by Bree Barton
“I didn’t feel it.”
Zai met her eyes. “That, Raven, is the first thing you’ve said that has truly impressed me.”
She was flattered, before realizing there was an insult wrapped in the compliment.
“This conversation is fascinating.” Ville yawned. “Fyre ink and frostflowers and aren’t we all lovely, impressive people. Now can we please get back to more serious topics? Like what we’re going to eat for lunch.”
At the lagoon pub, Ville and Nelladine ordered plates piled high with lobster and grilled fish. They ate with their fingers, the tender white meat flaking easily from the bone. Zai’s meal was simple: smoked lamb shaved thin and laid atop crusty bread smeared with lemon-sage butter. “A local delicacy,” he explained.
At Nell’s suggestion, Mia ordered the lamb chops with sticky rhubarb jam.
“It’s from a sheep farm down the way,” Nelladine said. “Very fresh. I know the farmer’s daughter.”
“Also very fresh,” Ville quipped.
Nell grinned. “For once you happen to be right, Ville.”
The cuts of lamb were so tender Mia’s knife slid through them like soft butter.
She missed the taste of butter. She missed the taste of everything.
They ate on a low balcony overlooking the White Lagoon. Back in her normal clothes, Mia felt more herself. The carved frostflower sat quietly in her lap. She would ease the conversation casually into the terrain of science, like easing a boat into the sea.
“What makes the lagoon so white?” Mia gestured toward the visitors below, who were laughing and splashing each other with chalky water. “I bet you can explain it to me, Ville.”
“Right you are!” He puffed out his chest. “Back in the old days, freshwater and saltwater mingled together in fyre ice caves deep underground. The fyre ice sparked a paroxysm that made the water very, very hot, releasing minerals that gave it an otherworldly sheen. By the time the water bubbled all the way to the surface, it was the perfect temperature for bathing. Of course, once the fyre ice ran out, the lagoon lost its appeal. What good is a hot soak that isn’t hot?”
Ville rapped his knuckles on the table. “But here we are! Fyre ice fully restocked beneath us, so we can indulge in our excesses once again. Even the floors are warm.”
He toed the hard marble, then flashed Mia a grin. “Nice and toasty, isn’t it? Which reminds me.” Ville turned to Zai. “Did you get the shipment?”
“I meant to show you down at the dock.” Zai grinned. “Everything you said is true. I took her out for a spin this morning, and she purrs.”
Ville whooped. “What did I tell you? Burns clean as a whistle. And so much power!”
“I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Nell let out an exaggerated sigh. “Boys and boats, an ongoing love affair. Even if they have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a boat truly is, what it means.” She poked playfully at Zai. “I’d still like to know how you managed to buy yourself a heap of fyre ice. Must’ve cost a pretty penny.”
“He owns an alehouse,” Ville boomed. “He’s a man of profits. Leave him in peace!”
“I’m only saying—”
“Good Græÿa, Nell. Don’t you know that’s exactly why the Grand Fyremaster’s discoveries are so revolutionary? Clean fuel at an impossibly low cost! Thousands of new pits in the heartlands. A natural resource that never depletes.”
“But doesn’t every resource deplete?” Mia asked. “If it’s natural, it’s finite. You said yourself Luumia has run out of fyre ice before.”
She realized the table had gone quiet. Both Zai and Nell looked expectantly at Ville, like they’d been wondering the same thing.
Ville’s gaze cut into Mia.
“I don’t expect you to understand, Raven. Luumia is the first kingdom to harvest a self-replenishing source of power, and the system is complex. As this is my field of expertise, I could explain how we reap that power—but I’d have to teach you a lesson in advanced mechanics, which frankly would ruin my mood.”
He leaned back, cupping his hands behind his head.
“I may play the clown, but I’m the brightest one here.”
Nell snorted. “Speak for yourself, Ville.”
“I am speaking for myself.”
Mia hadn’t meant to insult his intelligence. Her pulse thrummed against the ink flower on her wrist. She couldn’t risk upsetting Ville, not when she needed his help.
