Tears of Frost

by Bree Barton

  “Stop!” Dove cried. “You’ll kill them! If you don’t coax them back the right way . . .”

  “Either way, they’ll be free.”

  Pilar watched in horror as one by one, the children fell. Six little bodies. Used. Discarded.

  But Angelyne looked calm. Maybe even satisfied.

  Lord Dove ran toward the flames. He tried to drag one of the children out. But then, suddenly, he let go. Walked obediently back to Angelyne. Stared at her with glazed eyes.

  Pilar knew that glaze. Angelyne had enkindled him.

  “There is a reason I have always loved the Addi myths, Lord Dove. Græÿa in particular. In these stories, the weakest become the strongest. The children become eternal Souls, creatures with the power to enact justice on those who hurt them.”

  The stench of melted glass was foul. Or maybe that was melted flesh.

  “People are far more powerful in their stories than in real life. Your story is that you are a good man. That you have done what you must do for the good of your kingdom. So you sought out the descendants of the Addi who suffered most. You took the weak and made them weaker, all so you could be strong.

  “But tonight you told me there is a reservoir of suffering inside us all. And if this is true, then suffering is not fixed. We have the capacity to make anyone suffer—and to create the imbalance that makes for powerful magic. Powerful fuel.”

  She held her head high. “As queen of the river kingdom, I would like to thank you for this generous gift. I am already able to make all those who oppose me suffer. Now I can use their suffering to become even more powerful. And that is only the beginning.”

  Angelyne waded into the broken glass and fallen bodies, unfazed by the smoldering flames.

  “For a man who touts himself a scientist, you have not been very curious. You believe the physical world is divided neatly into six elements, three counterbalances in perfect harmony. You are not alone in this. But you have invested so much time in the pursuit of balance, you failed to investigate the potential of imbalance.”

  Pilar watched her sift through the wreckage.

  “I have been working with stones as well, Lord Dove. Tinkering and toiling with the Elemental Hex you hold so dear. She who can tip that fragile balance is a mighty queen.”

  When she uncurled her fingers, the black gem nested in her hand.

  “Imagine my delight upon discovering there are not six elements, but seven. Much like you’ve discovered with Pilar d’Aqila, the final component—the one everyone overlooks—is the most important.”

  Sweat beaded on Dove’s brow. He couldn’t speak under the enkindlement. Pilar almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

  “Death,” Angelyne said.

  She stroked the stone. “The world is not black and white, good and evil. You think elements exist on perfect poles? Since when has wood been the opposite of wind? How does earth counter water? The Elemental Hex is a contrivance, a meager human attempt to understand a complex world. Death is the final axis, and it tilts your tidy elements askew.”

  She laughed. “Balance itself is an illusion. But how you people treasure it! Can you even imagine how fervently I will be cherished? The one person in all four kingdoms who can destroy peace, harmony, and life itself? And the only one who can bring it back?”

  Her blue eyes sparkled.

  “Of course this stone alone is worthless. A trinket for scaring children. To fuel it I needed a source of power forged through corrupted means. When one human is made to suffer at the hands of another, it pulls the very fabric of the world out of alignment.”

  Her grin was wolfish.

  “Now it’s time to give you a gift. We all have myths about who we are. Sometimes they just need a different ending.”

  She stepped forward. Held out her palm.

  The gemstone lifted itself on seven legs, rose off her hand—and crawled into Dove’s mouth.

  He screamed.

  Black smoke curled from his cheeks. His eyes dripped, bubbling out of their sockets. Nose crumbled. Blood gushed down his lips.

  “Goodbye, little lord.” Angelyne gave a wave.

  Pilar backed away. She had to run. Had to get out of there.

  But it was too late. Angelyne turned away from Dove’s melted carcass.

  “I’m sorry, Pilar.”

  Pilar tried to swallow. “Sorry?”

  Angelyne waved a careless hand toward the wreckage. “I’ll need to take one live conduit back to the Kaer so I can learn the process. It appears you are the only conduit left standing.”

