Tears of Frost

by Bree Barton

“Some of us embrace the full potential of the Elemental Hex,” he said. “We’ve learned to bend the natural balances. Others are afraid of the Hex’s power.”

  Mia wanted to be delicate and respectful; at the same time she was dying to ask him about his magic. This ability—to render an image on the page, then in someone’s mind—was new to her, both terrifying and exhilarating.

  “Do you know where the Hex first came from?” Zai asked.

  “The elements, I thought.”

  “There are different origin stories. Six has always been an important number in Luum’Addi.”

  “I imagine it’s why the frostflower has six petals.”

  “It’s the other way around. Because the frostflower has six petals, the number six became important. The bloom has special meaning to the Addi. It’s why I first questioned your ink.”

  “But the bloom is all over Luumia.” Mia nodded toward the crest over the fireplace. “It’s even on the flag.”

  “Yes. The Luumi thought the flowers looked especially nice when crushed underfoot by an ice leopard.”

  “Colonialism in a nutshell,” she muttered, feeling pleased when she earned a wry smile from Zai.

  “The number six isn’t only about the elements. It goes back to Græÿa.” He gestured toward her wrist. “May I?”

  When she nodded, he carefully peeled back her sleeve, his fingers grazing the frostflower inked onto her skin.

  “This symbol has been passed down from the earliest Addi. It’s the mark of the witch. One petal for each of her six children.”

  “Is that why the runes are supposed to guide children back home?”

  “Not just home—back to each other. The Six Souls are most powerful when they’re together. That’s how they survived.”

  “I thought they didn’t survive.”

  “Everyone has their own theories. I believe not only did they survive, they grew up to have children of their own, who had children, who had children. The lineage continues.” He broadened his shoulders. “I’m a proud descendant of the original Renderer.”

  Zai began tracing shapes into the condensation on the windowpane, etching a family of ghosts.

  “The Renderer,” he said. “The Flesh Thief. The Silver Sorcerer. The Warrior. The Wonderer. And the Liaress.”

  He wiped his misty finger on his trousers.

  “There you have it. The Six Souls of Jyöl. Take a look.”

  She stepped forward to examine the drawing more closely.

  “No, no. Not there.” He pivoted her gently. “There.”

  Mia inhaled sharply.

  Six figures stood in a circle across the room.

  The family of ghosts had come to life.

  Chapter 38

  A Mother’s Touch

  THE GHOSTS WERE ALIVE.

  At the very least, they weren’t dead.

  Mia stood in awe. “You rendered them.”

  “Hard to make a masterpiece on a wet window,” Zai said. “But good enough.”

  Their outlines were wispy and indistinct, like their smudged shapes on the glass. When Mia inched closer, she saw lopsided mouths, eyes gouged out of foreheads; their bodies lumpy and irregular, as if molded out of clay. Or rather, fog.

  Their shoulders rose and fell. Almost imperceptibly, but she caught it.

  “Are they . . .”

  “Breathing? Yes. I can make them breathe.”

  “But do they . . . I mean, are they . . . real?”

  “Depends on how you define real. If your eye sees something—and your mind believes it—does it exist?”

  Mia reached out to touch the closest Soul. Her hand slid through empty air.

  “I can’t make them material,” Zai said. “They live and breathe only in your mind’s eye.”

  “Phantoms,” Mia whispered.

  “They’re pictures. Nothing more. A trick of the aether.”

  The figures were beginning to fade, first from the glass, then the room.

  “What a remarkable gift,” she said. “Thank you for showing me.”

  “There’s something else I need to tell you, Mia.”

  She wasn’t sure she could take any more surprises.

  “I mentioned my cousin doesn’t live in Kom’Addi with the rest of my family,” he said. “That’s because she lives here.”

  “In Valavïk?”

  “Here in the palace.”

  Mia raised a brow. “One of the queen’s guards?”

  “Not exactly.”

  The realization struck.

  “Four gods. Your cousin is the queen.”

  “I wanted to tell you,” Zai said. “It’s just . . . I didn’t want to overwhelm you. You’ve had to digest a good deal of new information since coming here, and—”

  “Does that mean Lord Kristoffin Dove is your father?”

