Tears of Frost

by Bree Barton

  “This is some kind of test. Freyja’s been toying with us from the start.” She nodded toward his pouch. “We could try and use your dead men’s stones. Make the door reappear.”

  His hands tightened around the pouch. “Stones won’t do us any good. This room isn’t magic.”

  “Then why do the walls have veins?”

  “I don’t know. Science?”

  “They’re warm, too.” She pressed her fist against the marble. “Feel it.”

  “Why do you think I’m down here? The floor is nice and toasty.”

  “Nice to see you put up a fight.”

  “And you pacing in circles has been so incredibly effective.” He sighed. “This is precisely where you wanted to go, remember? You made it to the palace, and—wonder of wonders—you didn’t even have to arrange transportation! Relax. Unload. Take some nice, deep breaths.”

  Pilar hated being told to breathe. She turned away before she said something she regretted.

  Quin wasn’t wrong. She knew full well she’d hitched a free ride to the Snow Queen’s palace. But she couldn’t stand being confined against her will. It reminded her of the long months she’d spent trapped in the Kaer, enkindled by her mother or Angelyne, the nasty moonstone dangling from their hands. The desire to kill them flooded her mouth with the sweet taste of blood.

  It took her a moment to realize she was biting the inside of her cheek.

  Pilar paced more quickly. The minute she stopped moving, her breath would stick in her throat. The Kaer wasn’t the only time she’d been a prisoner in her own body. She might see things from the cottage by the lake. Thick wooden beams. A broken bow.

  “I think they want us to find our way out,” she said.

  “Good luck with that.”

  “Typical. The prince of the river kingdom sits on his ass.”

  Quin sat up. “Is there a bone you’d like to pick with me, Pilar? Because it certainly seems that way.”

  “Why didn’t you pull some fancy royal card? Demand an audience with the queen?”

  “I’m sure she’ll see us eventually.”

  “For someone who’s supposedly so determined to go back to Glas Ddir and save Dom, you sure aren’t trying very hard. As far as I can tell, you haven’t spent a single second thinking about the kingdom you left behind.”

  “You don’t know what I spend my time thinking about,” he snapped. “And why do you, of all people, want me to storm the castle and proclaim myself king? Descendant of the men who have been killing Dujia for generations, long before my father took the throne?”

  Her mouth twisted. “You could choose not to kill Dujia, you know. It’s not like that’s part of the job description.”

  “A fair point.” He shook out his curls. “I don’t approach a challenge the way you do, is all. I prefer diplomacy to unfettered bouts of violence.”

  “Do you?” Pilar snorted. “The Diplomacy of Lying Flat on Your Ass.”

  “If you’re so keen to get out of here, why didn’t you use magic on the guards? At any point on this journey you could have easily escaped.”

  “I told you. I don’t use magic anymore.”

  “Right. The Obstinacy of Being Pilar.”

  “You met my mother, right? Does she seem like a nice person to grow up with? All she cared about was magic.”

  She shook her head. “As a girl I believed everything she told me. She said magic was how we Dujia got our power back—how we made the world right again. But that was a lie. Magic is just another way to abuse power. My mother didn’t care who she hurt.”

  Pilar bit down on her lip. Why was she telling Quin all this? She hated being vulnerable.

  “I don’t expect you to understand,” she said.

  “You’re right. A parent who hated you, lied about magic, and killed innocent people?” He arched an eyebrow. “I obviously have no idea what that’s like.”

  Some of the tension leaked out of Pilar’s chest. Maybe he did understand.

  “All I’m saying is, I don’t ever want to be like my mother.”

  Quin cocked his head. “You could choose not to use magic to hurt other people, you know. It’s not like that’s part of the job description.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth.

  “You do have a way of throwing my own words back at me, don’t you?”

  He shrugged. “They’re good words.”

  She plopped down beside him on the warm floor.

  “The thing is, I did escape. First from Refúj, then the Kaer. I don’t have to be who I was on the island. That girl is gone.”