A new strategy crystallized. She would appeal to his vanity. Play the ignorant Glasddiran girl with adorable freckles and a compass she didn’t know how to use.
As she leaned forward, a blaze of scarlet in the water caught her eye.
The fork fell from Mia’s hand. Below them, a red-haired woman was standing in the White Lagoon.
Her mother.
Wynna stood tall and fearsome, her pearly skin nearly as pale as the water around it. Wavy red tresses pinned in the Luumi style, swept up in a clasp at her nape. Wide hazel eyes. She was looking straight at Mia.
She was not smiling.
Mia’s memories flooded back in a torrent. Karri, blood soaked on the forest floor. Pilar, shrinking back into the forest, bow hot in her hand. Zaga, cold and furious in the castle crypt. The dullness in Quin’s eyes as he raked his hands through Angelyne’s tresses, kissing her with manufactured passion, helpless against the enthrall.
And in the midst of everything: her mother’s final gift. A way to save her heart by stopping it. Wynna had used this gift herself—and fled to the snow kingdom, never to return.
Mia felt grief and joy and white-hot fury. She didn’t know if she could ever forgive. Yet in that moment, all she wanted was to throw her arms around her mother and never let go.
Hatred will only lead you astray. Sometimes love is the stronger choice.
“Mother!”
Mia stood with such force it sent her chair flying. She sprinted down to the lagoon and leapt in fully clothed. When she tried to run, the water slowed her limbs, so she dove under the surface, streamlining her body as she kicked.
When she emerged, gasping for breath, her mother was gone.
No. No. She couldn’t have vanished. She was right there.
Mia splashed through the lagoon, her heart pounding in her eardrums. “Mother!” she shouted. “Mother!”
The hair should have been a beacon, crimson against creamy white water. “Have you seen a woman with red hair?” she said, over and over. The same question she’d asked for months, only now it would finally yield the right answer.
None of the visitors had seen a red-haired woman.
“Except for you,” one man murmured.
A hush fell over the lagoon as Mia grew increasingly frantic. “She was standing right beside you! Right here!” The visitors regarded her with curiosity, then discomfort, then fear.
“Raven?”
She whirled around to find Zai standing in the water, his brow creased with concern. “Who are you calling to?”
“She was here, I swear it. My mother was here.”
Mia no longer cared if Zai knew she was looking for her mother. She should have told him from the beginning, pushed aside her foolish pride. She saw the others standing a ways back: Nell chewing her bottom lip, Ville uncharacteristically quiet.
“Maybe we should go back to the pub,” Zai suggested. “For a calming drink.”
She shook her head fiercely. She was done drinking. Done hiding. Done pissing her life away in White Lagoon. She had a mother to find, a moonstone to shatter—and a prince to save.
“I have to find her, Zai.”
He pressed his hands together. “A red-haired woman came to my alehouse two nights past.”
Mia forced herself to breathe. Two redheads in all of White Lagoon, and he hadn’t thought to mention he’d seen the other?
“I don’t know for sure it was her,” Zai said slowly, “but if it was your mother, I can take you to her.”
“What do you mean, take me to her?”<
br />
“In my boat. She’s headed to Valavïk to request an audience with the Snow Queen.”
Mia’s heartbeat ricocheted through her rib cage. “How do you know this?”
“She told me.”
19 Days Till the Weeping Moon
Sister of mine,
Let me tell you a story.
Once upon a time, there was a little ogre. He lived with his family in a cozy ice kabma at the foot of a mountain. But “cozy” is just a nicer word for small. There was never enough food to eat, never enough space to think. The ogre’s mother loved him very much, but he was the littlest, and by the time she had ladled out enough lamb and potato stew to feed her five elder children, there was hardly any left for him.
But the little ogre had a gift.
He could render.
He kept a row of sharp, brightly colored pencils underneath his straw pallet. Whenever he was lonely, when his sisters and brother played with one another and not with him, he would take out his pencils and draw the most beautiful things. Orange marmalade kittens. Strawberry cake. An ice leopard about to pounce.