  Pilar couldn’t move. Angelyne was enkindling her. Of course she was. She’d lied about that, too.

  “I’m afraid it will hurt very much. But you always wanted to be a warrior. Now is your chance.”

  Angelyne stooped and kissed Pilar on the cheek. “It’s only for a little while, beloved sister. Once my labs are up and running, I’ll set you free.”

  Pilar fought hard against the fog settling into her head. She wondered if set you free meant the way Angelyne had just set the other children “free.”

  “Let her go, Angie.”

  Mia Rose stepped out of the shadows.

  “Take me instead.”

  Mia stood with her fists clenched at both sides. Brazen. Cocky as ever. And—to Pilar’s astonishment—willing to take her place.

  “How sweet, Mi.” Angelyne sounded like she was talking to a child. “You want to sacrifice yourself!”

  “Pilar has suffered enough.”

  “You feel nothing. No pain. No anything. Not much of a sacrifice, is it?” Angelyne sighed. “I need someone with a deep well of suffering, and frankly, you are the worst candidate.”

  Mia drew the vial of sand-colored liquid from her pocket.

  “Unless I had an elixir that made me feel things again.”

  Something sparked behind Angelyne’s eyes.

  “Well done, Mi. You just made things much more interesting.”

  She leaned forward.

  “If we got the dosage right, I suppose we could make you feel all sorts of marvelously excruciating things, couldn’t we?”

  The fog was lifting from Pilar’s brain. She moved her jaw. Then her fingers.

  “You’re welcome,” Angelyne said to her, smug as ever. “In a moment, you’ll be able to run just fine. I’ll take Mia back to the Kaer, where she will suffer indescribably. But you will be free. You can start over. Make a new life. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Pilar’s heart knocked against her ribs. It would be so easy to run. Leave Mia. Even Quin.

  Then she met Mia’s gaze. Her eyes were light gray. Funny how she’d never noticed. Pilar expected her to look scared. Instead she saw a ferocity she recognized.

  She’d always thought of Mia as the enemy. The selfish, entitled river rat who had everything. Maybe Mia had been that girl. But they’d both lost so much. They’d trusted their mothers, struggled with the constant guilt of Karri’s death. And they were lonely, searching for a family they no longer had.

  In the end, maybe they weren’t so different. They were proud. Reckless. Broken. And willing to risk their lives.

  In other words? Fucking heroes.

  Angelyne was right about one thing. They had to make a new family now.

  “Should I help you choose, Pilar? Perhaps you’d like a brief reminder of how it feels to be lost in your Reflections.”

  She drew a red stone from the neckline of her dress. Pilar’s eyes widened.

  The ruby wren.

  What was it Freyja had said after Pilar and Quin emerged from the Watching Chamber? Nothing can harm you during the Reflections. Even I can’t reach you. What happens there happens in a space between.

  Pilar turned her head, noting the black walls with their purple veins.

  Just like the Watching Chamber.

  She curled and uncurled her toes. Back in her body. Back in her mind.

  The wren only shows the Reflections you ask it to.

  Pilar had no idea
if this would work. But she didn’t have time to wonder.

  Angelyne cupped the wren in her hand. He let out a shrill chirp as he stepped onto her finger.

  In one swift move, Pilar swiped him. Pivoted. Cranked back her arm.

  She let go.

  The bird soared through the air and smashed into the wall.

  For a moment, nothing happened.

  Then the purple veins ignited.

  The cave fell away.

  Chapter 51

  Hurt You

  MIA STOOD IN A forest of whitewashed bones.

  One minute she was in the cave; the next in the Twisted Forest. A light fog wisped through the swyn. She craned her neck and looked skyward, past the twisting limbs, expecting to see a canopy of blue needles. But as the elegant ivory branches swelled and intertwined, she realized they weren’t branches at all.

  They were ribs.

  The bones expanded. They heaved, fracturing, every rib cage splintering like wood. Overhead the sky shivered with viridescent light. The Ribbons curled and fell from the sky, serpents writhing at her feet.

