Chapter 290: Divine Throne Frost Pod

"What?"

Grey opened the folder and pulled out a postcard, along with a few black-and-white photos.

"Hemus Island." She pushed them over to Richard.

"My parents took me there when I was little."

Richard picked up the postcards.

They were color prints. Even though the hues were a bit distorted, the scenery was still impossible to look away from.

A deep blue bay with water clear enough to see the bottom.

At the end of the bay, mountains ringed the water, their peaks capped with snow.

At the foot of the mountains lay small towns with white walls and red roofs, climbing halfway up the slopes.

He picked up the black-and-white photos next.

"It's beautiful," Richard said sincerely.

"Right?" Grey leaned in and pointed at one of them.

"This is the town where we stayed back then.

"The town was built on a coastal slope. You'd open the window and the sea was right there.

"In the mornings, fishing boats would sail out one by one, and in the evenings, they'd return one after another.

"They hung lamps on the boats. From a distance, it looked like stars had fallen onto the sea."

Her fingertip tapped lightly on the photo.

"This mountain," she said, pointing to a snow-capped peak.

"The locals say it's where the gods live. The snow on the summit hasn't melted in thousands of years."

"How do you know all this?" Richard asked, a little surprised.

"I looked it up." Grey's expression grew a bit unnatural.

"Didn't you... get into the Department of Classics at Imperial Capital University? I figured you'd definitely be researching this sort of thing."

"So you went out of your way to look up Hemus Island?"

"Not out of my way, really." Grey shifted her gaze elsewhere. "Just... flipped through a few books."

The young woman gathered the photos but didn't immediately put them back in the folder. She looked up and scanned the shop...

The two female students at the neighboring table were long gone, and the waiter was dozing at the counter.

She turned back, lowering her voice a fraction.

"Actually... my family hasn't just been dealing in spices these past two years."

"Oh?" Richard's interest was piqued.

"Once the war broke out, some things started selling even better than spices.

"The army wants them, the Church wants them, and some... less reputable clients want them too.

"Along with pepper and cloves, that old trading route to the Eastern Continent now carries other goods as well."

She spoke vaguely, but Richard understood.

Grey watched his expression, as if confirming something.

From a hidden inner pocket of her satchel, she drew out a palm-sized Tin Box.

Opening the lid revealed wax paper lining the bottom, with about a dozen pods neatly arranged inside.

These pods were a size larger than normal cardamom, their skins covered in a layer of fine white fuzz, as if dusted with frost.

"Feel them."

Richard pinched one between his fingers, and a sudden chill struck his hand.

The cold seeped right through his skin. Even though they had been kept in the warm satchel the girl had carried the whole way, they were unnaturally cold.

Bringing it close to his nose, the first thing he caught was the salty scent of seawater, underlaid by a subtle, indescribable smell.

"These are called 'Divine Throne Frost Pods,'" Grey introduced with a hint of pride.

"They grow on that snow-capped mountain I just showed you, right above the snowline.

"The locals consider it the forbidden domain of the gods, and nobody dares go up there to harvest them. The whole island only manages to collect one small box like this all year."

"What are they used for?"

"I don't know the details." Grey shook her head.

"I just heard an old client say they're related to things involving 'cold' and 'stillness.' Just this one box is worth several crates of our ordinary spices."

She pushed the Tin Box a little closer to Richard.

"My mother told me to give you this box, just to show you our family's channels.

"...So if you ever need anything from the Eastern Continent in the future, just say the word.

"What other people can't source, our family's ships just might be able to find."

She said this as casually as if she were offering to bring him another scone next time.

Richard held the ice-cold frost pod, looking at the young woman across from him.

"...Thank you."

"No need to thank me," Grey offered a slight smile. "It's no trouble at all."

The two of them sat for a while longer, drinking until the teapot was empty.

Grey glanced at the wall clock.

"I have to go back." She stood up and smoothed out her skirt.

"My hour is up. If I'm late, the dorm matron will scold me."

"I'll walk you to the school gates."

"No need." Grey shook her head.

"If we walk to the school gates together, the teachers will definitely be interrogating me tomorrow."

The young woman took out a small paper bag and placed it on the table.

"Here."

"It's not scones this time. Open it and take a look."

Richard opened the paper bag.

Inside were a few crescent-shaped pastries dusted with a thin layer of icing sugar, their edges pinched into lovely pleats.

A sweet aroma wafted out, hiding a hint of a familiar spice underneath.

This spice was the cardamom from last time.

Richard picked one up and took a bite.

The flaky crust melted in his mouth. The fragrance of crushed almonds, the sweetness of the icing sugar, and that faint hint of cardamom blended together perfectly.

It was on a completely different level from what this cafe served.

"It's delicious."

Grey let out a breath of relief.

"That's good. You're the only one who gets to eat these.

"Those teachers at the academy could never replicate this flavor..."

She raised an eyebrow.

"They don't have my family's cardamom."

With those words, the hem of her dark blue skirt flashed by the doorframe, and she was gone.

Richard remained in his seat and took another bite of the pastry.

Spending time with a girl like Grey always left him feeling entirely at ease.

...

In an old alley in the Imperial Capital, on the top floor of a three-story building.

Lillian held a kingfisher in her hands.

