by Bree Barton
Dedication
For Anna, aw yea
Map
Author’s Note
Writing the author’s note in Tears of Frost was a given. I wanted readers to know from the very first page that the book would delve deeply into sexual assault and depression.
This time, I didn’t know what to say or where to start. In Soul of Cinder, characters are still processing the aftermath of assault and coping with suicidal ideation. Trauma does not vanish after one moment of connection, magic or no.
“How do I write an author’s note?” I asked a dear friend. “What should I even say?”
“Bree,” she said, “you’ve been preparing for this author’s note your whole life.”
She’s right, of course. I’ve spent my whole life seeking out meaningful ways to heal. This final book is really my love letter to healing, a story about finding your way back into the light. But there’s still plenty of darkness, messy and painful, the kind that doesn’t fit neatly into prescribed boxes. Which sounds suspiciously like real life.
I believe healing is personal, psychological, physical, political—and it always starts with doing the work. If we want to shift the shadows around us, we have to first confront the shadows within ourselves. Then we must find ways to heal that feel good and right to us.
Therapy, medication, physical movement, activism, creativity, storytelling, meditation, supportive friendships, safe communities—there are many paths to healing. I’ve included some resources at the back of this book that I’ve found helpful. Keep in mind that no two people heal the same way. If others tell you your way is wrong, remember that they’re not the ones inside your head and heart.
If it takes a while to find what works, that’s okay. Don’t give up. And when you’re in the darkest places, find people who will fight for you, until you’re strong enough to fight again.
Bree Barton
Epigraph
Flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone,
I give you my body, my spirit, my home.
Come illness, suffering, e’en death,
Until my final breath I will be yours.
Till the ice melts on the southern cliffs,
Till the glass cities sink into the western sands,
Till the eastern isles burn to ash,
Till the northern peaks crumble.
Promise me, O promise me,
You will be mine.
—Glasddiran wedding vows
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Map
Author’s Note
Epigraph
Act I
Chapter 1: Every Scrap
Chapter 2: Overboard
Chapter 3: Another Kind of Sweat
Chapter 4: Abandoned
Chapter 5: Split Open
Chapter 6: Unclenched
Chapter 7: Home
Chapter 8: Celestial
Chapter 9: The One They’d Come to See
Chapter 10: The Leading Man
Chapter 11: Poisoned
Chapter 12: Dirty Little Secret
Chapter 13: Ink
Act II
Chapter 14: Bloodbloom
Chapter 15: Muscle and Bone
Chapter 16: Starving
Chapter 17: Your Own Blood
Chapter 18: Uncomfortably Familiar
Chapter 19: Lying Slut
Chapter 20: An Impossible Life
Chapter 21: Espionage
Chapter 22: Something to Punch
Chapter 23: The Pretending Arts
Chapter 24: Freely Given
Chapter 25: Disappeared
Chapter 26: Everything You Touch
Chapter 27: Only Light
Act III
Chapter 28: The Last Drop
Chapter 29: Brialli Mar
Chapter 30: No Mark
Chapter 31: Completely Gone
Chapter 32: Back from the Dead
Chapter 33: GWYRACH
Chapter 34: Two Spikes
Chapter 35: Choked
Chapter 36: THE SMALLEST
Chapter 37: Aglow
Chapter 38: Nothing
Chapter 39: The Way We Say Goodbye
Chapter 40: Explorer of Worlds
Chapter 41: Remember Me
Chapter 42: The Last Son
Act IV
Chapter 43: Modalities of Healing
Chapter 44: Bloom
Chapter 45: Into the Hats
Chapter 46: Softer Falls
Chapter 47: Tomb
Chapter 48: Shattered
Chapter 49: Wide as the Sky
Chapter 50: The Greatest Love Stories
Chapter 51: Ignite
Chapter 52: Endless Opaline
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Resources
About the Author
Books by Bree Barton
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Act I
Once upon a time, in a castle carved of stone, a boy plotted murder.