  Mia gasped and leapt back.

  Her feet struck water. It slurped at her ankles, then her knees, sucking her down. Thick and soft, a viscous milk.

  Mia was dragged into the lagoon.

  When she struggled to lift her head above water, the snakes had vanished.

  Mia was naked, her body wrapped in thick gray fog. She ducked lower in the water, ashamed of her bare skin, not wanting the other visitors to see. But as she shrank back, they waded toward her, dozens of shapes weaving long, ghoulish shadows through the swirling steam.

  They were monsters. Beasts with clawed hooves and twisted faces. Moonlight glinted off their scales and pelts and mottled skins. Noses coiled into corkscrews, teeth forked into fangs. Ears blossomed into roses.

  Mia closed her eyes.

  When she opened them, the lagoon was empty. Water as white and placid as a swatch of oyster silk.

  She was shivering. Her bottom half toasty, top half freezing. She sank an inch lower, letting the silken warmth curl into the hollows of her collarbone, melting off every shred of cold. She inhaled deeply, recognizing the eggy tang of sulfyr.

  Silken warmth. Eggy tang.

  Mia gasped.

  She could feel heat. Smell scents.

  No sooner had she thought it than the lagoon dissolved.

  Mia woke from the dark into the dark.

  Terror clawed at her chest. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t see. But she didn’t have to see to know the shape of the wooden box.

  This time, she felt everything.

  The deathly chill coating her skin. The stench of mold. The taste of rot in her mouth. The sound of nothing, no one.

  Mia was shaking. She pressed one hand into her belly to calm her breathing; instinctively her other hand curled into a fist. But this time she didn’t punch through the lid. She was so heavy, so tired. What was the point? No matter how hard she fought, no matter how many times she lifted herself out of the darkness, she would always come back to the box.

  “What is this place?” said a voice.

  Mia gave a start. She wasn’t alone.

  “Pilar?”

  “Who else?”

  Pilar knelt in the dark corner, heart thumping in her ears. She’d done it. Thrown the bird and launched them into the space between. Her wild scheme had worked.

  Or mostly worked. Pilar had intended to bring them both to the forest of twisted trees. But at the moment they appeared to be in a wood coffin.

  Pilar had no clue what came next.

  “You just saved us, didn’t you?” Mia said.

  “Maybe. Don’t know yet.” Pilar inhaled, then gagged. “Did something die in here?”

  “I think I did.” Mia’s voice shrank to a whisper. “Sometimes it feels like I’ll never get out of this box.”

  Pilar reached out to touch the wood. Her fingers snagged on a splinter.

  “For once, Rose, I think I know exactly what you mean.”

  The box began to move.

  It tipped to the side, both their bodies thudding against the wood as the coffin toppled, then toppled again. Like a kurkits cube rolling from one side to the next.

  When it finally settled, Mia crawled to her hands and knees. The box had expanded. She stood, shaky. A candle flickered on a round table, illuminating four walls.

  She peered up to see a lattice of thick beams overhead. To her surprise, Pilar was crouched on one.

  “Where are we?” Mia asked.

  Pilar didn’t answer. She was staring at the shape of her body pressed into the dirt. She couldn’t look away. One indentation, two people’s weight.

  Pilar should have known better than to trust that filthy red bird. She’d never wanted to come back here, of all places. She wanted to be free.

  “I remember now,” Mia said quietly. “The cottage.”

  Pilar dropped from the rafters to the floor. The impact drove spikes of pain up both legs, her palms smacking the hard dirt as she fell forward. Gravel dug into the soft parts of her palms.

  The same old panic. The same searing shame.

  “I’ll never get out of here, either.”

  Panic wrapped its fingers around Mia’s throat. She didn’t know where they were, but they needed to get out.

  “We’ll find a door,” she said.

  But as she scanned the room, she saw there were no doors, no windows. Only the candle and a broken violin.