She had picked it up by the canal this morning. It had broken its neck flying into the newly strung telegraph wires.

Its neck was broken, but its feathers were still neat.

Its back was a blue so bright it bordered on gold, and its belly was a vibrant orange-red.

When it was alive, it must have flown close to the water's surface, flying so fast it didn't see the wire stretched above it.

The window was open. August in the Imperial Capital was heavy and stifling.

The stone slabs lining the canal had baked in the sun all day, and even into the evening, they still radiated visible heat.

Down in the alley, an ice vendor passed by, the wooden wheels of his cart clattering against the cobblestone crevices, bells chiming all the way.

The heat surged in through the window, but Lillian couldn't feel it.

Three parts naphtha, one part lime water.

For birds with thick fat, some distilled water had to be added, otherwise the skin would yellow.

Skinning, scraping the fat, sorting the bones—taking it one step at a time, very slowly, but at just the right pace.

The attic was cramped, its sloping roof pressing down low, with a single north-facing window.

She paid the rent herself.

Her uncle hadn't asked where the money came from, and even if he had, she wouldn't have answered.

A girl living under a relative's roof suddenly renting her own place out of her own pocket should have aroused suspicion.

But her aunt was happy to have the peace and quiet, glad for one less eyesore in the house.

A titmouse perched on the corner of the desk.

Its head was tilted to one side, standing on a dead branch as if listening to something.

She had left the other specimens for someone else, bringing only the titmouse with her to the Imperial Capital.

Lillian turned the kingfisher's skin inside out and applied the chemical solution over and over again.

The kingfisher beneath her hands would never rot now. It wouldn't fall apart, and it wouldn't be blown away by the wind.

It would remain forever in the exact moment of its fastest flight.

She had been doing this for several years. In the past, it was out of fear that a certain thing would disappear.

Now, she finally understood that she was actually practicing.

Practicing turning living things into still objects, pinning down things that moved and making them stop.

Before, this was just manual skill.

Now, it was something else.

Lillian set down the knife and went to pour a glass of water.

The water had been drawn from the well. Logically, it should have been cold.

But whether it was cold or warm, it felt exactly the same on her tongue; there was no difference.

The first time she noticed this was in June.

At first, she thought she was just tired. Later, she tried a spoonful of honey.

Her tongue felt empty. She couldn't taste the sweetness at all.

Her guide, Ms. Holloway, had left behind a few pages of notes, which mentioned this exact situation:

"The faster you ascend, the sooner it collects.

"What takes others decades to lose, you will lose in a few months.

"Don't panic. This is your blessing."

Blessing. Ms. Holloway loved using that word.

The first time Lillian met her was in the corridor of the sanatorium where her mother stayed.

The place was on the outskirts of the Imperial Capital, built with red brick walls half-covered in ivy.

The corridor was long. The windows on both sides were kept closed year-round, leaving a strong scent of carbolic acid in the air.

Ms. Holloway had stood at the door of her mother's room. She wasn't tall, but her back was straight, and her eyes barely moved when she looked at someone.

"You are the daughter of the Hayward family."

Lillian hadn't started on that path yet. She just felt the woman looked incredibly familiar, though she couldn't remember where they'd met.

"Your mother and I are old acquaintances from years ago."

As Ms. Holloway spoke, her gaze shifted from Lillian's face to the half-open door of the hospital room.

"When she was young, her eyes looked just like yours."

Lillian followed her gaze.

Her mother was sitting in the wicker chair by the window, her back to the door.

Outside the window was the sanatorium's garden. The afternoon sunlight poured in, falling onto her shoulders.

She was talking to someone, her tone as gentle as when she used to coax Lillian to sleep as a child.

But the garden was completely empty, and she was the only one in the room.

"She once took a glance into that door, too."

Ms. Holloway retracted her gaze.

"Of those who look inside, some can pull back, and some cannot. Your mother is the kind who cannot pull back."

Lillian hadn't understood back then.

Now, she did.

No wonder the doctors couldn't cure it, nor could the priests from the parish.

Lillian never thought too deeply about why an "old acquaintance" of her mother happened to be waiting for her in the sanatorium corridor, or why this person knew exactly what she most wanted to understand.

There were too many suspicious points, but she couldn't afford to care.

The other party had lowered a rope down into a bottomless abyss, and she had grabbed it.

As for who held the other end of the rope, or what they intended to do with it... that was a matter for the future.

The future... she might not have a future at all.

Lillian set the water glass down and sat back at the desk.

The kingfisher's skeleton was laid out on the linen cloth, and she pieced it back together bone by bone, exactly as it had been when alive.

She picked up the thinnest sliver of a toe bone and attached it to a branch.

Last winter, she and Richard had chatted about Virgil, about that dog-eared botanical encyclopedia.

She only remembered that the room had been very warm at the time.

But the exact details... she couldn't quite remember them anymore.

Lillian secured the last toe bone in place.

The kingfisher was perched on the branch now, a blue so bright it shone with gold.

It looked as if, in the next second, it would flap its wings and fly toward the canal.

Outside the window, the Imperial Capital's sky slowly darkened.

The streetlamps lit up, reflecting off the canal like shattered gold.

The young woman took out an object.

It was a token.