Chapter 1
Every Scrap
QUIN WANTED TO HURT him.
From the moment he saw the man standing precariously on the horse’s back—his forehead sheened with sweat, wrists bound, a dirty rope noosed around his neck and tied to the tree branch above—Quin yearned to send the horse bolting. To hear the wet, clean snap of bone.
“Is someone there?” the prisoner asked, his voice a dusty croak. Quin wondered how long he’d been strung up. The mare seemed content to stay in one place, flicking her tail against the white flies.
“Please,” the man said. “If you’re there, please help me.”
Quin stayed silent, hidden behind a copse of swyn trees. His fingers ticked with restless energy. He still marveled at it, the twitchy heat in his hands.
Magic.
He no longer had the two stones: the red fojuen wren and the black wheel with seven spokes Angelyne had wielded beneath the Snow Queen’s palace. Death is the final axis, she’d said. It tilts your tidy elements askew. As the walls crumbled down around him, he’d almost lost far more than that. Somehow he had managed to stagger out of the palace, only to be buried moments later in an avalanche. Face crushed against hard-packed snow, arms pinned to his sides, the surrounding whiteness so complete it turned to black. He couldn’t breathe.
Seconds before losing consciousness, he’d felt his hands warming. All around him the ice lit with a smoky red glow. The snow began to shift, softening to slush.
Only when he had stumbled onto his knees, gasping, did he see the scarlet flames flickering between his palms. He had burned his way out.
The prisoner’s boot started to slip on the horse’s back. He caught himself just before falling.
“I don’t know who you are,” the man whimpered, “but I’ll give you everything I own. I swear by the four gods . . . the Four Great Goddesses . . . whoever you believe in.”
Whomever, Quin thought.
The question of belief was really a question of power. And power, it seemed, boiled down to magic. The real question he’d been asking himself since crawling out of the snow was this: Had the two stones given him magic? Or had it been lurking inside him all along? A quiet, growing power, even during his most vulnerable moments?
Perhaps it existed because of those moments. Since escaping the snow kingdom, he’d spent long hours recounting his litany of losses—including the first. The memory came in brutal slashes. The shifting shadows of the crypt. The coldness in his father’s eyes. His music teacher’s screams as Quin stood by, doing nothing.
When he thought of the horrors of that night, his palms ached with hungry heat.
No Dujia had
bothered to give him magic lessons. Why would they? They assumed he was powerless. Everyone had assumed that, his whole life: First his father, shaming and abusing him for who he was. Then Mia Rose, dragging him on an adventure he’d never asked to go on. Then Pilar d’Aqila, who had launched the arrow that nearly killed him—and the arrow that did kill his sister, Karri.
Of course, Angelyne Rose had rendered him more powerless than anyone. She had controlled him for months, hurt and abused him, burrowing into his head and heart so successfully that even after she’d stopped enthralling him, he did her bidding so mechanically she no longer had to ask.
If magic was born of a power imbalance—one person being stripped of agency in body, mind, and spirit—it was only a matter of time before he bloomed.
As Quin had risen from the avalanche that should have been his grave, he’d seen a boat sailing out of the harbor. He had only been able to make out three shapes, but he’d had no doubt to whom they belonged. Angelyne. Pilar.
Mia.
In that moment, he realized the truth. They had never loved him. Not a single one of them. The Twisted Sisters had chosen each other, and always would. Quin’s thoughts darkened as he watched them sail toward Pembuk, the glass kingdom to the west. They had betrayed him and left him for dead, thinking him too weak to survive. He wanted to burn them for it. He wanted to burn anyone—everyone—who had ever thought him weak.
And now, finally, he could.
“I beg you,” pleaded the prisoner, jolting Quin from his thoughts. “I beg you to have mercy.”
Mercy. In the old language, the word meant “reward.”
