Snow Like Ashes

by Sara Raasch

  But today he casts off his fear, slamming his ladle on the ground in a shatter of clay. He races across the yard toward me, flying around the dozens of slack-jawed Winterians who stare at the still-settling mess of wood and dust and rocks, the debris interspersed with the bodies of Spring soldiers.

  All attention sucks to the boy, his little legs pumping over the ground, shouting as he goes, “Don’t hurt her! I want her to live—don’t hurt her! STOP HURTING US!”

  His voice rips into me, sharper than the knife in my hand, deadlier than the structure that just collapsed. I grip my chest, my fingers digging into the space over my heart.

  He’s going to get himself killed. Because of me.

  The soldier whirls as the boy stumbles to a halt in front of him. The boy’s round face pulses red in his anger, his hands in tight little fists, his eyes alive with fury. He snarls up at the soldier like that’s all it takes to stop an attack, and stands there, holding his ground.

  The soldier blinks in surprise before he reacts. I see it all happen in a flash of terror and I scream, a single word bursting through my confidence, through my satisfaction at killing so many of Angra’s men all at once, through any excitement I had in coming up with this plan.

  “STOP!”

  Nothing stops, though. Not the soldier, not the men beyond him, scrambling to pick through the rubble, dragging out a few still-alive comrades. Not comprehension creeping over me, showing me what I just did, what’s happening around me.

  I could have killed my own people. And now the boy will suffer for it.

  “Winterian scum,” the soldier hisses, yanks a whip off of a hook on his belt, and unwinds it in a single crack that sends the boy crumbling to his knees, ripping flesh from his brittle bones.

  “Stop!” I cry again, and lunge forward, but cold hands pull me back and the small knife flies from my grip, scattering into the dust. I yank on two Winterian men who hold me but they don’t relent, their faces set in determined glares.

  “You’re making it worse,” one grunts, and shakes me back. Even farther from the boy, who screams again, the whip’s cracking the only other sound to break his pain.

  “I can’t just stand here,” I bite back. “I can’t do nothing anymore.”

  I don’t regret bringing the ramps down. I don’t regret taking action. But I will always regret letting any Winterian hurt when I could help them, when I could have saved them. I’ve been selfish for far too long, and too many people have died.

  Tears spring to my eyes, blurring everything. The men release me when I shove them off and fling myself toward the boy. His back is a bloody mess now, thick lines of maroon running through a smear of scarlet red. I slide to my knees in front of him, cradling his white head as he holds himself in a ball on the dirt. Grabbing on to him like I should have grabbed the man, his heavy black rock pulling him off the platform, rolling through the air like a magnet getting dragged to its mate. Helpless and alone, falling and falling, left to die while a battle rages on around him, while I get thrown through the air by a cannon and Mather gets dragged to Bithai …

  The whip pops but I catch it this time, the leather licking around my arm and holding tight. I grab the thicker end and yank, pulling it out of the soldier’s hand in one flesh-biting jerk. The soldier’s eyes flash wide before he barks for help from nearby men, from other soldiers struggling between saving their comrades and the growing panic around the boy and me.

  I pivot to the boy, the whip still around my forearm. “You’ll be all right—” I start, but see his back. Blood pours down his sides from the ripped flesh, his ribs sticking out as white islands in a blood red sea. He doesn’t move, doesn’t cry, doesn’t do anything but stay curled on the dirt.

  My hands go to his head. “I’m so sorry,” I whisper, my forehead pressed to his matted hair. He squirms, a flicker of life in my palms. “I’ll make this better, somehow, I’ll save you.”

  This is so wrong. And I can’t change it, couldn’t stop it, made it worse—I did this to him.

  A chill turns my limbs to ice, makes my lungs freeze so much I’m sure frost puffs out with my breath. Everything about me turns to snowy chill, my hands freezing in a cage around the boy’s head. So wondrously cold, every fiber in me twisting like ice-covered branches in a forest—am I slipping away now? Is the horror of this pushing me to death?

