The Ruin of Snow

by Lacy Sheridan

  He smirked. “None’a my business, girl, don’t worry. But if I were ya, I’d find a way to attract less attention. A pretty girl like you will get enough, but walkin’ in and payin’ in noble jewels…” He shook his head with a chuckle under his breath. “At least, if I was runnin’ from somethin’ nasty, I would.”

  I took a sip of my water to wash aside the nerves that laced my throat. “Not all girls travelling alone are running from something,” I said.

  “What’re ya runnin’ to, then?”

  What was I running to?

  Where was I going? I hadn’t worked that out yet. I just knew I needed to be far from my family, before things got worse. Before I became another victim of the Morningspell curses, a tragedy Acalta gossiped about for a week and then forgot. Stay away and figure out what I wanted. I had no other goal in mind.

  Even if he was no more than a stranger at an inn I’d never step foot in again, a passing ghost in the cold night, I couldn’t let him see that. I finished my drink, checked that my bag was strapped securely across my chest, and stood. “Maybe I simply like a different view of the sky every night.” I left him with that, abandoning my dishes and heading to my room.

  I didn’t sleep.

  I spent an hour ensuring every corner was reinforced with protection charms, breathing the words so nobody in the inn would hear them, and twisting leaves and stone into things I could carry with me when I left. Small defenses, but more than I’d had before. They’d be useless against my family’s determination, but they’d provide some protection against the unsavory types that’d be more than happy to target a lone girl.

  What they didn’t shield me from…The hair stick burned cold against my scalp. Sometimes I swore I could smell Desmond’s blood when I wore it, even though it’d been scrubbed and polished clean.

  I thought I heard his voice too, during that long night. Perhaps my mind was drifting halfway to dreaming, too tired to stay as alert as I wanted. Whispers of his voice reached me every so often, enough to make me sit up straighter and shake off the exhaustion, to check I was still alone. I always was.

  All night eyes pricked at the back of my neck and made my blood rush hot and sharp, though, between my senses and the magic circling the room, nobody could have been watching. When I couldn’t bear to sit awake any longer I lay on the scratchy, uneven bed and waited for the late hour to pull my eyelids close.

  The feeling of being watched didn’t ease in my dreams. I didn’t remember the images, but I remembered the feeling. Familiar and sinister, a sensation that formed a knot in the pit of my stomach. When I woke, I could have sworn to the Lady figures were standing above me. Silvery and warped but bearing faces I knew. Emilia. Desmond. Mother. But when the lantern sprang to life they were gone. Fractured figments bleeding from my sleep.

  I’d eaten a quick, plain breakfast, ensured there was no trace of spellwork in my room, and retrieved my stallion by the time the sun was beginning to break through the ice that had spread across the roads overnight. As I circled to the streets, the man from the inn, the stranger, stepped out the door, shrugging on a thick but well-used coat. We shared a quick nod, and then he spoke as I began to lead my horse back the way I’d come into town.

  “If a girl like you was runnin’ from somethin’,” he said, prompting me to stop in my tracks and listen, though I didn’t give him the satisfaction of turning around, “she might want ta take the forest paths instead of the main roads. And the view of the sky there isn’t bad, either.”

  I wondered if there was something I should say. But, I found nothing, and urged my horse on.

  After all, he was nothing more than another nameless soul passing through. Just like me. How quickly I’d gone from drawing every eye to myself to passing them all invisibly.

  It was better, I reminded myself. Witches didn’t need to be the center of things. Maybe I wasn’t Neyva Morningspell, jewel of Acalta, anymore. But I was still Neyva Morningspell—still different from them. I needed nothing more than the magic in my veins and the power in my fingertips.

  Except maybe the sky was worth something too.

  Nine

  I’d never ridden through the forest like this. I’d travelled along forests on occasion, in the comfort and safety of carriages with my sisters, and always in the summer. I was used to lush green growth all around, the chirp and scurrying of birds and squirrels when we moved the curtains aside to let in the sweet breeze. Warm and alive, pulsing. Now it was simply cold.