Through the prickly swyn branches, Quin scrutinized the man’s gaunt, pale face. Brown stubble cut a sharp contrast against his sallow cheeks. Strong chin. Bloodshot blue eyes.
Quin knew the face well. They were, after all, cousins.
He thought of another copse of trees, where he had discovered Tristan on top of Karri, attempting rape. It felt like a dozen years ago, and yesterday. Half feral with rage, Quin had barreled into his cousin to save his sister—perhaps the one true courageous act of his life.
Now he tapped his fingertips together, watching the thin red flame begin to flicker.. His aim had gotten quite good. Since leaving Luumia he had killed three creatures with a spike of fire straight to the throat. With the rabbit he’d felt a pang of guilt. With the ermine the pang had been smaller. Smaller still with the cwningen. Quin had cured the meat himself.
His cousin would be his biggest game yet. Not that Quin had any plans to eat him. Tristan’s death was its own reward.
Quin stepped into the clearing.
“Hello, Cousin,” he said.
Tristan’s face brightened for only a moment before twisting into fear.
“Qu-Quin,” he stammered, clearly wishing his would-be rescuer were someone—anyone—else.
The mare nickered, whisking the flies with her tail. She was growing restless.
“Please,” Tristan whispered. “If she runs, it won’t even break my neck. I’ll strangle.”
Quin had always had a way with animals. He could calm them easily with a gentle touch, a soft word.
He gave neither.
“Say something, won’t you?” Tristan begged.
Quin thought of all the things he could say. A passionate monologue regarding the depravity of his cousin’s soul, delivered to a captive audience hanging (literally!) on his every word. Quin had a gift for the pretending arts. As a boy he’d written, directed, and performed whole plays. Occasionally one or two of the cooks would make the trek from the castle kitchens to see the production, but more often than not, he was his own audience, alone on the stage.
What good had words done him? They had no power. They reeked of frailty, a lonely player hiding behind a soliloquy. Empty gestures spoken to an empty room.
“Goodbye, Cousin,” he said, and lifted his hands.
He could aim for the chest, cut a blade of fire into Tristan’s heart and kill him instantly. But Quin didn’t want instant. He wanted his cousin’s feet to slip. He wanted to watch the life gasp and gurgle out of him, this rapist to whom he was bound by blood.
The flame leapt from Quin’s hands. The scarlet arrow singed his palms as it shot toward Tristan’s ankles.
But at the last second, the fire arced upward, corkscrewing a ribbon of red sparks—and searing through the taut rope binding his cousin’s neck to the tree.
Tristan fell, landing sideways on the horse. He cried out in pain. Quin charged forward, but it was too late: the horse galloped into the forest, Tristan clinging desperately to her flanks.
Quin cursed his feeble hands. He’d been clear in his head what he wanted, focused on bending his magic to his will. Why had it failed him?
Deep inside his chest, a wisp of relief wafted through like morning fog. Despite all he had done, all he had been forced to do, he had yet to take a human life.
He felt a scorching sense of shame. The relief belonged to the boy he once was. The good, gentle prince of the river kingdom who would never wish harm on anyone—and who had paid the price. Quin resolved to find every scrap of weakness within himself, every pathetic speck, and burn it down to ash.
Next time he aimed to kill someone, he wouldn’t miss.
Chapter 2
Overboard
MIA COULDN’T GET IT right.
She had struggled, tirelessly, to understand the mechanics. She knew that this type of boat, with its single triangular sail—a lateen sail, Nelladine had told her—could not turn into the wind. She’d scrutinized the delicate maneuver Nell did with the long coconut ropes, loosing the eucalyptus pole, leaping across the hull, and swinging the sail from one side of the mast to the other.
Mia knew all the right words. In theory, she could apply them.
In practice?
“I can’t,” she said, shoving the rope into Nell’s hand. “I’m a lost cause.”
Nelladine sat easily in the teakwood hull, face tilted toward the sun, black braids coiled in a regal bun atop her head. The hint of a smile played on her lips.