  “No, no. Other side of the family. Dove is her uncle on her mother’s side. Freyja’s father was Addi. Remember how I told you the late queen fell in love with a boy from Kom’Addi? That boy was my uncle. My mother’s brother.”

  He let out a long sigh. “My mother wasn’t happy when her baby brother took up with a Luumi woman, particularly a royal. She felt like he turned his back on who he was. Thought he was ashamed of being Addi. Some families might be happy to have an open invitation to the Snow Queen’s palace, but not mine. My uncle stepped into a very different world, and once he got a taste of it, he never looked back.”

  Mia was reeling. “No wonder you could afford a shiny new batch of fyre ice for your boat.”

  “I’ve never asked my cousin for a single coin,” he said sharply.

  “And yet you run her errands. Retrieving girls in White Lagoon and tricking them aboard your boat.”

  “I told you: I help Freyja from time to time. She’s a paying customer, and she pays well. But I’ve worked for everything I have. I bought my alehouse and my boat. The fyre ice came from Dove, yes, but I paid for it. I wouldn’t—”

  “Any more secrets you’ve been keeping from me? Just when I thought you might finally be trustworthy.”

  “Like I said: I’ve always had a foot in both worlds.”

  “That’s truer than you know. You speak ill of the Luumi royals who used fyre ice to fuel their excess—yet you seem perfectly happy to reap the benefit of those excesses.”

  Zai bristled. “I swore I would make a good life for myself somewhere else. A better life. But I also swore I wouldn’t be like Freyja’s father—or Freyja herself. I have never turned my back on who I was. I am proud to be Addi. Proud to call Luum’Addi my home.”

  He tapped his chest. “You’ve seen my fyre ink. The frostflower serves as a reminder of where I came from. But I’ll never let myself be poor and hungry again. I will never go back.”

  “If your frostflower is meant to bring you back to your family,” Mia said, “then it has failed.”

  The silence stretched taut between them like a rope waiting to be snapped.

  A hard knock echoed through the chambers.

  “Mia?”

  Her mother.

  He was already moving toward the door.

  “You finally got what you asked for,” he said. “Don’t waste it.”

  Wynna stood in her opulent chambers, staring out the window at the wind-whipped sea. She hadn’t looked at Mia once. Who was this cold and quiet stranger? Her ivory skin was paler than it had ever been in Glas Ddir. Less sunlight in the snow kingdom. Or perhaps her mother spent more time lounging in the palace while the queen’s servants fed her candied grapes.

  “So you live here now.” Mia’s voice was cold. “In your palatial chambers.”

  “I live here now,” her mother said simply. Something in her tone made Mia think the last three years had not been a merry cavalcade of parties and idle pleasures. The lines around Wynna’s eyes had deepened. She seemed thinner, her figure swathed in thick snow fox cloaks.

  “Are you cold?” Mia asked.

  “I haven’t felt cold in some time.” Without t
urning from the window, her mother asked, “Have you?”

  “No,” she answered honestly. “I haven’t felt much of anything.”

  “It was the same for me. And the fyre ink?” Wynna tapped her own wrist. “Did you feel it?”

  Mia realized her frostflower mark was still exposed. Self-conscious, she rolled her sleeve back down.

  “No.”

  “I fear this is the legacy I’ve left you.” Her mother pressed her palm into the glass pane, as if she were trying to absorb the cold. “The numbness. The endless gray fog.”

  Mia’s heart plummeted. You think your mother can unbreak you.

  Nell was right. Mia had traveled from Glas Ddir, stumbled through White Lagoon, hitched a ride with a strange boy—who turned out to be a lying smuggler—all on the desperate hope her mother could fill up the empty space inside her.

  Even as Mia’s heart sank, a piece of it lifted.

  At least someone else knew how it felt to be broken.

  Her mother’s hand dropped to her side. “A body without sensation is like a broken violin. Still beautiful, but empty without the music that made it sing.” She smiled a little. “Kristoffin taught me that. It’s an ancient Luumi saying.”

