by Ellie Cypher
The necklace, broken stone and all, burned hot in my palm.
CHAPTER 48 Breaking Darkness
Thank you, Ma. Thank you.
I shucked my gloves and began to tear desperate at the silver chain.
“Come on, come on,” I muttered. “There.” I pried the fractured stone away. Leaving the setting and its links. Together they were only half the size of my fist. My heart lurched. Would it be enough? I didn’t know.
“We need more.”
Without a word, Cody reached into his pocket and pulled out the silver compass. The words engraved in the surface flashed in the starlight. Could it be? I nearly laughed. Opening the top, he let the little coils of silver, parts of the broken compass, parts that had held something precious once, slide into his hand. Something from the North. We had enough.
I gave Cody’s other hand a hard squeeze.
Wrapping all of the necklace pieces around the jagged edge of my blade, I spiraled it around. The rest of the silver I handed to Cody. I pulled out the two leather pouches I had recovered from our things at Bass’s camp. The black and the white. The quicklime and the iron. Quick, I broke off a large chuck of stone bark from the tree.
I also broke off a long slender icicle from the lowest branch. With care, I upturned the pouch. A bright blaze of fire erupted, hot enough to force my hand away. Hot enough, I smiled, to heat the stone.
Snow melted into boiling water around where the bark sat, sprinkled in the iron ore. And then, the silver. Soft metal already, the shards of silver didn’t take much heat to become malleable enough. To liquefy.
When they were a twisted mixture of black and silver, smooth as oil on water, I plunged the knife into the liquid. The metals bubbled. The handle grew hot, but I didn’t drop it. Silver fused into the blade.
After a minute I pulled it from the mix. The thick blade of tempered steel dripped with the black of the iron and the molten shine of the melted silver. I plunged the blade into the snow at my side. It hissed something fierce.
I turned to Cody. He took out one of the shells from his gun, dumping all but the casing into the melt water at our feet. Deep breath—which I immediate regretted—I took the shell casing from his hand. And poured the remaining molten metal inside.
There were three bullets, one silver knife. It was gonna have to be enough. He had his, I had mine. Four chances. All we got. Except way I figured, it was better than most people ever got.
“Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” he replied, raising his gun and taking aim. Ready to cover me.
Outside the storm, Brenna screamed.
In among the bodies of the trees, Cody settled in, limbs digging into the snow and frost, body heavy. Bullets loaded, rifle raised, his sights fixed on the pair of women just outside the yellowed center of the storm. If I failed, he would take the shot.
This was it then. I pulled off my coat, set it on the ground. I did not feel the cold. Silver-coated knife in one hand, I made a rush for the waiting whiteness of the storm just beyond.
CHAPTER 49 Under Another Sky
I hit the storm wall at a dead sprint. It hit me back just as hard.
Air slammed out of my lungs, I stumbled over the threshold. One hand pressed to my chest, mouth gaping. I gulped bigger than a two-horned sculpin on land. But hitting that wall, it were like running straight into water, the thickness of the storm unforgiving heavy about my bones.
The cold tore at my skin, the wind licking at my lungs. Finally I took a jagged breath. Gripping the blade at my side, I ran on, legs pumping against the exhaustion, adrenaline plunging through my veins.
They were in front of me. Bren and Vela. They were both of them on their knees. Vela’s reed-like fingers gripping Bren’s bowed head. Black lines twisted over Bren’s skin. A kiss of darkness swilling in her veins, a contrast to the silver lines pulsing through Vela’s. Not unlike iron and ice they were.
Snow pooled around them, a twisted globe of white. I ran for it.
Ten steps away. Five steps. Three steps away. My heart beat an uneven rhythm against the slick lining of my chest. Vela chanting high and urgent. Screaming words into the wind. Words I didn’t know, but which Bren were repeatin, her voice breaking with disuse.