It did not take him long to discover his drawings were different. When he rendered a picture on the page, he rendered it on the landscape of the mind.
He could make his family see things. Images so real they would reach out to stroke the kittens or cut themselves a slice of cake. He made one of his sisters flee in terror from the ice leopard she swore had barreled down the mountain, baring its razored yellow fangs.
He even made his family see angry villagers encircling the kabma, fiery torches clenched in their pale fists. While the little ogre spooned more lamb stew into his bowl, his sisters charged outside, only to find no villagers at all.
Legend has it that when the villagers did come, surrounding the kabma with torches dipped in oil and fire, the little ogre frantically drew portrait after portrait, trying to paint a different picture of his family in the villagers’ minds. But this was where his talents failed him.
Perhaps it is only legend. After all, we do not know how the witch’s children died. Only that they died.
Today the little ogre goes by a different name. He is the Renderer. And though he is the smallest of Græÿa’s children, he is known as the Second Soul of Jyöl. He is, the Luumi tell their children, one of the kinder Souls. But every night of Jyöltide, you must leave a blade on your front stoop so the Renderer may sharpen his pencils. If you do not, he will draw monsters that haunt your dreams, so full of terrors you can no longer tell when you are sleeping and when you are awake.
My men have found curious artifacts in the Twisted Forest. First: an empty box with claw marks made by human fingers. Second: two of my men. One with a severed windpipe, drowned in his own blood. The other skewered through the heart . . . and no knife.
It appears you, sweet sister, did not leave a blade behind.
My men have arrived in White Lagoon, along with my army of Dujia. A charming town, they tell me, candles strung up over the streets with no strings, bewitched by some strange spell. Are you close? Floating in the lagoon, perhaps?
Come home and I will not meet you with torches and knives. On the contrary: I have something to offer you. You are a victim of your own delusions. Though Zaga tells me you are lost, I have hope that I may yet be able to save you from yourself.
I will render you a better world in bright, vibrant colors.
I will skewer the old world through its dark, rotted heart.
Tenderly yours,
Angelyne
Chapter 15
Home
“TAKE ME TO THE queen.”
Pilar stood on the steps of the Snow Queen’s palace. Hands bound behind her back, elbows jutted out on either side.
They’d made it to Valavïk after a miserable three days. Bumpy roads, choppy seas, more bumpy roads. Reports of the snow kingdom being a “land of progress” were sorely overrated. Despite the strange nature of the carriage Pilar and Quin had been locked in—a box that bounced along with no horses to pull it—the roads had more ruts and ridges than a washboard. Not to mention they reeked of shit.
She stared hard at Freyja, leader of the guardswomen. Freyja with her sharp silver eyes and shaved head. After three days on the road, her scalp was beginning to show signs of black stubble.
Pilar lifted her chin. “Dove said the queen would want to see us.”
“I heard him,” said Freyja, leader of the guardswomen. “I was there.”
“Get on with it, then.”
The other two guardswomen watched, stoic. They talked about as much as two large rocks. Pink-cheeked Lord Dove had scuttled off as soon as they arrived at the palace. But Freyja remained. She always seemed vaguely amused.
Pilar wanted to punch the grin right off Freyja’s face.
Or you could use magic.
She’d thought about it a hundred times along the journey. She’d even dreamed about it, when she wasn’t dreaming of Princess Karri. Freyja and her two large-rock lackeys wore no protective stones. When the lumbering guards escorted them outside to piss, it would have been easy to unblood their hands and make a run for it.
But Pilar had sworn not to use magic, especially against other women. Besides. Despite her beef with Freyja, Pilar couldn’t deny the guards had brought her exactly where she wanted to be. She didn’t like the way they’d done it, or that it wasn’t on her terms. But there she stood on the steps of the Snow Queen’s palace. In nineteen days, her father would stand in this very spot.