  This is how I felt when Sir died. This uncontainable chill, everything in me going numb. This is how death feels.

  Soldiers break through the snowy vortex of my panic, their rough fingers grabbing me and hauling me up, yanking the whip off my arm and tearing me away from the boy. I pull against their grip, kicking out at them, fighting to get back to the child.

  The boy peeks at me from between his fingers, his blue eyes rimmed with tears and …

  Relief.

  He’s relieved. I gawk, not sure if what I’m seeing is real or some distorted image I want to be real with all my heart. My eyes travel past his face to his back, his back that should be bloody and gruesome, but … isn’t now. His torn shirt shows clean white skin gleaming in the hot sun, not a scar or a scrape or a single lingering cut. Like he was never whipped at all.

  The soldiers holding me notice it too. Everyone feels it, this moment, echoing through the Winterians as they’re filled with the same relief. He’s healed.

  A wave of cold slides through me, and I want to bask in it forever, let icy flakes coat my body, whisk me away to somewhere peaceful and safe. No one else around me seems aware of the sudden cold I feel, and I wonder if I’m hallucinating.

  The soldiers wake from their stupors before I do. Their hands tighten on my arms, fingers slipping in the blood that cakes my skin from where the whip bit into my forearm. They drag me away, through the crowd of Winterians who gape as I pass.

  She brought the ramps down. She healed the boy.

  A Winterian man steps forward. One of the many who looked at me with suspicion and hatred, who echoed Conall’s distrust of me. His face relaxes in a smile so genuine and pure I expect the entire foundation of Abril to shatter in two, and he lifts his arms into the air, tips his head back, and screams. His cry of joy is the shock wave that sets off the rest, the screams and cries rippling through the Winterians like their excitement had been building since the first post snapped. Spring soldiers look up from the bodies of their dead comrades, their fallen ramps. Their prisoners have never had such joy before. How do they stop it?

  I’m so lost in the euphoria around me that I don’t notice the guards dragging me back into Abril until the gate closes behind me. But even as the heavy iron bars drop into place, the cold in my body doesn’t dissipate. The Winterians’ cheers don’t fade.

  Angra can hear it, I’m sure. He can feel the shift in the air, the joy spreading like wafting flurries of snow through the Abril work camp. My grin returns, bursting across my face.

  Soon he’ll know the blizzard started with me.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  25

  THE CLOSER WE get to Angra’s palace, the more my relief and amazement fade.

  This is the moment I’ve feared since I arrived, when Angra will torture me into submission. He’ll make me beg for death until I tell him how I brought down the ramps, how I healed that boy, and when I don’t explain it—can’t explain it, at least not with the boy—he’ll make Herod break me.

  A shiver eats up my insides. No, I’m not afraid of Herod. I’m not afraid of Angra. I’m not afraid.

  But Angra will kill me before I talk to Nessa again. Before I can do anything else to help them, maybe even save them. And after seeing what happened to the boy …

  I want to dissolve in a fit of incredulous laugher as the soldiers pull me through Abril. The boy is all right. Even as I think it, shock chases away my need to laugh, snuffing it out like a candle getting sucked up into wind.

&nbs
p; How did I do that?

  Nessa, Conall, and Garrigan look up from their work in Angra’s garden as we pass. Nessa’s expression flashes from numb to panicked in two blinks, her body coiling with helpless realization. She surges toward me but Garrigan stops her, wraps his arms around her as he whispers something quick and low in her ear.

  Conall sees me too, his glare dangerously dark. I tear my eyes away from him before I can see his disappointment, before his eyes tell me I knew you would die too.

  I won’t die. Not today. Not after what happened, what I did, what I can do for them. But what can I do for them? I don’t even know how I did it, where it came from—I healed the boy.

  I healed him.

  “Leave us.”

  Angra’s voice ricochets around the throne room. A group of high-ranking advisors stands huddled around his dais, the black suns and gold trim on their uniforms gleaming in the filtered light from the holes above. They turn away at his command, all eyes falling on the battered Winterian girl two of his soldiers drag down the long walk to the throne.