I flexed my fingers on the hilt of my blade. The metal colder than the plunging temperature around me. I dug my skin into the pommel, till I had no idea where my flesh ended and the handle began. Two steps away. One step away…
Vela’s eyes shot to mine. I froze. Not cause I didn’t want to move, but cause I couldn’t. A low laugh played across her distorted features. Her fingers never left Brenna’s head. If anything, Vela were even more beautiful than before. A burning star. She was radiant. And I wanted nothing so much as to stab my blade straight into her gorgeous beating heart. My muscles were aching with the strain of trying to just move.
A shot rang in across the ice. Right next to her, it grazed the shoulder of her silver gown. Vela’s lips pulled back in a snarl. The snow began to whip harder. Faster. One step away… my arm shook with the effort, but I wasn’t moving. Another shot. This one took her in the ear and she were forced to clasp a hand to it. Her blood didn’t freeze. Just sat there, slick and glistening.
“I will break this world, rip it fissure by fissure, before you will take this from me. I will not go back to that prison, not now, not ever again. I will have this body.” Vela whipped her head around as a bullet tore the air, the crack of ice singing in its path. I smiled. Keep it up, Cody. My heart cried, even if I couldn’t speak. One step away… one more.
Vela looked down at Bren then, my sister’s breathing ragged. A deep, visceral cry ripped through the air, tearing at the cold and haze and storm.
With a massive leap, Fen and Boz exploded out of the wall of snow and ice. Teeth and fur and feral eyes blazing. Great padded paws landed home and Vela crumpled under their combined weight, dispersing the snowpack under their fall. Snarls ripped through the air. They spun away into the wall of the storm. So too did Vela’s screams. Sudden as silt after a storm, I could move again.
I ran to Brenna’s side. I took her shoulders in my hands. Her head snapped up. Her eyes, near black in the pale sockets.
“Jorie?”
My heart stopped. I choked back all the anger and frustration and pain and tears. I spoke near as calm as I ever had.
“I’m going to get you out of this, I swear it. Just hold on, Bren. Hold on.”
The blue and brown of her eyes blazed, the black retreating to the edges. A shadow ran across her features. Scowling, I spun, heels digging into the snow, blade tight in my hand. And stalked to the roiling pile that was Boz and Fen and Vela. My soul harder than ice.
Boz sunk his thick yellow fangs deep into the meat of Vela’s arm. She let out a scream, tearing the dog from her skin. With impossible strength, she flung him from her. His body swallowed whole by the storm around us. His cries lost to the squall.
Panting, Vela got to her hands and knees. Around her, Fen prowled, darting in and out, snapping her jaws. Long lines of silver dripped from the pack leader’s gums, from where she had already taken pieces of Vela. Vela snarled.
“I will have the freedom owed me, my bargain is paid! Have I not suffered enough, is this not enough?” Tears ripped frozen down her porcelain skin, her hair wild as a squall raging about her, her face turned skyward. And yet for all of it, for all her heartrending screams hurtling into the darkness around her, the call went unanswered.
Vela’s face were contorted by rage. By pain. By loss. It were the nearest to human I’d ever seen her. And for the barest of moments, I believed her will were stronger than mine. That I would lose.
But it were only a moment. As with the next heartbeat a searing blast of pure resolve flooded through me, adding strength to my pulse and drive to my bones. No. She would not win. A flash of fur off to my left caught my eye. I ground my teeth against the cold and smiled. Cause, Bren and me, we mattered just as much. Not to mention Bass, all those people
back in the tent, their families, their lives.
Just cause Vela had been torn from her world, it didn’t mean she had the right to tear us from ours.
I looked at her this time and saw her. Not the fury and the anger, but the once-living girl, a girl who had to stand by helpless as everything she’d ever loved had been torn from her. As her sister and father and mother had been killed. Murdered by the very people she had called friends. And in that instant I understood why Vela had made that bargain. Why she had sold her life for the vengeance to which she had been owed. And honest, I did not know if I could say I’d have chosen different. And I knew then that it weren’t hate inside me for what Vela had become, but pity for what she had been. For the life she had lost. Sadness for what she had become. Dark, twisted. Lost.
Even Bass had it wrong. No survival without victory? That weren’t right.