“It’s all right, Mia. It’s your first time on a dhou, you’re not supposed to know everything.”
Mia plunked down sourly beside her. She was gifted at most things, and on the rare occasion she didn’t understand a concept or idea, she picked it up quickly. If you couldn’t do something perfectly, why do it at all?
“It takes a while to get the knack with the ropes, really it does,” Nell assured her.
“Maybe she’s more useful as boat meat,” said a voice behind them. “But high marks for effort, Rose.”
Mia glanced over her shoulder. Pilar was tucked into the stern, her favorite spot, hugging her knees to her chest. Grinning as usual.
“I should never have taught you that term, it’s not meant to be an insult!” Nell shot Pilar a disapproving look, then turned back to Mia. “Those”—she nodded at the sandbags lining the hull—“are boat meat. I am boat meat. Every crew member is ballast when you’re on a dhou, the whole thing is about balance. You’re always shifting as the wind changes.”
“It’s called trimming,” Pilar said, maddeningly smug.
Mia resented how easy Pilar was on the water, how she seemed to have absorbed Nell’s sailing lessons with no difficulty at all.
“You’re hardly bigger than a sandbag yourself,” Mia sniffed. “I imagine we could trim you right off the boat.”
“Behave yourselves, you two!” Nell admonished, though she was clearly amused. “I did always want a sister.”
“Sisters are overrated,” Pilar said. “All they do is try to kill you.”
Mia couldn’t argue. Considering this whole sorry mess had started with her little sister, Angelyne, sending an assassin to put an arrow in Mia’s back . . . an assassin named Pilar d’Aqila, who had turned out to be the secret first daughter of their father, Griffin Rose . . .
“On Refúj I grew up with hundreds of Dujia who were supposed to be my sisters,�
� Pilar said. “My mother always said the bond of magic was even stronger than blood.” She grunted. “The only thing worse than sisters is mothers.”
Mia couldn’t argue with that, either. She’d journeyed all the way to Luumia to enlist her mother’s help, only to discover she had no interest in helping. Wynna had turned her back on her daughters and started a new life, a new family, with the Snow Queen. And she had paid for it. She, like everyone else in Valavïk, had been buried under the avalanche.
As Mia studied Pilar’s face, a gentler emotion stirred in her chest. When it came to rough edges, Pilar was practically a dodecahedron. But why wouldn’t she be? The people who should have protected her, including her mother, had done unconscionable things. Zaga made Wynna Rose look like a slice of strawberry cake.
“I do have a brother,” Nell said.
“Really?” Pilar unfolded her legs, leaning forward. “We’ve been on this toothpick for the last month, and now you decide to tell us about your family?”
“Not a toothpick, thank you—I’ll ask you to show Maysha the respect she deserves.” Nell stroked the side of her boat, thoughtful. “I haven’t seen my brother in four years, not since I left Pembuk. He’d be fifteen now.”
Mia felt a twinge of guilt. Why had she never thought to ask Nelladine about her family?
“He would like you,” Nell said to Pilar. “He’s a fighter, too.”
Mia felt another twinge. Not guilt. Envy.
Perhaps it was inevitable they were grating on each other. They had, after all, been stuck on a twenty-foot sailboat, on a choppy and capricious sea, subsisting on a diet of fish, fish, and—would nature’s bounties ever cease?—fish with a seaweed garnish.
Mia’s feelings toward Pilar were complicated. Her half sister was truculent and ill-tempered; she loved picking fights and wore her sarcasm like a second skin. Pilar lorded over Mia her superiority in sailing, magic—just about anything.
Mia had spent a lifetime trying to decipher the world and apply that knowledge logically, like any good scientist. But long before she failed at sailing, she had failed to understand her own sister, which meant she had failed to recognize the plots Angelyne had set in motion. Mia had failed to understand magic, including the magic in her own body. She had failed to save Quin, sweet, innocent Quin, the boy she might have loved.
