Snow Like Ashes

by Sara Raasch

  Angra beams. “I thought so.”

  His hand trails down my horrible, traitorous face, giving away my emotions. As his fingers touch my skin, his image swirls. His face contorts, darkness pulls in, and the blackness of his throne room fades to a milky white. As it did when Hannah touched me, my mind’s eye pulls me into a memory not my own.

  A field of snow stretches into the distance, frozen white perfection beneath a clear night sky. The moon, a sliver against the speckled black of night, sheds light on a small gathering of men and horses. One holds a lantern that casts light onto the black sun breastplates of Angra’s guards. And Angra himself, his appearance unchanged from how it is now, sits on a thick warhorse in front of his men. He wears a heavy, black cloak, and his staff sits in a holster on his saddle….

  Angra tears his hand off my face. “What did you—”

  I stare at him, mouth half open. A voice in the back of my mind urges me to reach out, and I grab Angra’s hand with a strength I didn’t think I still had. The image returns, stronger now, as though I’m standing next to Angra on one of Winter’s fields.

  Hooves beat in the distance as three riders come toward us. They stop, the field around us empty but for snow and this clandestine meeting of Spring and Winter.

  Hannah pulls her horse forward and dismounts. She wears nothing over her gown but a blood red cloak, the flow of scarlet on snow a shocking contrast. “Thank you for meeting me.”

  Angra’s horse dances under the unspoken tension on the air. The guards behind Hannah hold weapons, ready to leap to their queen’s defense, while Angra’s men look furtively at their king for any sign to attack. But Angra just swings one leg over his saddle and dismounts.

  “How could I resist, Highness? Especially after your enticing message.” Angra steps forward, black cloak swishing through the snow. “You said you had a deal I couldn’t refuse.”

  Hannah folds her hands beneath her cloak and looks up, blue eyes shining in the weak moonlight. “I will lay down my life for my people.”

  Angra’s face flashes with shock. “No riddles. What do you propose?”

  The locket pulses white from Hannah’s neck before she speaks, her voice steady and sure. “I will let you destroy Winter’s conduit, and I will let you kill me.”

  “If?” Angra’s tone is mocking.

  “If Spring’s army never sets foot in Winter again.”

  Angra sneers, making my skin crawl. “This doesn’t have to do with how few men you have left? I know that our last battle left Winter weakened, but I never thought it would drive you to such desperation. Do you plan to make good on your end now?”

  Angra pulls a dagger out of his belt and shoves it against Hannah’s throat so quickly I barely see it happen. Her guards fly forward, swords out, and Angra’s men ready their weapons. But neither monarch moves, frozen knife to neck with each other.

  Hannah waves a hand at the men behind her and they back up. “Yes,” she whispers, and a gasp ricochets through them. Yes? She’s going to let him kill her now? But Hannah’s face doesn’t betray any fear, even with Angra’s knife moments away from slashing through her throat. “Does this mean we are in agreement?”

  “We are. But I wonder, Highness, how far your deal extends.” Curling the knife into his palm, he backs up. His eyes slide down Hannah’s body and linger on her stomach, his face radiating amusement. “You don’t know yet, do you?”

  Hannah’s hands move beneath her cloak, clutching her stomach as her lips part in confusion. “We have an agreement, Angra. We can end this!”

  Angra pulls himself back onto his horse. “We do have a deal.”

  “Then kill me. Break my locket and kill me. End this!” Hannah is pleading now, her red cloak rippling around her as she steps toward Angra across the snow.

  “Don’t worry, Your Highness.” Angra glares down at her, his green eyes flashing. “I agree to this deal. But I will destroy you when I see fit, when it causes you the most pain.”

  Hannah’s face collapses. “What do you mean?”

  Angra smirks. “You aren’t the last of your line.” And he’s gone, plunging his horse across the snow with his soldiers riding hard behind him.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  21

  HANNAH SURRENDERED.