  Pilar stopped to consider what she’d just said. She had never put it into words before, but it was true. During her months as a scullery maid she’d dreamed of returning to Refúj and asking her Dujia sisters for forgiveness. But she didn’t have to go back. After she killed her mother, what was keeping her from finding a better sisterhood somewhere else? Sisters who both listened and believed?

  “For the first time in my life,” she said slowly, “I get to see who I am without magic. Who I really am, not the person my mother wanted me to be.”

  Quin was quiet a moment. Then he said, “Maybe this is what it means to grow up. We see our parents for who they truly are, then get to choose whether or not to follow in their footsteps.” He traced a purple vein in the marble floor. “Gods know I never want to be like my father.”

  Some of the tension crept back into her shoulders. She was trying to be like her father. A man who killed Dujia, no magic required.

  She reached into her pocket and touched the silver coin, then the bone carving. Freyja and her guards had poached Pilar’s dagger, but she’d managed to keep the coin and flower hidden. They gave her comfort.

  Restless, she forced herself back onto her feet and stepped onto the raised platform where the beasts stood. If she were right about this being a test, maybe they held the clue.

  Of the seven dead animals, the ice leopard was most striking. Curved yellow fangs. Cold blue eyes. Six silver blades on each paw, more like sickles than claws. Pilar had never seen a real leopard, only heard about them. Vicious, bloodthirsty carnivores with paws big enough to crush a child’s skull—or hers, since she wasn’t much bigger. True to their name, an ice leopard’s pelt wasn’t fur at all, but barbed silver ice.

  She reached out a finger and poked the leopard in the eye.

  “Why doesn’t he melt?”

  “I’m sure they replace the ice with glass,” Quin answered.

  “Is that how they keep the eyes from rotting?”

  “Precisely. The flesh mounters scrape out all the blood and fat and tissue so they can stuff glass orbs into the eye sockets. It’s quite mesmerizing. I used to watch the mounters work on my father’s stags in the Kaer.”

  “Your father kept an army of flesh mounters in the castle?” She grimaced. “You royals are a strange breed. If you kill an animal, you should eat it, not parade its skin around. You’re all braggarts and thieves.”

  “I won’t argue with that.”

  They fell silent once again.

  How long would the queen keep them imprisoned? Freyja had said “a while,” which for all Pilar knew could mean forever. What if she were still a prisoner on the last night of Jyöl—a stone’s throw from her father, yet unable to reach him? The thought made her throat burn.

  To calm herself, Pilar drew the coin from her pocket. She dragged it over the ice leopard’s pelt, silver clinking against the glass like the tines of a fork. She poked the reinsdyr with her finger. The emerald eagles were green. No surprise there. The small red bird had no feathers. Unlike the other animals, he was made of hard stone.

  Pilar unclamped the bird from his marble platform. He was heavier than she expected. When she touched him, her pulse hummed, the way it always did when she sharpened her fojuen arrows on Refúj. The bird was made of fojuen, too.

  “Maybe Freyja wants us to lose our minds,” she said, more to herself than to Quin.

  “May
be it’s working,” said a voice that wasn’t his.

  Chapter 17

  Guttural

  FREYJA STOOD TALL IN the chamber, the door a shadowy outline behind her.

  “How long have you been standing there?” Pilar said.

  “Long enough.”

  Freyja cracked her neck, then her knuckles. Grinned.

  Anger churned in Pilar’s chest. She hated being trapped. Hated being under someone else’s control, unable to get away.

  “How long do you intend to keep us here with your dead beasts?”

  Freyja nodded toward the red bird. “I see you’ve been making friends.”

  Pilar slammed the bird down on the marble platform, wishing he would shatter. For Freyja this was all a game. A game Pilar had no interest in playing. She was done poking stuffed animals and waiting to be summoned by the Snow Queen.

  New plan. Escape this chamber. Hide out in Valavïk and circle back the last night of Jyöl. Find Snow Wolf, kill mother, be free.

  As for Quin? His fate was his own. She didn’t owe him anything.

