One True Queen: A Wings of Fire fanfiction

53.

content warning: snowfox. icewings in general. a mental breakdown. polar is literally self-destructing. fairly non-graphic descriptions of burns, a bunch of people get electrocuted, violence in general. think "shadowhunter in waves of ice"

Polar

They're holding a memorial, in the sacred grounds below Mount Khione. For the thousands that died in an attack on one of the northern villages.

If I died, I wouldn't want to be mourned by strangers, somewhere I'd never even seen. I guess that won't be a problem for me—I don't think any more than a handful of dragons would care to come to my funeral.

I wonder how Mother feels about it. Of course, she'll say she's distraught. But I've never once seen her cry. Mother's never sad; only different shades of angry. I'm not sure if she's even capable of mourning, or if there's just one more weak, soft thing she carved away over the years. 

Would she be sad if they were mourning me?

Would she even stop to think about it, for so much as a moment?

I've heard that losing a dragonet is the worst kind of grief, a suffering so unimaginable it shatters you entirely. Like my great-aunt, Diamond; who was never the same since her son left.

But I can almost imagine my mother giving it maybe a moment's pause, and then going right back to fighting for the tribe. Doing her part. A perfect IceWing.

I don't know why that thought makes me feel so angry.

Of course she'd be devastated. She's your mother—she loves you, I remind myself. What's gotten into you, Polar?

I watch as the wind picks up, snow falling harder and harder, despite my best efforts to calm myself. It piles up on my horns, burying Prince Arctic's desk in heaps of snowdrift.

She didn't even ask me to stand beside her. The prince! Her son! Her flesh and blood, her favourite dragon in the world! Eclipse doesn't even count as royalty! She didn't have to go through any of the rites of passage or the rituals, she's never climbed Mount Khione or hunted down the Wolf of Kings. But she gets all the glory!

Because she's evil, just like her father, I remind myself. Anyone, even a dragon as formidable as Mother could fall for her manipulation, so kind she really seems genuine. I almost did.

My jaw hurts from grinding my teeth together. A bad habit. I try to relax my posture, perched on my shelf of ice, but the snowfall doesn't calm.

The copper cuff on my wrist is uncomfortably warm. It's started doing that of late, burning the scales beneath it so bad, I have to stick my talon in the snow or try to freeze it in ice until I can't feel anything anymore.

I could take it off, if I want to. Or, I'm pretty sure I could. But I'm not going to. Even when it leaves burn scars on my talons, when ice crawls up my limbs and I'm scared it'll freeze me into a statue—this power is the best thing that ever happened to me. I'm not giving it up now.

Mount Khione. I haven't been there since I had to hunt down the Wolf of Kings, three years old. I spent a week searching every crevice near the base of the sacred mountain and all the way out to the sea. I remember lying in the snow, completely lost and convinced death was near, when it found me—a massive creature, carved out of ice so clear it could have almost been glass—and carried me back home. Like it took pity on me. Mother was so disappointed, but technically, I did find the monster, so it qualified as a pass. No one was coming to save me when I was scaling Mount Khione, she muttered. Princes get it easy.