  The truth makes it painful to breathe. Hannah handed herself over to Angra. In Bithai’s garden the night of the ball, Noam had been so certain that Hannah had yielded, and Mather had been just as certain that she had fought against Angra until the end. Noam was right, though. She did surrender—but not in the way he meant. It was a sacrifice, not helpless submission. A sacrifice like the one Mather tried to make for us.

  Tell me how to save them….

  In my dream, Hannah asked her conduit to show her how to save her people. Is that what it told her? That the only way to protect them would be to die? But she didn’t know she was pregnant, and that the end to Winter’s royal line meant murdering her son too.

  Angra’s staff barrels through the air and slams into my cheek, making my head smack into the floor and roar with electric fingers of pain.

  “You brought magic into my palace, general.” His voice cracks through the air like his soldier’s whip.

  Magic? Terror lances through me—terror that Angra will take away whatever magic source I have, terror that I could actually have a magic source at all. The stone? Hannah? Whatever it is, how am I using it? Hannah said she couldn’t speak to me once I got into Spring, that it was too much of a risk. Was it really the lapis lazuli then?

  Herod coughs a laugh. “Magic? She’s harmless.”

  Angra swings his staff at Herod and knocks him to the ground before whirling on me. “Whatever remnant of magic you have, you’re out of luck, girl.” Angra stomps forward and pulls me roughly to my feet. He makes sure to only touch my armor, not allowing skin-to-skin contact again. “Your weakened magic cannot win here.”

  Angra would never have been satisfied with ending Winter’s line, with breaking the locket, killing Hannah and Mather and letting us go about our lives. He wouldn’t have been satisfied until we are where we are now, his slaves, Spring standing on the fading carcass of Winter. Even Hannah’s sacrifice, something so much larger than anything I could ever do, wouldn’t have changed anything. But why? What was all of this for?

  “What do you want from us?” The question spills out of my mouth, shaking and feeble.

  Angra releases me, takes a step back. “Power,” he says like that explains everything.

  I shake my head, fighting the urge to collapse in gasping sobs. “Winter isn’t powerful! We’re nothing now.”

  Angra purses his lips like I’m a toddler throwing a tantrum. “Winter will not stand in my way,” he whispers half to himself. He nods at Herod before I can decode his senseless explanation. How are we standing in the way of anything?

  He’s insane. There is no reason for what he’s done, nothing we can do to satisfy him. And knowing that makes everything so much more terrifying, because it means there is no end to his horror. There is no box it can be contained in, no way to predict what he’ll do.

  He just wants to watch us bleed.

  “Strip her armor,” Angra tells Herod. “Rid her of anything she has.”

  I lurch back as Herod stands, grabs my arm, his face reddening, spit flying from his mouth. A rabid dog leashed to Angra’s wrist. He shoves his face into my hair, his breath warm and heavy from the battle and the long march to Spring.

  “I’ll teach you your place,” Herod growls as he undoes the straps on my armor, the mess of padding and dented metal clattering to Angra’s floor. I’m left in a stained cotton undershirt, tattered pants held up by a fraying leather belt, and my worn boots. I hadn’t realized how much of my strength lay in having a layer of metal between Herod and me. My knees buckle, my insides rolling over like a whirlpool.r />
  He’ll find the stone. He’ll take it away. Then he’ll destroy me.

  Herod’s fingers grope across my neck, my arms, trailing down my body as he searches for objects. His fingers leave numbness in their wake—until he brushes over the lapis lazuli.

  “Don’t—” I start, my body twitching involuntarily.

  Herod smirks up at me as he eases out the stone. I fling myself forward, my fist sliding through air, but he easily ducks my exhausted attempt at fighting and jams his arm back into me. I crash onto the obsidian floor with a dull thud, pain cutting through my elbow and hip.

  But none of that holds my attention more than the thoughtless way Herod chucks the lapis lazuli ball to the dais, where it clatters at the feet of his master. All I can do is stare at the circular stone, that brilliant blue piece of rock, and see the day Mather gave it to me. How certain he was that I should have it, a remnant of our lost kingdom. I never thanked him. Not enough.