  Pilar sized up the door, still visible in the wall. Freyja had come far enough into the room that there was space for a person to slip behind her and out into the corridor. Not much space, but Pilar was smaller, faster. Plus, she was coming at an angle. If she ran, she could make it.

  She charged. Feet moving before her mind could say no.

  Inches from the door, she made an instinctual decision. Why not punch Freyja? She’d been dreaming about it for days. One solid bone strike on her way out. A parting gift.

  Pilar pivoted. Swung her arm back and aimed for the soft spot behind Freyja’s ear.

  But she miscalculated. The guardswoman stepped back, swatting Pilar’s fist away like a moth—and shoving her off balance. Freyja crooked her elbow. In one swift move she’d snaked her arm around Pilar’s neck.

  “I admire your spirit,” Freyja said, as Pilar’s vision began to cloud. Orry, her fight teacher, would hold her in chokes just like this. She’d wake up dazed on the hard dirt floor, unsure how much time had passed.

  Pilar dug her nails into the guardswoman’s arm, but Freyja’s grip was iron.

  “Let her go!” Quin cried. “You’re hurting her.”

  “You’re making this harder than it has to be,” Freyja said. Her words held no malice—they were almost kind, which was worse.

  She let go. Pilar staggered forward, coughing.

  Freyja cracked her knuckles. “Your instincts are good. But you trust them too much. You should have run while the door was clear.”

  Pilar hated how weak she looked. To the head of the queen’s guard. To Quin.

  “I don’t—need fight—lessons from—you,” she gasped.

  “I think you might,” said Freyja.

  “I’m lighter—on my feet. I should be—quicker.”

  “You are quicker. But when you abandon your own strategy, the only opponent you’re fighting is yourself.”

  Freyja brushed her hands on her trousers. “Save your strength. You’ll need it.”

  In one move, Freyja swiped the red bird off the marble platform and hurled it against the far wall. The air glittered and hissed. Where the fojuen struck, the wall’s purple veins ignited, spilling in every direction like rivers of indigo ink.

  Quin glanced over his shoulder. Gave a start.

  “Pilar. Look.”

  She wheeled around. Both Freyja and the door had vanished.

  So had the wall.

  Pilar and Quin stood at the threshold. Or what had been the threshold a few moments ago. Now there was nothing but pitch-black space.

  Pilar stretched out her arm. Wiggled her fingers. Couldn’t see them for shit. The shadows gobbled everything after the wrist.

  “Where’s the hallway we walked down?” Quin asked.

  “Poof. Gone.” She yanked back her arm, more disturbed than she wanted to admit. “I told you Freyja’s been toying with us.”

  “I’m starting to come around to your point of view on that.”

  Pilar walked forward into the dark. Every step was a leap of faith—and one step farther from the room of dead beasts. The floor was slick, then coarse. Her boots bit into gravel.

  Rough dirt.

  “Pilar, wait. Could you slow down for one second?”

  She quickened her pace. “I was right. This is some kind of test.”

  The air grew colder. Pilar could see her own breath in white puffs. She had a feeling they weren’t inside anymore, but in a forest. The smell of pine needles confirmed it.

  Something cold and wet plopped onto her cheek.

  Quin let out a mangled laugh. “Is it actually . . . ?”

  “Snowing,” she finished.

  Pilar peered up. A fat white moon dripped over the tree branches like spilled milk.

  It wasn’t snowflakes on her cheek. It was melted moon bits.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t go any farther,” Quin said, uneasy.

  Pilar heard a sound like footsteps. Fast and light.

  “What was that?”

  He tensed. “What was what?”

  She was sure they were being followed. But then she looked over her shoulder, she saw only the room of dead beasts. A glowing white box floating in the black. It seemed farther away than it should have, like she and Quin had been walking for hours.

  “Nothing,” she said, even as a chill knocked down her spine.

  The ground shifted underfoot. She staggered forward, catching herself with her hands. The floor was no longer made of snow or dirt. Her fingers snagged on splinters.

  Wood beams.

  The room flipped upside down. Or at least she did. She was kneeling on the ceiling, the rafters casting shadows like a cell.