  “So you’re trading colloquialisms with the queen’s uncle?” The words spewed out with more vitriol than Mia intended. A moment ago she’d felt herself opening; now the drawbridge was hinging shut.

  “I think you’ll like Kristoffin.”

  “You seem quite at home here in the Snow Queen’s palace.”

  “They have been kind to me.”

  “Mm.”

  A minute in and they’d already exhausted all conversation. Hurt and hope warred inside Mia’s head.

  “All this time,” she said.

  “All this time,” her mother echoed.

  Slowly, painstakingly, Wynna turned away from the window. When her hazel eyes settled on her daughter, they were full of emotions Mia couldn’t read.

  “None of this is easy, my raven girl. For either of us. I don’t want to lie to you. There’s been far too much of that already.” She fidgeted with the pearl clasps on her cloak. “So much can happen in three years. I don’t even know where to begin.”

  “How about at the beginning?”

  Her mother gave a small nod.

  “Won’t you sit?” she said, motioning toward the snow plum vanity.

  “Why?”

  She gestured toward her daughter’s unruly curls. “For old time’s sake.”

  Mia didn’t want to sit at a vanity. She wanted her mother to tell her how to balance the elements and neutralize Angelyne’s moonstone so she could go get Quin. And of course, more truthfully, she wanted to know if she would ever feel alive again.

  But Mia was so tired. She pulled back the chair and sank into it numbly.

  “My little red raven.” Wynna placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. “Your hair has never been in greater need of a mother’s touch.”

  Nor have I, Mia thought. Nor have I.

  Chapter 39

  Fairy Tale

  MIA PERCHED WARILY ON the chair’s edge, her eyes fixed on the oval looking glass. She didn’t want to look at her mother. Didn’t want to feel the pang of knowing her mother was not looking back.

  “I don’t know how I lose these things,” Wynna muttered to herself, rummaging through a messy drawer stuffed with combs, pins, and brushes. “Here we are.” She pulled out a pearly tortoiseshell comb.

  Memories poured through Mia’s head of the nights she’d spent in the cottage, her mother patiently worked a tortoiseshell comb through her curls. It was all achingly familiar.

  “Do you remember the tangles you would get when you were a girl? You’d run free in the forest all day and come home with a headful of knots.”

  Wynna began to draw the comb through Mia’s ringlets, first delicately, then with more confidence. They were both slipping back into old motions.

  “I’d never dealt with curls before, not like yours. Neither of us knew what we were doing. You’d sit before the looking glass, clenching your little fists, while I combed out one tangle at a time. It took us hours sometimes. But we always managed. We’d work through every knot, untangle every snarl, together.”

  Mia sensed this was not only about her hair.

  “You’ve grown up,” her mother murmured. “As clever as always, and lovely, too. You have your father’s eyes. But you look like my mother, at least how I remember her. You were always more Wren than Rose.”

  Her mother tipped the comb onto one edge and dragged a straight line from crown to nape. Mia tried to conjure up the tingling sensations on her scalp; the warmth that had once sat in her chest, tight and cozy, while they swapped stories and spilled secrets.

  It was all gone. The easy conversation, the delectable tingles. There was only the cloak.

  “Tell me something I don’t know about you,” Mia said, her voice low and pointed.

  The comb stopped moving. “Oh, Mia.”

  In the looking glass, her mother looked so much like Angelyne. The hours leading up to the royal wedding bled back: Angie painting Mia’s face with skin greases, whipping her into a giant white soufflé of a bride, all the while knowing Pilar was poised in the chapel with an arrow ready for her heart.

  “I’ll go first.” Mia’s eyes bore into her mother’s reflection as the words bubbled to the surface. “Angelyne wanted me dead. Did you know that? My own sister tried to murder me—and your Dujia sisters helped her do it. Zaga sent her daughter to do the deed.”

  Her mother’s face clouded. “You’ve met Pilar?”

