Snowdon was.
Snowdon, the capital of Lunwyn and where my mother and father lived, was a city like Sudvic, huge and sprawling. But it was not skirting a bay and nestled in hills, it spread across a valley and up the sides of white, snowy mountains. Its tall, densely built buildings were made of white stone capped with snow covered roofs dripping sparkling icicles, their doors painted in dove grays, creams or the lightest blues or lilacs. Its winding roads were cobbled in creamy stones that, like Sudvic, had been cleared of snow. As we rode through the city, we passed many snow-blanketed parks from large and rambling, to small and square in which there were twinkling fountains, white monuments, grand cream-colored statues of the gods, dragons or past kings, queens, Drakkars or Freys and in one I saw an iced over pond where people were skating.
Frey told me (and I noted he was right as we rode over four bridges) there were three rivers snaking through the city. And as we rode over them or beside them I saw their water was glistening and clear, their banks shimmering with ice, their rock beds glittering as if covered in fairy dust. Over these rivers were arched, ornate, cream-colored bridges with tall white-painted streetlamps rising from the balustrades. One river was much larger than the other two and flowed from a valley between two mountains fed from, Frey also told me, the Winter Sea.
Unlike Sudvic, which seemed working class from what I had seen, and Fyngaard, which was entirely cosmopolitan, Snowdon had working class areas and the pubs, shops and businesses that tended to those classes as well as posh areas with the cafés, restaurants and shops that catered to the more affluent. You could easily assess the status of those who lived in the dwellings in the different areas, the tall, narrow buildings that were likely apartments or row houses of the lower classes and then, as we rode from the outskirts to the more elite inner city, the stately, extensive homes and even mansions with the crystalline frost on their windows and window boxes filled with carefully tended miniature evergreens.
And best of all, built into the side of the mountain and overlooking the entirety of the city was Rimée Keep, a frost-colored castle that somehow shimmered in the sun. It had an abundance of conical roofs that had long, thin, red and gold diamond-patterned pennants drifting across the sky attached to short flagpoles. These were over circular turrets of which there was also an abundance. The façade had stone-balustrade balconies and blinking, diamond-paned windows with shutters painted a gray so light it was almost indecipherable from white. The front of the Keep was landscaped with tall white-painted lanterns and taller, lush, long-needled fir trees. Leading up to what had to be three-story, arched, double doors was a sweeping staircase that looked to be carved from ice and up both sides were green, tapered miniature pine trees. And at the front of it all, even from far away I could see the massive, twinkling, five-tiered fountain with flowing, crystal clear waters.
The whole city with its white and cream stone, muted colors and evergreens all coated with glimmering snow and dripping with icicles looked like it had sprung up magically from the snow.
It was bloody fantastic.
We made it to the Keep (me, with my lips parted in shock at its beauty, Frey, probably not noticing it) and Frey led Tyr around the fountain as his men on their horses positioned themselves around the drive. It was then I stopped looking at the Keep and instead saw Mother and Father emerging from the double doors followed by my girls.
My heart squeezed and my mouth smiled huge.
Frey stopped Tyr and dismounted. Reaching up to grab hold of my waist, he pulled me down and the minute my feet touched the ground I dashed up the icy steps which were not, by the way, ice, I just didn’t know what they were.
Two steps down from my parents, I dropped into a full on curtsy and waited to hear my father mutter, “Rise, daughter,” then I shot to my feet, ran up the last two steps and threw my arms around him.
On impact, he rocked back on a foot and I knew he was surprised because he hesitated before his arms closed around me. But when they did, they did it tight.
“Missed you,” I whispered into his neck, holding on just as tight.
“And I you, my Finnie,” he whispered back on a light squeeze.
Then, still whispering, I told him, “I got a bulls-eye.”
His body stilled for a moment then he pulled back slightly, I did too and I looked up in his surprised but delighted eyes and felt my belly warm.