  The wind crept beneath my cloak and bit into my skin, the sun high above useless. Snow blanketed the ground, thicker than on the more travelled roads, my horse’s hooves sinking into it with every step. The crunch of his steps and the rattling of bare branches were the sole sounds. There was nothing to watch but my breath clouding in front of me and the endless parade of gray trees reaching for one another over my head like desperate fingers. When a scattered evergreen broke the pattern, providing a hint of color beneath layers of glittering frost, I enjoyed it as it fell out of sight. and my vision revolved to gray and white. Even the sky couldn’t muster a blue today.

  Why Tulia had painted this, I couldn’t imagine. She’d made it dreamlike, but the real version was empty.

  Beneath the emptiness, despite the sun high in the sky, I could feel darkness whispering, gathering. A primal kind of darkness, the darkness of blood and starvation and the vicious wild. Though I steered my horse on what few paths could be found beneath the snow, we were not in a place where humans ruled. But maybe that was fitting. I’d been a hunter among high society, and now I was where we had all begun, where the one law was survival.

  Not so different from magic.

  I glanced to the protection charm woven around my wrist, making sure it was still there.

  Another hour, perhaps two, of stifling cold and silence passed when my horse’s ears started swiveling. I didn’t let him break pace but listened as well, searching the quiet. There was a deeper kind of quiet; the wind had died. Nothing to cause alarm. I kept going.

  Roughly twenty minutes later, a faint, barely audible footstep in the frost stole both mine and my horse’s attentions. I stiffened on instinct. Animal, or something else? I couldn’t tell. The dead, frozen forest scenery didn’t change.

  I moved onward, on and on with no destination in mind but safety. Anonymity. Perhaps I would cross into the Northern countries, where mountains rose like jagged teeth and warlords ravaged the desolate land with their slave-armies. A witch could build herself a new army there, a new kingdom. Magic wouldn’t get her burned at the stake, and rumor said the Lady and her gods had abandoned that part of the world centuries ago.

  I could take a new name, find a faction I liked, and take over from the inside. I doubted any warlord would reject a pretty witch offering her services. Or perhaps I could build my own from loners and runaways, people who would kneel to me without question. No doubt one day, years from now, whispers would make their way to the noble squares in Acalta of the witch queen in the North, and my sisters, married to their Lord husbands, would bristle at the thought of my crown. A crown of ice and stone and blood.

  Except maybe Tulia. She would paint it, paint me on an obsidian throne, a fierce and exotic animal, a polar bear or snow-white wolf, crouching at my side.

  Or I could go South, where jungles ran wild and the women favored bare skin over corsets, where rivers steamed, and plants would eat one alive. There I could swim in the rivers or the salty ocean anytime I liked and take power from the damp, vicious ground beneath my feet, feast on fish and mangoes and forget the rest of the world existed. How tame Acalta was, really, with all its fighting done through crafted words. Not a suitable place for a witch at all. We were cunning, yes, and it let us rule the city, but was killing whores and petty thieves to save a few pieces of silver or a reputation the best we could do with our magic?

  Another whispered crack of a footstep severed my fantasies, and I stopped myself from whirling around to see who had caused it. I co
ntinued riding, my stallion barely pausing, though he remained as alert as me. The taste of blood touched the back of my tongue, but I couldn’t tell if it came from somebody else or the protection charm. The hair on my neck, beneath the hood of my cloak, smarting at the eyes on me.

  I had half a second to choose: face whatever—or whoever—was following me, or continue pretending I was ignorant of their presence and see what they did.

  My horse was too relaxed—alert, aware, but not skittish. Not shying away from the presence behind us as if it were an approaching predator. He’d lived with witches all his life; he knew magic had never touched him.

  That made my decision for me. I pulled his reins and looked to the silent, seemingly empty trees. “Well? Which of you tracked me?”

  For several long seconds, nobody answered me, as if I was talking to the empty air, but then she stepped into view, form rippling as the glamour that shielded her dropped. She might have been a floating shadow in the snowy woods; black dress, black boots, black cloak. She lowered the hood with black-gloved hands, but it wasn’t one of my sisters.