  “Who cares about Pilar? I’m talking about my sister. Angie wears your moonstone around her neck, but it’s no longer a healing stone. She uses it to control people, to kill and destroy. And if we don’t stop her . . . if we don’t go back to the river kingdom . . .”

  She didn’t finish. Her mother set the comb on the vanity, the uneasy clack of tortoiseshell against wood exposing the tremble in her hands.

  “I don’t expect your forgiveness, Mia. But I am asking for your compassion.”

  “I’m not sure you deserve it.”

  Wynna let out a long breath. “I knew you had magic. When we had our fight, I could feel it, even if you didn’t yet know. I was terrified the Hunters would discover you. I never expected your sister would find out first.”

  “Angie threatened to reveal you. You must have known she would reveal me, too—that if you stopped your own heart, there wouldn’t be anyone to protect me. But you did it anyway. You saved yourself and left me behind.”

  The words stung. Wasn’t that exactly what Mia had done to Quin?

  “I was afraid.” Her mother’s eyes glistened. “I panicked. There wasn’t time to make prudent choices. No Dujia wants to break the Second Law. But I knew your father would protect you. I had already entrusted him with my journal—he knew that, if something happened to me, he was to give it to you when you were ready.”

  “Ah, yes. Father, Hunter of Dujia. And a journal that led me to the fire kingdom, far from where you were.”

  “I thought I would be there! I was supposed to be there.”

  Wynna’s shoulders sagged. “We knew the river kingdom was more dangerous than ever, especially once the king began to suspect Griffin was no longer loyal to the Circle of the Hunt. Your father and I were making plans to flee—all four of us. But life rarely follows the plans we make for it.”

  “Father was going to leave the Circle?”

  “He was consumed by remorse. Even before the night Angelyne discovered my magic and threatened to reveal me, Griffin was beginning to understand the Gwyrach were not the demons he’d believed. We had long, honest conversations. I told him that if my life were ever threatened, I would stop my own heart.”

  She bowed her head. “It was your father who arranged for my body to be quietly removed from the castle crypt. He knew people in the snow kingdom. He knew the late Snow Queen herself. Here in Luumia, he goes by
a different name: the Snow Wolf. The legendary assassin, traveling between kingdoms to hunt. But your father no longer kills women like us. He has helped dozens of Dujia escape the river kingdom and find safe haven.”

  “He knew about Refúj?”

  “Of course. He helped you find it, didn’t he?”

  Mia thought of the journal her father had hidden in the train of her wedding gown. “So Father was secretly helping the very women he was supposed to kill.”

  “As leader of the Circle, he found himself in a unique position. No one was a better Hunter. So he kept hunting. Only, instead of killing Dujia, he ferried them to safety.”

  Wynna picked up the comb, running her finger over the teeth. “Your father is deeply grieved by his own deeds. For years he has done everything in his power to make reparations.” She smiled a little. “Sometimes people can surprise you.”

  Mia arched an eyebrow. “An understatement.”

  “It’s been a gift to watch your father become a good man. He comes to the snow kingdom once a year on the last night of Jyöl. He sails a ship into the harbor, full of Dujia who are seeking refuge.”

  Mia was floored—and it had nothing to do with the shipful of Dujia.

  “So Father’s grief was a fabrication. He’s been taking regular jaunts to the snow kingdom, sipping tea with his wife this whole time.”

  “Former wife. And it wasn’t a fabrication. Your father did lose me, just not in the way you thought.” She placed a tentative hand on Mia’s shoulder.

  Mia wished she could feel it—the softness, the warmth.

  “Was there anything either of you ever did,” she said quietly, “anything you ever told me, that wasn’t a lie?”

  Wynna removed her hand.

  “I know you’re angry. You have every right to be. We fed you a steady diet of lies. Your king, your father. I lied to you as well. It wasn’t your fault. Children are hungry; they eat what they are given.”

  She steadied herself on the vanity. “I didn’t want to stop my own heart, Mia. No one does. You of all people should know that.”

  “I don’t blame you for stopping your heart. You did what you had to do to survive. I blame you for everything after. For what you didn’t do. You left us alone in our grief. What happened to Angelyne . . . what happened to me . . .”