Tears of Frost

by Bree Barton

  Regret wove itself into the same heavy cloak. She felt numb from the relentless guilt, and guilty for the numbness. The one thing she remembered with perfect clarity was the moment she realized her mother was alive, waiting in the snow kingdom. Seconds later, Mia had pressed two magical stones to her chest in a last-gasp attempt to stop her own heart.

  Evidently, she had succeeded.

  Mia didn’t know who or what had woken her. She only knew that she’d sat hunched on the forest floor for what seemed like hours, blinking in the harsh sunlight as she massaged her adductors and tibiae, desperate to feel the blood humming in her legs. She’d expected to find both stones in the coffin: the ruby wren snarled up in the chain of the moonstone that belonged to her mother. Fojuen to stop your heart, and lloira to restore it.

  But there were no stones. Of course there weren’t. Zaga and Angelyne would need the moonstone to continue their reign of horrors. All Mia found tucked into the corner was a white flower. Hewn from bleached bone, the bloom had six petals and a small red bird etched into its heart.

  A raven.

  My little red raven.

  The flower was a clue, the first breadcrumb leading Mia to her mother.

  But if Wynna were hiding in the snow kingdom, who had stowed the carved flower in the box? Was it the same person who had carried Mia’s coffin out of the castle and deep into the forest, only a few days’ walk to the Luumia border? On that note, why in four hells hadn’t they stuck around long enough to open the box?

  How long had Mia been sleeping?

  But she hadn’t been sleeping. She’d been dead.

  “Are you drunk yet?” her companion asked.

  “Not nearly enough.”

  Mia shifted her hips until his hand slid off her knee.

  “What are those?” she asked innocently, gesturing toward the white blossoms hooked onto his belt.

  “These trinkets? They’re nothing.”

  She hoped that wasn’t true, since it would mean she’d squandered the last hour of her life with an insufferable boy for no reason. In an alehouse full of people, she’d seen his belt of frostflowers and felt a flicker of hope. Mia saw the blooms everywhere—floating magically in the streets, fluttering on Luumi flags—but this was the first time she’d seen one like hers, whittled from bleached bone.

  It pained her to have to speak to him. She could tell what kind of boy he was by the way he leaned over the bar, accosting the barmaid. Mia had sauntered up to him acting a little drunker than she was. He offered to buy her a nip, just like she knew he would. The paragon of chivalry.

  Regrettably she’d gone a little too far with the nips, her drunkenness moving from performance into reality.

  Now she leaned toward him, bending her mouth into a smile she hoped was coquettish.

  “Your trinkets are pretty. Where did you get so many?”

  “I collect them.” He patted his belt. “The witch mothers hand them out to their daughters like taffy. Supposed to bring them home safely, protect them from us big scary men. Maybe it’s we men who need protection! Ever think of that?”

  Mia’s fingers twitched on the table—and not just because her companion was asinine. Bring them home safely. This one nugget of information was more than she’d acquired in weeks of searching.

  Everywhere she went in White Lagoon, she asked innkeepers, barmaids, blacksmiths, ship captains, madams, street urchins—anyone she met—the same question. Have you seen a big woman with hazel eyes and wavy red hair?

  No one had.

  The first few weeks, Mia was relentless. Bit by bit, her hope dwindled. She still asked the question, but she’d learned to bolster it with a nip of spirits to stave off the inevitable sting.

  With each new disappointment, she cursed herself for her wishful thinking. Spoiled little Mia Rose, a girl who had never lacked for money. Had she really thought she’d arrive penniless in the snow kingdom and “magic” her way into finding her mother? Information cost money. Most things did. If not money, they cost something else.

  “But where did you get the frostflowers?” Mia pressed. The question came out sounding more desperate than she’d intended, so she poured on the sweet cream. “You certainly don’t need some good luck talisman, strapping man like you.”

  “True. But it makes me look trustworthy, don’t you think? Girls love a sensitive man, wearing their pretty baubles. I’m quite the catch.”

  Mia’s stomach soured. Or it would have, if she could still feel it.

  This boy was another dead end.