  “Katherine?”

  “I’m sorry, miss.”

  I couldn’t speak, staring at her. Katherine wasn’t a witch—there would have been no hiding it from us all the years she’d worked in the house—but I could taste the magic on her. She’d been glamoured, which meant a witch had cast it on her. I pushed my magic out to search for another presence but found none. “What are you doing here?”

  “I’m glad to see you safe, miss.” Not an answer, which meant she didn’t want to say. Someone had sent her.

  I ignored the comment. “How did you catch up so quickly?”

  She lowered her head. “I was told you would take a winding path to make yourself more difficult to find, but you would pass this way. Are you planning to cut up North? Join the barbarians?”

  “Perhaps I will. I don’t suppose it matters one way or another to you or anyone else at home.”

  Katherine picked at a drop of ice on the edge of her cloak. “I would be happy to see you there, if it’s what you want.” She said softly, almost pained. “But I must follow directions, miss. Please understand.”

  Of course she did, though I couldn’t guess what her directions were. Drag me home? I had thought once Mother knew I’d willingly gone, she’d be happy to let me go. If I didn’t stay and obey, I wasn’t worth anything to her.

  My blood went cold: that gave me my answer.

  Our father had ceased to be worth anything to her, and not a week later he’d been dead. A tragedy.

  Katherine wouldn’t look me in the eye, and I knew I’d guessed correctly. I fought the thin thread of horror creeping in me. Calm. Control. Just like always. It was the way to come out ahead in any situation. I swung to the ground, adjusted my skirt, and focused on her. “Are you to be my assassin, then?” She flinched at the word but didn’t speak. “How do you plan to do it?” Mother or one of my sisters might have posed a threat, but not Katherine. Whether or not she was armed, I could evade her easily.

  Her eyes shone with regret. “I’m sorry, miss. I don’t know what happened, but you were always kind enough. I don’t think you should die for it. But I’m only a messenger.”

  My magic tensed, like a warning, and I took one step back. “A messenger?”

  Her entire body jerked, as if it was on strings, and I braced myself. The air swirled with magic like it had in the house on my nameday, heavy and dark. Breathless.

  Katherine pitched forward, caught herself, and froze. When she straightened it wasn’t Katherine looking at me—her face, her dark eyes, but a witch’s distance in them. Cold power.

  I swallowed. “Sarafine?”

  “Hello, sister.” Katherine’s voice, but Sarafine’s familiar sinister-sweet tone.

  I’d never seen this done with magic. Katherine was a puppet, moving and speaking for my sister, Sarafine’s magic in the air. Chills swept down my spine, and I raked my mind for what to do.

  Neither of us moved, but neither did we look away from the other. “You sent a shadow-curse to kill me in my own bed,” I stated. Not a question.

  “A mirror enchantment?” she guessed.

  “Yes. You took no precautions against it. That was a child’s error.”

  “I didn’t expect you to be alive to try one.”

  I couldn’t resist a quiet laugh. “It took me one spell to end it. It was a weak curse. I expected better, if you were going to try something like that.”

  She made a face as if she agreed and wasn’t happy about it. “Mother insisted I not allow any stronger of an intent. I’m sure in the hope it would kill you slow enough to take your magic.”

  Taking a witch’s magic—it was a delicate and dirty move, but one the Morningspells had made more than once. I had my suspicions, based on all I’d heard of my grandmother’s death, that my mother had orchestrated a similar stunt to increase her power. There were rumors that those without magic could do it, should they want to make themselves into a witch and have the knowledge and courage to try.

  “That’s not a bad idea. Maybe I’ll take yours.”

  “I don’t think you’ll be in any condition to try, sister.”

  I spread my arms wide, an open invitation. I was tired of the circles, the banter, the game. I didn’t want the Morningspell fortune anymore, but if they insisted the one way to give it up was to die, they could do their best.

  I was Mother’s favorite, or had been a few days ago. We all knew it, and I knew how it grated under Sarafine’s skin. Perhaps we were near-matched in raw power, and our educations had been identical, but something had given me an edge over her for years, even after she’d taken her full magic. Whatever it was, I had greater faith in it than in anything else .