  My insides crumble as Angra curls his fingers around the stone, closing his eyes for a moment as if trying to absorb its magic himself. He looks at me, a grin tearing across his face. “Was this the magic, girl?” he asks. “If so, it’s empty now. And if it wasn’t what you’re using, believe me, I will find the source and rip it out of you.”

  His words break my panic. It’s not magic? It was all just Hannah? One last vision before she has to leave me alone in Spring? Loneliness swells inside of me, cutting through every nerve, leaving me holding back sobs in the horrible nothingness around me.

  History, the past, whatever Decay Hannah fears—it doesn’t matter anymore. Because it’s gone, every bit of it wrapped up in Angra as he grips the stone in a powerful fist. There’s nothing left to help me now.

  Herod grabs me off the floor, the look on his face telling me he isn’t done yet, not this easily.

  Breathe, Meira. Don’t think, don’t analyze, don’t even react.

  Angra relaxes into his throne. “Not now, general,” he orders, and I freeze as if I know what he’s going to say. I do, don’t I? I’ve known since we first entered Abril.

  “Take her to them,” Angra hisses. “I want them to break her before you do.”

  Herod pauses next to me, his disappointment silencing him as he flings me around and the two guards march me back down the dark hall.

  The dusk sky seems bright compared to Angra’s palace, even with the light streaming into his throne room and the encroaching darkness out here. I blink it away and notice, heart dropping, that the Winterian slaves are gone. Only their shovels remain, sticking out of the dirt. I have a feeling I’m about to find out where they were taken.

  “Put her with the rest. Oh, and Meira?”

  I keep marching down the stone path, my body jolting with each step. I’m healed, but Angra’s magic made me unsteady, wobbling with each footfall like a leaf on the wind.

  “I will see you again,” Herod calls after me. “Very soon.”

  He laughs, voice fading as he returns inside the palace. The doors slam and the smallest bit of tension unwinds from my muscles. He’s gone, for now.

  The guards take me through Abril’s slums, the buildings getting worse and worse the deeper we go. Rotted wood collapsing into rooms, piles of rancid garbage littering street corners. Spring citizens watch us as we pass, smirking at the newest Winterian prisoner. But the lives around them—their collapsing houses, the dirt smudged on their children’s faces. How can they be proud of destroying one kingdom when their king doesn’t even care for his own?

  The soldiers and I reach a barrier of spiked wire that vanishes into the city. Its high walls cut off the slum from what I can only assume is a—

  “Winterian work camp. Welcome home,” one guard grunts, and unlocks the gate.

  It takes all of my remaining strength to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, as they close the gate behind us. These aren’t even buildings; they’re cells. Just like Herod said. Cages with three solid sides, a roof, and one gated door, small and cramped and stacked on top of each other like blocks a toddler spilled. Some are empty but most hold hollow, vacant Winterian prisoners watching with soulless eyes. They don’t care. How could they? Angra’s beaten any care out of them, left them to rot in these hovels until he needs them for work.

  The soldiers shuffle me down the long row of cells. Dust coats my boots, the wind sings in my ears like a desperate wail. Cages stretch for rows and rows, so many that my stomach aches with nausea again.

  Three other camps like this sit throughout Spring. Angra really did imprison an entire kingdom, enacted the worst dominance over his victims by turning them into slaves. As a child it was always impossible to imagine—so many hundreds of people locked away? But now …

  How did we let this happen?

  The guards shove me into an empty cell on the bottom row. There’s nothing in here, no cot or food or furniture. Just a dirt-covered space with a view of more cells across from me.

  “Don’t get comfortable,” one guard spits. “We’ll be back for you.”

  I glare at them through the bars, fingers tight on the iron. “Go ahead and try,” I murmur, but they’re gone, the newest Winterian slave already forgotten.

  I’m alone now. And I don’t have to bite my tongue or stay strong or not let them see me break. That sad freedom rushes at me, and everything that’s happened, everything I’ve seen and felt, bubbles up my throat. I back to the wall and slide to the ground, pulling my knees up and burying my face against them. The Winterians across from me are watching. They’re gaping and wondering and whispering, That is one who lived out there while we were in here. Why hasn’t anyone saved us?