  She sank an inch into the booth, defeated. Every day she failed to find Wynna meant one more day Quin remained captive in Kaer Killian, enthralled by Angelyne. Mia had promised to come back for him. If she didn’t save him, who would? Quin was alone in the world, his whole family murdered, their blood on Mia’s hands.

  But she would make things right. Find her mother, return to Glas Ddir, destroy the moonstone—and set Quin free.

  “My baubles certainly worked on you, didn’t they?” Her preening companion slid closer until they were hip to hip.

  “Mmm.” Mia took a breath. “Have you seen a woman with wavy red hair and hazel eyes?”

  Over the last few months she’d asked this question so many times, to so many people, in so many ways. Mia had heard all sorts of answers, but they were never the one she wanted.

  “Not many redheads around these parts,” said the boy. “Why? Do you miss your mummy?”

  He trailed a finger over her clavicle and down her arm, stopping at her wrist.

  “Your skin is so soft,” he murmured. He pressed his nail into her flesh, so hard it gouged a white crescent moon. Though she felt only light pressure, she could imagine the pain spiking up her arm. She saw the way the boy’s face lit up because of it.

  A line from her mother’s journal came back to her. Bring your rage into the light and love will heal it.

  Mia didn’t want light. She sure as hells didn’t want love.

  She stared at the boy’s hand around her wrist, then into his watery, hungry eyes.

  “You’re wrong,” she said. “It isn’t soft at all.”

  The boy howled in pain. He leapt off the bench and staggered back, his face twisting in shock.

  “Witch!” he shouted. “River witch!”

  Mia didn’t need her sense of smell to know his skin was boiling. The flames hissed and curdled flesh, blackening his shirtsleeve into shreds. His whole arm was on fire.

  Unfortunately, so was hers.

  Chapter 9

  The Darkest Night

  MIA STARED AT THE flames licking her arm, spellbound. Her skin puckered as it burned, the way a strip of fruit might dry in the sun. Fascinating.

  “I’m on fire!” her companion yelled, knocking down chairs as he tore through the alehouse. “She lit me on fire!”

  The other patrons seemed unperturbed. This clearly wasn’t the first time a woman had used magic to rebuff a man in this fine establishment.

  The proprietress, however, came barreling out from behind the bar.

  “Out you go,” she barked. “Before you set fire to all my spirits!”

  Mia stumbled toward the door. Her legs were wobblier than she expected; she had the distinct impression she was balanced on two slabs of meat gelatin posing as feet. No matter. The gelatins carried her over the threshold just fine.

  She teetered out into the night, hobbling across the street and down a narrow alley steeped in muck and garbage, then another, lest the boy feel inclined to come nipping at her heels. Once she was a safe distance away, she sidestepped a pile of what appeared to be human excrement and crouched on the cobblestones, burying her arm in a snowdrift.

  A memory burbled to the surface: a virescent hot spring with steam wisping off the water. Piercing green eyes.

  The colors melted as quickly as the snow against her skin.

  Mia peeled off chunks of charred cloth and flesh, tossing them aside. Her tunic sleeve was ruined. For that matter, so was he
r arm. She ran her hand over the blistered skin.

  Nothing happened.

  Mia longed for the sudden shifts in temperature that had confounded her when she first bloomed. The sticky, roiling heat of desire; the bone-shivering ice of fear; the bitter scald of hatred. She even felt nostalgic for the headaches that had threatened to split her skull in two.

  Funny how the things you’d hated were the things you missed the most.

  Strictly speaking, she still had magic. But she could no longer control it.

  Mia stared at her arm, forcing herself to focus. In spite of her faulty body, her brain still functioned passably well. This wasn’t the first time she had inadvertently ignited.

  She closed her eyes and focused on images of frost, icicles, snowflakes, snowdrifts slushing into rivers, sweet spring flowers blooming on the banks.

  When she opened her eyes, her flesh was knitting itself back together around her radius and ulna, then phalanges. Her arm was whole again, freckles uncharred, skin unmarred.

  Mia breathed a sigh of relief. She could no longer feel or smell or taste; she couldn’t hear when someone was lying or sense their emotions. But at least she could still heal herself.