  One of the advisors is Herod. He smirks and eyes his king like he’s asking for permission, but Angra’s voice booms out again.

  “I said leave us.”

  The advisors gather the papers they had scattered on tables around Angra’s dais and file out through various doors. I’m left draped between the two soldiers at the base of the dais. Angra leans back in his throne, one hand as usual clutching his staff. His green eyes are sharp and deadly, and he stares at me as if I’m a prized dog he’s considering buying.

  “Report,” he growls.

  The soldier on my right snaps to attention. “She brought down the work ramp at the wall and killed and injured many of our men. She also—” He stops, his eyes darting to my face and pulling away like I might strike him dead with just a stare. “She healed a slave.”

  My lungs refuse to let in more air, tightening like they know how hopeless it is to continue breathing. I don’t know what I am, what I can do, but Angra will torture me until he either finds out or I die.

  Angra stands. “Dismissed,” he says. Both soldiers spin away, the clanking of their boots on the obsidian floor fading into silence. The doors shut behind them.

  It’s just Angra and me now. Angra and me and the dull, empty thudding of my pulse echoing off the heavy black rock of the throne room. I tighten every muscle against any wavering threats of fear in the back of my mind.

  No matter what happens, no matter what he does, I am part of the bigger current of Winter, and that is something he can never take from me.

  Angra’s fingers playing idly on his staff. “Brought down a ramp, did you? And healed a slave?” His eyes shoot to me. His face is impassive, and that lack of emotion is somehow more terrifying than anything else. I surprised him. And he doesn’t like being surprised.

  Angra steps forward. He smiles, shaking off his small flicker of nothing. Composed, in control, analyzing me with taunting words until he can figure out what I did, how to stop me from surprising him again. “Clearly you have not learned a Winterian’s place if you think you can do such things without repercussions. But fear not—Herod will be more than happy to show you how a slave should act. Maybe I should have had him tutor you in etiquette from the start?”

  The mention of Herod is like a bolt of lightning on a clear day, sharp and jolting. I stumble backward, eyes popping open, and draw in a quick inhale of breath. Angra’s smile widens. He can tell he found a weakness.

  “Killed my men,” he muses, half to himself. “And healed a slave. It won’t take long to figure out how you did one, but the other? You came in with nothing but that stone, so what, exactly, gave you the power to heal someone?” Angra takes one step down the dais. “Has a little dead queen been helping you? Is she feeding you information in the hope that you will succeed where even her son has failed?”

  I gape at him. Hannah. How did he know—

  But Angra steps the rest of the way down, stopping close enough that I can see the anger lingering behind his expression, the threat of explosion should I press the wrong button or refuse to play along. “I see everything,” he hisses. “I control everything. I know she’s still connected to Winter’s magic, but I didn’t think she’d be stupid enough to use her power in my kingdom, especially for a worthless girl. You’re going to tell me what Hannah has said to you, how she is feeding you magic, then I’m going to squeeze every bit of that magic out of your body.”

  I swallow, my throat tight. The little boy’s eyes appear in my mind, so wide and awed and relieved, his small back healed.

  “I don’t know,” I whisper. My own words shock me. I didn’t mean to speak. I just—I did something. I’m powerful.

  “I think you do,” Angra disagrees. He lifts an eyebrow and looks at the orb on his staff. Darkness leaches out of it, one long string of shadow that swerves through the air, wrapping around his hand like a vine hugging a tree branch. The line of shadow uncurls from his hand and makes one great swoop through the air, wrapping in a wide circle around my head. Toying with me, taunting me with how close the magic lingers to my face. Its darkness plays off the distant columns of light around us, the beams of sun that fall down through the holes in the ceiling.

  I gape at it. I’ve never seen magic before. This—this isn’t magic.

  This is the Decay.

  “And I’m sure Hannah’s put some rather interesting bits of information in your head,” he continues. “I’d like to see what she’s been doing to you.”