  Because we failed. Because I let Sir die. Because our only ally is rolling in the desecration of their own kingdom. Because we only have half of Hannah’s locket, and it took us this long to even get that. Because Angra is so much more powerful than we ever knew.

  My shoulders tremble and I pull myself tighter, fighting sobs. Sir trained me better than this, but I don’t have any strength left to keep myself stoic and calm. Mather was always the one who was able to hide his feelings no matter the situation. And if Theron’s on the run, and Mather, and Bithai fallen, and Angra as ancient and evil as Hannah said—I’ll probably die in here.

  I force a soundless scream into the cave of my legs, gripping my hair and squeezing into myself. No. This isn’t how it was supposed to end—

  The lock on the door clicks, but I can’t find it in me to care. Let Angra come for me, or Herod even. There’s nothing else they can take from me.

  Feet shuffle in and the door locks again. Someone’s in here with me.

  A second passes. Two. Whoever it is kneels beside me. I keep my eyes shut, sniffing in the darkness of my knees, and stiffen when a hand unfolds on my shoulder.

  I look up. It’s the Winterians from the palace, the two men and the girl who got whipped in the dirt. She has the marks on her arms to prove it, jagged cuts caked in dried blood. But she’s smiling, a comforting smile, and light shines deep behind the bruises around her eyes.

  She drops a half-empty bowl of stew on the ground, forgotten in the way she stares at me. “You’re here,” she breathes like she’s just as shocked as I am. Like this is some dream come to life, and she’s afraid if she doesn’t say it, I’ll vanish.

  The two men sit behind her, their eyes on me, a dull flicker of interest hiding behind their wounds as they sip at their own bowls of stew. They’re more wary of me than the girl is, but the weight of their lives sits even heavier on them.

  I exhale, inhale, still unable to believe the girl touching me is real. They’re all real, and here, and alive. Seeing them from a distance was hard to accept, but this is impossible.

  The girl says nothing else. She sits next to me, our hips touching, and curls her arm around my shoulders. She’s so thin that I’m afraid I’ll break her if I touch her at all. But we just sit in silence, the men staring through the bars, the girl holding me or me holding her.

/>   As sunlight fades over the work camp, a small voice resonates from the back of my mind, something that makes the horrors not quite so overwhelming:

  You will understand how to use all this when you are ready.

  It really was Hannah, talking to me. And if she thought it was important to tell me about the past, to try to help me figure out something—then maybe there’s still a way to win this.

  The girl shifts. She’s asleep now, her head on my shoulder and her breathing slow. I lean my head onto hers and close my eyes.

  Sir and Mather and Theron might be lost, but the Winterians aren’t. And as long as they live, I’m not entirely alone.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  22

  THAT NIGHT, SLIPPERY, fleeting dreams suck me down like a hungry wave. Dizzy and disorienting, soulless eyes and faces from my past, and darkness, always darkness. From that blackness come monsters, clawing fingers and bloody teeth lunging for my throat—

  I fly awake, every nerve tight. But there are no monsters here. At least, not in this cell.

  My panic fades a little at the sight of the three people staring at me. The two men, both at least ten years older than me, and the girl. Her blue eyes gleam, set in a sunken, pale face, and she studies me like she can see my whole life story written across my forehead.

  “I’m Nessa,” she says, and points over her shoulder. “Conall and Garrigan, my brothers.”

  Garrigan nods but Conall keeps his eyes level with mine. His expression is a vibrant contrast to Nessa’s—she is open and willing, he is closed and decided. Decided, from the look of it, that I am just as much a danger as the Spring soldiers moving around our cage.

  It’s morning.

  I jump up, back scraping along the rough wall. Will Angra send for me? Will he let Herod torture me into submission, until everything about the past sixteen years comes tumbling out of my mouth? My chest fills with lead-hot pressure, pinching off air.