  She wondered how long before she lost that, too.

  Mia was exhausted. She supposed she should go home, “home” being the cramped sliver of a cot she’d been sleeping on, owned by a gray-haired innkeeper who sold magical salves. In exchange for a place to sleep and a few coins in her pocket, Mia hawked the woman’s wares on the streets of White Lagoon: creams that dulled pain and numbed unpleasant sensations.

  The irony was not lost on her.

  To hells with going home. She was always tired, yet she hated sleeping—a persistent paradox. As a girl she’d loved the sensation of falling asleep, her feet toasty from the warmer her mother slipped beneath the blankets. But now, whenever she closed her eyes, all she saw was the wooden box.

  Mia stood, then stumbled forward, stubbing her toe on a loose cobblestone. She longed for ferocious pain to shoot up her leg. She was broken. Damaged beyond repair. The girl who’d once had all the answers was now a combustible failure.

  She would toast her failure with a drink.

  As Mia snaked her way through White Lagoon, the streets teemed with both vagrants and landowners, emaciated beggars and glutted red-cheeked youths. The port town was perched precariously between destitution and prosperity. Mia was no historian, but she knew the last two decades had not been good ones in Luumia; a disastrous cocktail of trade embargoes and depleted fyre ice mines had swiftly brought the thriving realm to ruin.

  But over the last year, the queen’s Grand Fyremaster had discovered new fyre ice pits, and the snow kingdom had sprung back to life. For the first time in twenty years, trade was flourishing, and the eponymous lagoon of White Lagoon—a brief carriage ride from the town itself—had reopened its doors. Heated by the fresh crop of fyre ice, the mineral water was said to have curative properties. Dozens of visitors piled in from Fojo Karação, Pembuk, and other parts of Luumia, lured by the promise of a healing soak.

  To Mia, the town of White Lagoon seemed like a street urchin who’d recently become queen. Giddy with unbridled energy and promise, but still dirty behind the ears.

  Two women staggered past, laughing. For a moment Mia’s heart stopped, the way it always did when a woman passed by. That fleeting clutch of hope she might have found her mother.

  But it was only two drunk girls.

  As usual, the disappointment smoldered down to anger, followed by an insatiable need to drink the anger down. Mia heard the Luumi word for “spirits,” so she followed the girls. They ducked into a wide, low-roofed alehouse she’d never noticed.

  Mia donned her best countenance of sobriety and stepped inside.

  The alehouse was homey. Fat hickory beams, rosy orange torches, and an impressive collection of reinsdyr antlers on the walls. Not too many patrons—other than the two girls, there was a wiry older gentleman at the bar, and a few others playing a lazy game of kurkits, moving whittled bone pieces from one square to the next.

  Beyond the kurkits table she saw the most important thing: casks, and plenty of them.

  The barmaid approached with a skeptical expression, her thick white-blond braid swinging like a pendulum at her back. She was dressed in the traditional Luumi costume: bright red frieze, metal-embroidered collar with pewter charms, and a quilted white belt. Mia liked these costumes, though she hadn’t seen many since arriving in White Lagoon.

  “Good Jyöl,” the barmaid said.

  The whole town was abuzz over the solstice festival, especially now that so many foreign visitors were pouring in, eager to hear dark and twisty tales. During Jyöltide the Luumi paid homage to mythical Græÿa, the vengeful witch with a taste for human flesh.

  “One nip of vaalkä.” Mia slid onto a tall stool. “No, wait.”

  All the alehouses in Luumi offered special seasonal drinks for Jyöl. She would order the strongest spirits.

  “A dram of silver death, please.”

  The barmaid cast her a disapproving look. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

  Mia raised a hand in solemn oath. “I swear to you, I have had no silver death this evening.”

  Technically true.

  The barmaid eyed Mia’s burnt shirtsleeve hanging off her wrist in scorched tatters. She pursed her lips and did not reach for the cask. Mia’s irritation flared. This girl was barely in the swell of womanhood—certainly not old enough to condescend.

  “Pour her a dram, Sirpa! She looks like the kind of woman who can take care of herself.”