Victory meant nothing without the people you loved. Because without love, without even the memory of it, there were nothing left to be victorious about. Even if Vela killed us all, if she found that vengeance, her own victory over the descendants of the people who had long ago killed her family, she would never be free. Not really. Not like this.
“Well, you are right about one thing, Vela.” I inched ever closer. “I don’t know that I can stop you. But I know I can try.”
Vela snapped her eyes to mine, her face a snarl of rage. And in that moment lines of black flashed under her silver skin, a mirror of Bren. Vela did not seem to notice the change. “You think I care what—”
But whatever I thought, she didn’t get time to tell me, cause Fen and I lunged at the same time, the dog from the right and me from the left. Vela had no direction to turn. I raised my blade.
Vela twisted away, as if she were the storm itself, ashen and mutable. Panic shot though me. I weren’t gonna land the blow. I was gonna miss. After everything, I was going to fail.
Sudden as thunder, Fen slammed into Vela’s blind side.
My arm fell.
The blade sank. Deep. Biting flesh and sinew and light.
The silver of my smelted blade kissing the very form of her muscles, snapping the fascia and tearing into the bone. Pressing it right up and between her ribs. Straight to her shattered heart.
A look of hatred turned sudden to shock. And confusion. Vela scampered back. Hands clutching to the handle of the silver-coated knife. Face scared. With a silent cry, silver cracks fissured through her skin. Breaking. Then, mouth open, silver blood spooling from her body like lines of starlight into a midnight sea, Vela simply ceased. Stopped.
Her shell just hanging in the cold, her parts sealed together by nothing so much as the memory of their closeness.
Her body just—dissolved. Skin and muscles, blood and bone, all scattered into a million flakes of ice. Perfect crystalline snowflakes.
Fragments of what they once were. Each one, one by one, were whipped up and away by the wind, scattering the pieces. Dispersing into the sky.
I stood motionless for a long time, staring at the hole where she had been. And seeing nothing. It were simply—empty. Vela gone.
A low whimper brought me back. I spun and sprinted to Brenna’s side. A moment later, Fen was at my side, nuzzling into Brenna’s outstretched hand. Bren’s eyes were clear. Her skin clean. She was shaking with the cold.
Cody skidded to our side. “Did you see… I don’t… is she?”
I nodded. “Gone. I sure hope so.” I placed my coat careful on Brenna’s shoulders.
“That was—”
Cody cut me off. “Brenna. I… I thought you were… that we all were…” He blinked down at my sister. “Dead.”
She smiled shy like up at him, her face, even in its ragged exhaustion, more alive than I’d ever seen it. She turned her smiling face to mine and squeezed my hand.
“No offense, Jor, but exactly who the stars was she? And who is he?”
Cody flushed a very, very deep crimson. It looked good. Matched his hair.
The three of us alone on the open Flats of the ice, I let out a long, long laugh.
CHAPTER 50 The Pulse of Morning
The world didn’t settle all at once. But settle it did. We gathered ourselves as the dogs limped back in, Boz included. The dark clouds slunk away, letting go of their grip over the sky, a last blush of night caught on the horizon. We had spent near an entire day in the heart of the storm. Under my feet, dense snowpack leaked into slush. Around us in the woods, icicles began to drip from the trees.
Deliberate, I lowered myself to Cody’s side. His eyes stayed unwaverin on the slow pull of the horizon. Breathing out and in. Somber. I knew that look. I knew it cause it were my look.
It were a reckoning. Untangling the grief and guilt wound tight about your roots. Smothering, even as the sun rose, as the world pressed on. As uncaring as it always were. I laid my head on Cody’s shoulder. He smiled and scrubbed a hand over his face.
Brenna were resting against the remains of the sled. The dogs tucked in tight about her, heads pushing under her arms, smiles big.
In the rising golden dawn, I counted my heartbeats. Counted the strong living beat that thumped inside. That resilient, wondrous beating. A tiny red miracle within all of us.
“Hurt ain’t all there is in this life, Cody. I may not know much, but I know that whatever lies ahead, I promise you”—I raised my eyes to his—“you ain’t gotta face it alone. Not if you don’t want to. Not anymore.”
