“The Rising.” She dislikes the taste of the foreign word. “And who are you to my son?” She eyes my hair with more disdain than a mortal should have for a god. Something deeper is at play here. “Are you Ragnar’s master?”

“I am his brother,” I correct.

“His brother?” She mocks the idea.

“Your son swore an oath of servitude to me when I took him from a Gold. He offered me Stains and I offered him his freedom. Since then he has been my brother.”

“He…” Her voice catches. “Died free?”

The way she says it intones that deeper understanding. One Mustang notes. “He did. His men, the ones you have hanging on the walls outside, would have told you that I lead a rebellion against the Golds who rule over you, who took Ragnar from you as they took your other children. And they would have told you, as well as all your people, that Ragnar was the greatest of my generals. He was a good man. He was—”

“I know my son,” she interrupts. “I swam with him in the ice floes when he was a boy. Taught him the names of the snow, of the storms, and took him upon my griffin to show him the spine of the world. His hands clutched my hair and sang for joy as we rose through the clouds above. My son was without fear.” She remembers that day very differently than Ragnar did. “I know my son. And I do not need a stranger to tell me of his spirit.”

“Then you should ask yourself, Queen, what would make him return here.” Mustang says. “What would make him send his men here, if he would come here himself if he knew it meant breaking his oath to you and your people?”

Alia does not speak as she examines Mustang with those hungry eyes.

“Brother.” She mocks the word again, looking back to me. “I wonder, would you use brothers as you have used my son? Bringing him here. As if he is the key to unlocking the giants of the ice?” She looks around the hall so I see the deeds carved into the stone that stretches the height of fifteen men above us. I’ve never met an Obsidian artisan. They send us only their warriors. “As if you could use a mother’s love against her. This is the way of men. I can smell your ambition. Your plans. I do not know the Abyss, oh, worldly warlord, but I know the ice. I know the serpents that slither in the hearts of men.

“I questioned the heretics myself. I know what you are. I know you descend from a lower creature than us. A Red. I have seen Reds. They are like children. Little elves who live in the bones of the world. But you stole the body of an Aesir, of a Sunborn. You call yourself a breaker of chains, but you are a maker of them. You wish to bind us to you. Using our strength to make you great. Like every man.”

She leans over my dead friend to leer at me and I see what this woman respects, why Ragnar believed he would have to kill her and take her throne, and why Mustang wanted to flee. Strength. And where is mine, she wonders.

“You know many things of him,” Mustang says. “But you know nothing of me, yet you insult me.”

Alia frowns. It’s clear she has no idea who Mustang is, and no wish to anger a true Gold, if, indeed, Mustang is one. Her confidence wavers only a fraction. “I have laid no claims against you, Sunborn.”

“But you have. By suggesting he has evil wishes in store for your people, you too suggest that I collude with him. That I, his companion, am here with the same wicked intentions.”

“Then what are your intentions? Why do you accompany this creature?”

“To see if he was worth following,” Mustang says.

“And is he?”

“I don’t know yet. What I do know is that millions will follow him. Do you know that number? Can you even comprehend it, Alia?”

“I know the number.”

“You asked my intentions,” Mustang says. “I will put it plainly. I am a warlord and Queen like you. My dominion is larger than you can comprehend. I have metal ships in the Abyss that carry more men than you have ever seen. That can crack the highest mountain in two. And I am here to tell you that I am not a god. Those men and women on Asgard are not gods. They are flesh and blood. Like you. Like me.”

Alia rises slowly, bearing her huge son easily in her arms, and walks him to a stone altar and lays him upon it. She pours oil from a small urn onto a cloth and drapes it over Ragnar’s face. Then she kisses the cloth. Looking down at him.

Mustang presses her. “This land cannot hold seed. It is ruled by wind and ice and barren rock. But you survive. Cannibals roam the hills. Enemy clans ache for your land. But you survive. You sell your sons, your daughters to your ‘gods,’ but you survive. Tell me, Alia. Why? Why live when all you live for is to serve. To watch your family wither away? I’ve watched mine go. Each stolen from me one by one. My world is broken. And so is yours. But if you join your arms with mine, with Darrow as Ragnar wanted…we can make a new world.”

Alia turns back to us, beleaguered. Her steps are slow and measured as she comes before us. “Which would you fear more, Virginia au Augustus, a god? Or a mortal with the power of a god?” The question hangs between them, creating a rift words cannot mend. “A god cannot die. So a god has no fear. But mortal men…” She clucks her tongue behind her stained teeth. “How frightened they are that the darkness will come. How horribly they will fight to stay in the light.”

Her corrupt voice chills my blood.

She knows.

Mustang and I realize it at the same terrible moment. Alia knows her gods are mortal. A new fear bubbles up from the deepest part of me. I’m a fool. We traveled all this distance to pull the wool from her eyes, but she’s already seen the truth. Somehow. Some way. Did the Golds come to her because she is queen? Did she discover it herself? Before she sold Ragnar? After? It’s no matter. She’s already resigned herself to this world. To the lie.

“There’s another path,” I say desperately, knowing that Alia made her judgment against us before we ever entered the room. “Ragnar saw it. He saw a world where your people could leave the ice. Where they could make their own destiny. Join me and that world is possible. I will give you the means to take the power that will let you cross the stars like your ancestors, to walk unseen, to fly among the clouds on boots. You can live in the land of your choosing. Where the wind is warm as flesh and the land is green instead of white. All you need to do is fight with me like your son did.”