  Pilar stood. Brushed her hands on her trousers. “You know as well as I do a door won’t do us any good. These places are inside us. They’re stuck in our heads.”

  She kicked the violin, her foot connecting with a hollow crack. The instrument skidded across the floor.

  Mia blinked, then rubbed her eyes in disbelief. A shimmering hexagon of black ice gleamed on the cottage wall, right above the spot where the violin had hit. Was the hex there before? It looked exactly like the ones in Kristoffin’s underground torture chamber.

  When Mia saw dark images flickering over the surface, she rushed forward, ready to shield Pilar from the familiar scene.

  But she stopped in her tracks. The images were both familiar and unfamiliar. She watched, rapt, as Pilar’s story played over the ice.

  This was not the story Mia had seen in the cave. Or rather, she was seeing it from a different point of view.

  “Pilar,” she said, her voice soft. “Come look.”

  “No.”

  “Then can I tell you what I see?”

  Pilar looked warily at the ice from across the room. Her head ached. Her fists ached. Everything ached.

  “I already know.”

  “I don’t think you do. I wish there were some way to . . .”

  Mia stopped. An idea was stitching itself together in her brain. She reached into her pocket. Would she even have it? In this strange liminal dream state, she didn’t know what had come with her—and what hadn’t made the leap.

  Her fingers struck tin.

  “If you don’t want me to tell you, can I show you?”

  Pilar looked dubious. “How?”

  “You have to trust me. I’ll need to touch you, but only for a moment. I promise it won’t hurt.”

  Pilar felt a flush of anger, then shame. But she didn’t say no. To her surprise, she felt a tiny, guttering hope.

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Do it quick before I change my mind.”

  Mia’s fingers flew. Her idea would work. It had to. Nervously she pulled out the Jouma’s Brew. It only took a few seconds to heat the tin over the candle.

  “Close your eyes,” Mia said, slathering the paste over Pilar’s lids. “It’s warm, but it won’t hurt you. Now open.”

  Pilar opened her eyes.

  She saw a little girl.

  Chapter 52

  Alive

  THE GIRL LIVED ON an island in the middle of the sea. Her mother cruel, her father missing.

  So when two strangers lande
d in a red balloon, of course the girl mistook them for the family she had always wanted. She loved the woman who made her feel special. She loved the man who made her feel strong.

  Pilar had lived this story a thousand times. But for the first time, she understood it.

  Orry had tricked her. He’d used his power to make her weak and small.

  And this time, when the story kept going—when it reached the parts she knew so well—she didn’t look away. Strange new feelings collided with old ones. She felt compassion mixed in with the guilt. Sorrow tangled up in shame.

  “It’s over,” said a girl’s voice. She sounded very far away.

  When Pilar touched the ice, it crumbled to silver dust beneath her fingertips. She turned and saw that everything had vanished. She was in a blank, empty space, an endless wash of gray. But she wasn’t alone.

  Mia Rose was there.

  “It’s over, Pilar.”

  Pilar’s eyes blurred with tears. Mia was wrong. It wasn’t over. Nothing was ever that easy, at least not for her.

  “It was my fault.”

  “No,” Mia said vehemently. “You didn’t deserve what happened. It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But I didn’t fight him. I didn’t.”

  “Of course you didn’t. You were terrified.”

  Mia tried to think of what to say, well-crafted words of wisdom that were both comforting and profound.

  But what came into Mia’s head was a science lesson.

  “I’ve always loved the natural kingdom. As a girl I devoured every book I could find about animals. Even cut a bird open once to study the anatomy.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because we are taught that creatures do one of two things when faced with a predator: they run, or they fight.”

  “And I did neither.”

  Mia took a breath.

  “That’s just it. What most people don’t know is that there’s a third thing. Sometimes a bird knows she won’t make it if she tries to flee. And she knows that if she tries to fight, the bigger animal will tear her to pieces. So she chooses a third option. She freezes.”

  Pilar had gone very still. She was thinking about the reinsdyr in the Watching Chamber being gored by the leopard. The way her eyes rolled back into her head.