I put a hand to my chest. As if I could feel it. The place where he had lodged when I weren’t looking. That place inside me that knew that whatever came next, we were strong enough. All of us. Together. Me and Cody and Bren.
“I know.” Cody gave me a shy smile as he stood at my side. The growing warmth of the sun flushing his face, catching on the curve of his cheeks and the familiar angle of his jaw. “And neither do you.” He put out his hand. I took it.
I know. Heat swelled at the back of my throat. I brushed the snow from my coat. “That’s right about enough sap for one day. Any more and we’re as like to drown out here as freeze.”
Cody beamed. Big and bright.
The certainty of its warmth—of his warmth—washed through me. I walked over to Bren.
She leaned on my shoulder, her breathing short and free.
Cody asked a question I didn’t right hear. I pointed. There, on a low branch, in the very place I’d stolen that skin of bark, was a wedge of green. He followed my stare. Bren must have too, cause she gave a little intake of breath. They all saw it. The splash of color cutting across the bleak stone. A leaf.
A sharp, beautiful slice of the most perfect color I had ever seen.
I began to laugh. Cody cleared his throat, running a hand through his terrible, perfectly perfect red hair. Warm and comforting, a sensation I weren’t right used to filled me. The swell of it slipped up and out my lips. And I smiled, a smile that burrowed into my bones. Cody gave a little shuffle of his feet in the slush.
Which made Bren, of all things, roll her eyes. I laughed again and enfolded Brenna in my arms. We stared all three of us out into the horizon.
“Where to now, Jorie?” Bren asked.
I smiled at her, wiping a soft layer of snow from her lashes. With my other hand, I reached out and grasped Cody’s. He gave me a half-turned smile, and a blush that had nothing whatsoever to do with the cold.
In silence we stared into the fading light of the sky. A soft flutter of snow coiled around us before arching up and away, disappearing into the distance. Overhead the fading white lights of a thousand stars blinked down on us from their dark river of blue as the rising sun swallowed the horizon whole.
“Home, Bren. We’re going home.”
Acknowledgments
First and forever most to my parents, Marybeth and Randy, the best parents a girl could ever wish for. Who have shown me that hope is the fiercest kind of strength any girl could ever have, that no dream is too big if you believe in yourself. Thank you. To my wonderful husband,
Quinn, who, no matter how cold and inhospitable the world around us becomes in real life, you somehow always make everything all right. I love you all. Thanks to my family, Donna, Maria, Marty, Bart, Patricia, Jessica, Bob, Ed and Verna, Rosie and Willard, Chris and Carollee, James and Ann, you are the best family anyone could ever wish for. To Jim, who reminded me that good people can persist in even the harshest of places. Thank you to my critique group, Amy B., Andrea, Amy S. and Cassie for being the first eyes, kind hearts, and wise sounding boards for my drafts.
To my editors at Simon & Schuster, Liz Kossnar, whose fierce championing of this world from the very start has made me more grateful than she’ll ever know, and many tears of thanks to Alyza Liu, who honed and sharpened this fictional world till it shone brighter than the Flats, you have my eternal gratitude. Many thanks and praises also go to Dainese Santos, editorial assistant extraordinaire. Thank you to my agent Rachel Ekstrom Courage and the entire team at Folio Literary who saw the potential in Jorie and her story and who took a chance on me before anyone else. Thank you all.
To my publisher, Justin Chanda, and the entire dedicated editorial and publishing teams, including Katrina Groover and Chava Wolin at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, I will be forever grateful that you gave me and this strange fantastical ice-covered world a chance. Many thanks to my copyeditor, Beth Adelman, for her hard work on this book. Thank you to my amazing cover designer Krista Vossen and the artist Lente Scura for bringing Jorie to life, as well as the entire design team at S&S BFYR for this stunningly beautiful cover. Thank you to Audrey Gibbons, Milena Giunco as well as the entire publicity and marketing teams who have worked for months to champion this novel, it means the world to me.