Not to mention the guards had earned her grudging respect. After a wandering thief stole a carton of apples from the carriage, they’d caught up to him easily on horseback—all three women were excellent riders. One punch from Freyja laid the thief flat in the snow.
“As head of the queen’s guard,” said Freyja, extending her hand, “let me be the first to welcome you to the palace.”
Quin reached out a hand, until Pilar looked daggers at him.
“We don’t shake hands with our captors.”
“For someone so intent on seeing the queen,” Freyja said, “you haven’t tried very hard to be cordial.”
“I never pretend to be something I’m not.”
“That I can respect.” She pulled back her hand. “A round of introductions. That’s Frigg”—she jerked a thumb toward the bigger guardswoman—“and that’s Fulla.” She pointed to the smaller blonde.
“You can’t be serious.” Pilar blinked. “Freyja, Frigg, and Fulla? Are you a nursery rhyme?”
The other two guards stared at her, unlaughing. There was no punch line.
“The queen is a busy woman,” Freyja said. “She will see you when she sees you.”
Pilar glared at Quin, waiting for him to say something. He’d come to Luumia to ask the Snow Queen for help. Why wasn’t he demanding to see her?
But he kept his eyes fixed on the ground.
Pilar shook her head in disgust. Coward.
“What are we supposed to do while we wait? Sit on our asses?”
“Not at all.” Freyja grinned. “We’ll give you the tour.”
Once again, Pilar found herself at the butt end of an ax.
The guardswomen prodded them through the snow palace. Pilar’s broken toes throbbed, but she wouldn’t give the three Fs the satisfaction of seeing her limp.
The palace was a world apart from the black shadows of Kaer Killian. The walls, floors, and ceilings were blazingly white, so bright they hurt her eyes.
They walked past a vast indoor garden with a scummy fish pond and a grove of snow plum trees. Then giant drawing rooms with paintings and marble busts—stern-looking noblemen and plenty of proud, curvy women. A refreshing change of pace from the Kaer, where King Ronan preferred to decorate the halls with the Dujias’ dismembered hands.
Maybe Luumia really was a land of progress. Or at the very least a land of pendulous breasts.
They had stopped in the middle of a corridor.
“Here we are,” said Freyja.
Pilar frowned. “Here we are where?”
No sooner had she said it than a curved line appeared in the white wall. Fulla heaved her shoulder against it once. Twice. Three times. The line deepened into an arch.
A doorway.
Freyja sliced through the ropes around Pilar and Quin’s wrists. As the door scraped open, she pushed them into a small dim chamber.
“We’re not sheep,” Pilar snapped. “I can goad myself.”
“Self-goading sheep! My favorite kind.” Freyja nodded toward the room. “You may be here a while. Make yourselves at home.”
Quin let out a muffled laugh. “Home.”
The door vanished into the wall, sealing them inside.
Chapter 16
Braggarts and Thieves
PILAR AND QUIN WERE surrounded by beasts.
Seven beasts, to be exact. Three reinsdyr, two emerald eagles, one small red bird, and—most impressive—a gigantic silver ice leopard.
All silent. All stuffed.
They were fascinating . . . for about five minutes. The longer Pilar waited, the more the dead animals lost their shine.
The walls and floor of this chamber were different than the corridors outside. Here sprawling purple lines reached across the white marble. They looked like tree branches, or lightning bolts. Pilar thought of the elder Dujia on Refúj—their wrinkled, veiny hands. That was what the purple marks looked most like. Human veins.
Pilar paced the chamber, dragging her bare knuckles over the marble, hoping to find a crack. The only light came from the walls glowing pale purple.
“You’re not going to find the door,” Quin said. “It disappeared the minute they did.”
He lay face-up on the floor, leather pouch resting comfortably on his stomach, his hands folded over it.
“How long have we been in here?” Pilar said.
“Somewhere between three hours and three hundred. We’re like everything else in this room.”
“Dead?”
“Captured.” From the floor Quin waved a hand. “The Doomed Duet of Pil and Kill! Playing in a dungeon near you.”