  Mia turned to see who was speaking. The elder white-haired patron at the end of the bar gave a little wave. His slender frame was bundled in several layers, his white beard full but neatly kept. Underneath his fur-fringed hood, his pale beige cheeks were rosy.

  “Thank you,” Mia said. “That is exactly the kind of woman I am.”

  Whoever this gentleman was—and he was most certainly a gentleman; his intonation revealed his noble birth—he appeared to have spoken the magic words. The ornery barmaid dipped her head, properly chastened.

  “As you like, My Lord.”

  The barmaid reached for the cask and tossed it smoothly from one hand to the other. She picked up an empty glass.

  “Hoarfrost?” she asked.

  Mia shrugged. “Why not?”

  The barmaid turned the glass upside down and dunked the rim in a bowl of water. When she dragged it through a plate of grayish-white crystals, the rim emerged crusted with rime.

  The girl poured three thumbs of the silvery spirits as opposed to the usual two. Magnificent.

  “On the house,” she said, sliding the dram of silver death across the bar.

  Mia lifted the glass and tilted it toward the gentleman.

  “A toast to you, My Lord.”

  He waved her off. “Kristoffin. I insist! I’m far too old and senile to be anyone’s lord, least of all yours.” He hefted his dram in the air. “Welcome to the queendom of Luumia.”

  She liked the way he said queendom. Matter-of-factly, as if it had always been that way.

  “To the queendom,” she said.

  Together they tipped back their silver death. Mia had heard a dram of death was both sweet and bitter, pungent with a hint of licorice on the swallow. For her it was tasteless, heatless, and hopefully effective.

  “Good Græÿa.” Kristoffin set down the empty glass and dabbed his mouth on his coat sleeve. “I’m also too old to be drinking death at this hour, I’m afraid. As the old proverb goes, A boy drinks to remember. A man drinks to forget.”

  He winked. “To that I’ll add: a very old man forgets to remember not to drink.”

  There was something bewitchingly impish about him. Mia had never met her parents’ parents, but she imagined this was how a jolly grandsire would be.

  Mia was starved for good cheer. She commandeered the stool beside him.

  “Why is a non lor
d drinking at this hour, may I ask?”

  She knew it was the right question from the way his blue eyes sparkled.

  “Carting precious cargo to our lady queen.”

  “What kind of precious cargo?”

  “I’m sworn to secrecy.”

  She took the bait. “Yes or no questions, then. Is it jewels?”

  “Hardly! Or very dull ones, I suppose.”

  “Weapons?”

  “Not very potent.”

  “Wild animals?”

  “Ha!” Kristoffin chuckled. “Might as well be.”

  “I give up. You’ll have to tell me.”

  He leaned in conspiratorially. “Foreign goods. Smuggled in from the river kingdom last night, only slightly worse for wear.”

  Mia fought to keep a smile on her face, even as the invisible cloak wrapped itself around her. She, too, was smuggled in from the river kingdom, and definitely worse for wear: insensate body, memories warped like ink on a wet piece of parchment. Angelyne betrayed her. Zaga betrayed her. Her mother betrayed her the moment she’d resurrected herself in the snow kingdom. For three years, Mia and Angelyne had been forced to relive her death over and over, until it broke them in different ways.

  Mia would not—could not—forgive her mother. Still, she needed Wynna’s help. There had to be a way to destroy the lloira, to sever the enthrallment and free Quin for good. Before her sister used the moonstone for evil, their mother had used it for good. If anyone knew how to quell the twisted magic inside the pearly orb, it was Wynna.

  “Forgive me.” Kristoffin slid his empty dram across the bar, dipping his head at Mia. “I can see you are deep in contemplation. I’ll leave you to your thoughts.”

  Mia’s attempts to be cheerful had once again failed.

  “Wait,” she said, as Kristoffin eased himself off the stool. “Have you . . .” She stopped short, loathing how pathetic she sounded, how small.

  “Have I . . . ?” he prompted.

  She hated having to ask the question. Hated her mother for leaving no clear path, for bequeathing a mysterious bone trinket only to abandon her daughter once again.