  I’m panting now, the shadow hovering a breath in front of my nose. “All your power, and you don’t already know?”

  Angra’s face twitches, revealing his true boiling anger beneath his smug façade. “You were put in a cage with—who was it? 1-3219, 1-3218, and 1-2072. What I do know, R-19, is that my need to know what is in your head is greater than my need to keep them alive. Should I bring them here? Because I’m guessing you care whether or not they live.”

  I bite my tongue to keep from reacting. Angra’s forehead relaxes in a pleased realization. The shadow line pulses before my face, the manifestation of his threat.

  “Ah, you do care. I thought so.” He steps closer, too close, less than an arm’s length away with only the shadow line hovering between us. “You probably would also care,” he continues, voice a low purr, “if I ordered my soldiers not to bother bringing them here. If I had them killed where they stand. Or even better, if I let Herod torture them. Maybe I should—”

  “I’ll kill you,” I spit, and lunge forward a beat before flailing back from the swirling line of dark magic, my chest rising and hands clenching into fists. I can’t stop my frantic impulse to tear Angra’s heart out, but I know it’s useless; I can’t stop him from making Nessa or Conall or Garrigan Herod’s next toy, can’t evade that pulsing rope of darkness that inches closer and closer to me, until I’m afraid to breathe too deeply lest I suck it inside of me.

  “Will you? Because I think you don’t have a choice. No one does.”

  Blood pools in my mouth. I’ve bitten clean through my tongue now, the sharp lucidity that comes from that pain the only thing keeping me from leaping at Angra through the aura of dark magic. I focus on the pain, not on the cloudy line of darkness, not on Angra’s lulling words. His gentle, pulsing voice that sounds so calm, so sweet, until the meaning of his words shines through. Beyond us, the black obsidian of the empty throne room reflects the sunlight, watching us like a bodiless audience.

  “It is freeing, not having a choice. And after a while, people no longer need to be forced to choose certain things. Like Herod, for instance—he has taken quite fervently to the choices I make for him. He’ll enjoy destroying you.”

  Cold. Everything is cold. The world is ice, coated in thick, solid wonder, nothing but gleaming surfaces and clouds of frozen breath. I’m locked in it, a part of it, my limbs hardening into the jagged branches of an ice-covered tree, stuck in a suspended state of hibernation while the world freeze
s around me. My bones release with a grinding sensation, moving against the ice, shattering it as my body heaves forward, fingers curled in claws, mouth opening in a bloody screech when I dive through the shadow at Angra’s face.

  The moment the black cloud touches my skin, I realize my great mistake. Desperation opened my mind to him, and my defenses crumble as the shadow dissipates into my head, diving back into my skull and filling every crevice with a dusty and ancient evil. I pull to a stop, sucked out of the cold, cold, cold of the world and into my own heat-drenched torture. The shadow wiggles through my thoughts, dives into my memories, kicking around in my brain as I’m flung backward and forward uncontrollably.

  A flicker of Angra’s smugness returns. His power is in me now, pushing around my mind, nestling inside me like ink in books.

  You will tell me everything, I feel him say. The words are my own thoughts, greedy and deep, and I grab my ears as if I could pull him out of my head. Or I will let Herod have you first, then those slaves you were with, then every Winterian I own. I will make him kill them all.

  No, he won’t. I’ll stop Herod; I’ll kill Angra before he ever does that to anyone else.

  Faces and images from my past swirl through my mind as Angra sorts through my head—Mather and Sir, the Rania Plains, Theron holding me as we danced in Cordell. Snow falling, gentle white flakes dusting Jannuari’s cobblestone streets …

  Cold sweeps over me, wondrous cold. I’m standing in Jannuari, bare toes digging into the mortar between the cobblestones as flakes stick to my eyelashes, making the world glitter. Why am I here? It’s so cold, every nerve in my body tingling with the wondrously numb iciness.

  I know how to break you, comes Angra’s voice. I know how to break all of you who long so badly for what you cannot have. You show your weakness in your desperation.