  Quin stared up at her from below. “What in four hells is going on?”

  The ground shifted again. Pilar clung to the beams as the room righted itself. She and Quin were back on equal footing. In the darkness she saw ribs. Bellies. A sea of corpses.

  She was kneeling on a lake of broken violins.

  “Quin,” she said slowly. “I think we’re inside our own heads.”

  “What in four hells?” He pointed at a cloud of black smoke in the distance. “Is that the ice kabma?”

  She tried to stand, then stumbled. Her palms smacked against cold skin.

  The dead Addi boy.

  He started sinking into the violins. She tried to catch him. To hold onto his shoulders, his hands. But the icy water sucked him down.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Pilar saw movement. She whipped around.

  “Leopard,” she said.

  Quin spun. The white box was still suspended in the black, the stuffed ice leopard at the center.

  But he was no longer stuffed.

  The leopard sat on his haunches, licking one gigantic paw. Long yellow fangs. Eyes narrowed into cold blue slits. He watched them.

  “You’re seeing this, too?” Quin whispered.

  “I saw it first.”

  The leopard dropped his paw to the ground. Pilar heard the click of his silver claws against the marble as he stepped over the threshold. His body one giant muscle. Coiled. Ready.

  “Run,” Pilar said.

  They pitched themselves into the darkness. But it was too late. The leopard was faster. In seconds she heard him at their backs. He let out a guttural roar—and pounced.

  Something warm and red spattered Pilar’s face, but she felt no pain.

  He hadn’t attacked her.

  He’d attacked Quin.

  Chapter 18

  Twisted

  QUIN LANDED WITH A thud on his back, pinned against the marble. Somehow they were back inside the room. His feet twitched and convulsed, the rest of him crushed beneath the ice leopard.

  Pilar couldn’t see Quin’s face. But she saw the dark red stains on the beast’s muzzle. Heard the wet sounds of teeth tearing flesh from bone. Smelled fresh blood.

  The prince was being mauled. He screamed so loudly i
t echoed in Pilar’s mouth.

  No. He wasn’t screaming. She was.

  Pilar charged forward with a feral roar. She hurled herself onto the leopard’s back. The barbed ice cut into her chest and belly, but she couldn’t feel it. It was always like that when she fought.

  She tried to hook her arm around the leopard’s neck, throttle him in a blood choke. Freyja had given her the idea.

  The beast reared and knocked her on her ass. She skidded across the marble.

  If Quin was torn limb from limb, she would never forgive herself.

  She got up and tried again.

  This time the leopard swatted at her face, his claws slicing open the old scar on her cheek. She reeled back. Howled in pain.

  She wouldn’t give up. Pilar bent her knees, shifted her weight to her lower half. She would save Quin. She had to. The prince was spoiled, ornery, infuriating . . . and he was all she had.

  “Pilar?”

  She spun around.

  Quin was standing behind her. Unbloody. Scared.

  She blinked. She had smelled his blood, heard his skin rip.

  “How did you . . . ?”

  She wheeled back around to where she’d seen him being shredded. In place of Quin, a reinsdyr lay on the marble. She was panting heavily, eyes two white orbs rolled back in their sockets as the leopard tore into her, jowls wet with blood.

  “Look,” Quin murmured.

  Pilar turned to where the other animals had been. The remaining two reinsdyr chuffed and pawed at the wall, trying to escape.

  “The birds, too,” he whispered.

  The emerald eagles were perched on the antlers of the reinsdyr, cawing.

  Had every dead beast in this room come to life?

  The room tipped like an hourglass. The leopard roared and split into a thousand shards of ice. The eagles screeched as they fractured into green teardrops and shattered on the floor.

  “Quin?”

  Pilar lurched forward, grabbing hold of him. Their eyes met. He was just as lost as she was.

  They held onto each other as the walls fell away.

  Pilar was standing barefoot in an icy stream. A dagger strapped to each thigh, bow slung over her shoulder. Red sand squelched beneath her toes.