  “If you’re going to kill me, get on with it.”

  She tilted her head, watching me, and stepped toward the next closest tree. As if she planned to circle me like a wild animal stalking its prey. The gentle breeze lifted curls off her shoulders, and I imagined without Sarafine lurking in her eyes, Katherine would be like a mourning angel standing there. My own magic rose, preparing itself, though for what I didn’t know. A witch couldn’t attack immediately with her magic; magic required preparation, ritual. Drawing the power from the world to cast a spell took time. Despite one knowing how to do it quickly and effectively, like we did, it wasn’t instantaneous. Magic was, simply put, not a tool for battle, not in the way some believed.

  Yes, Sarafine might very well have been able to boil my blood or change my lungs to ice, but not quicker than I could stop her.

  Though in the same vein, I couldn’t use it to defend against her.

  When nothing happened, I swallowed another laugh. “I always thought you could work without books and scrolls, but maybe I was wrong.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “It’s a shame, Neyva. You have all the talent, but put it in all the wrong places. Child’s curses and rash murders.”

  I shook my head and started for my horse. “I almost wish I could see the look on Mother’s face when Katherine returns without my head, or whatever proof she’s demanded.”

  I heard the grim, triumphant smile in her voice. “Your heart.” I froze, halfway to my horse, and my pulse increased. “She’s demanded your heart. One way or another.”

  I turned gradually, drawing a breath to calm my heartbeat. So that was her plan. If I wouldn’t give it to Nalcai, I’d give it to Mother. “And what do you plan? To cut my heart out if I refuse your so generous offer to return unharmed and embrace my fate?”

  She shrugged a shoulder. “As Mother wishes, Mother receives.”

  Yet another way out. A quiet offer to come home and pretend this had never happened. Part of me shivered and almost relented.

  But then I looked at Katherine-the-puppet, into her dark eyes, cold and flat. What worth was a manor of gold and silver, unquestioned power, if I could only see it through eyes like that? Unfeeling eyes clouded by darkness?

 
Maybe mine were clouded by what tiny, weak sliver of light clung to me, but I shook my head. “I made my choice. Try to kill me if you like.”

  “Very well,” she murmured with another shrug, and then the forest erupted into chaos.

  The sky opened, snow and ice raining on me so suddenly I couldn’t move, my feet rooted by shock. The storm stung through my cloak, and I ducked my head when something sliced my cheek. I was blinded; the world was a blur of white. The snow beneath me shifted, rolling, and then struck my knees, soaking my dress. I hauled myself up and spun, searching for the spot of black that was Katherine’s dress, but ice nipped at my eyes.

  I closed them and slid the charm off my wrist, clutching it in both hands. “Rings of summer, hear—”

  The storm filled my mouth, silencing me. The cold ripped through my clothes, my skin raw and bleeding. My magic was frozen. Every breath felt like it was shredding my throat, my lungs. It felt like I was inhaling more ice than air.

  Lady above, what the hell kind of magic was she using?

  My mind reeled in a frantic attempt to find a way to take control of the storm, but I couldn’t. Couldn’t think a clear thought. I snatched at my hair, searching for the hair stick, but, an instant after my numb fingers closed around it, it was knocked from my hand. I couldn’t see where it went.

  “Don’t you see, Neyva?” Katherine-Sarafine’s voice sang with the wind, deadly. I struggled to raise my head and find her, a dark silhouette shot through with the tiny ice shards whipping in the air. “There’s so much you never learned. So much you never imagined.”

  I couldn’t draw another breath. Shadows danced at the edges of my vision, beckoning. She crouched to my level, only her fluttering hair and cloak touched by the storm. “So much potential,” she purred. “It’s a shame. Have a lovely sleep, dear sister. Perhaps they’ll find you in the spring, if the wolves haven’t gotten to you first.”

  My eyes fell closed, my body too heavy to hold upright. Like stone, distant and numb and unmovable. Behind my closed lids, flashes of shadow and ice and blood warred.