The Ruin of Snow

by Lacy Sheridan

  I wondered if he might test the theory, the way he leveled his probing gaze. See which of us was faster. Then he sheathed the sword and replaced it. “There’s a middle ground. When it comes to trust.”

  I shook my head. “People keep secrets.”

  “I don’t keep secrets,” he replied.

  I quirked a brow. “Everybody keeps secrets.”

  “Not everybody.” When I continued to stare at him, he faced me. “Ask me anything.”

  I took him in again. Every detail, from the little scar on his collarbone, visible where the collar of his shirt parted, to the way he always stood like he was ready for a fight, one foot behind the other. Every day brought more things I wanted to know about them—all of them, but Kye especially. So many things I didn’t need to know, but I wanted to ask anyway.

  More information was more information. It could help.

  Or so I told myself. He was offering it.

  “How old are you?” I asked.

  “Twenty.”

  “Is Kye short for anything?”

  “No. Just Kye.”

  “Do you have a last name?”

  “Not one you’d be interested in.”

  “Try me.”

  Those honey eyes searched mine. Prying. The others—they were cautious, wary, curious. They asked their questions, and I provided the answers that would keep them satisfied, half-truth and half-lie. Idris came closest to seeing through them, but he wasn’t quite there. None of them looked at me like this. Kye’s gaze dug into me and locked around my soul like a bird’s talons around its prey. Like he wanted to read every secret I had. He spoke, though his voice was a touch lower. “Emris. Kye Emris.”

  Kye Emris. I repeated the name in my head, committing it to memory. It was lyrical, fitting of someone who spent his time with ink and paper and the sky.

  “How did you lose your finger?”

  He rolled his thumb over the scarred end. “I stole a piece of bread.”

  “And they only took the end?”

  “I was under ten. Children get two offenses before they lose a hand.”

  “You didn’t steal again?”

  “I didn’t get caught.”

  “Your tattoos are from the North.”

  “That wasn’t a question.”

  “No, it wasn’t.” I traced the intricate knots with my eyes. The brutal tradition of the warlords; tattoo their kidnapped warriors so they could never escape. Not truly. “How old were you when you were taken?”

  “Seven.”

  “How old were you when you escaped?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “I didn’t know anybody survived ten years there.”

  “Not many do.”

  I pulled my gaze from his inked arms to his face. “What happens if you go back North?”

  “They kill me. Or try to.”

  Why would he tell me something like that? A former child-warrior would by all logic keep every detail to themselves. There was nothing for me to do with the information but use it against him.

  He wasn’t that stupid. I saw the cunning in his eyes—cunning like I saw in my sisters and my mother. Which meant his giving me these secrets was to push me in the direction he wanted. It had to.

  I’d play.

  “Why do the others call you Kye?”

  “It’s my name.”

  “They only call you Kye. Never ‘he.’ Why?”

  A shrug. “Should I be called ‘he?’”

  Every inch of him was male. “Yes.”

  “By what rules?” I caught a note of amusement in his answer, and it set my skin crawling with annoyance.

  “By the rules of language.”

  His lips flicked. “Call me ‘he’ if you like, Neyva. I won’t take offense. The others find avoiding it easier. But it’s not what I am.”

  “Are you telling me you’re a woman?” I folded my arms.

  “No.”

  I didn’t understand, and it wasn’t a feeling I was used to. “What does that mean?”

  “It means I am what I am. That’s all.”

  I stepped closer to him—them?—unable to pull my gaze from his—theirs? I wasn’t sure where to fit that information with everything else I knew, but I had never met anybody like Kye. Those eyes were an eagle’s, a fierce, jewel gold, amber and sunlight and liquid power. But Aurynn’s soft blue didn’t carry to her wolf, nor did Tamsin’s muddy green to his cat. No, those eyes were Kye’s. Completely, naturally Kye’s, no curse involved. “Why don’t you keep secrets, Kye Emris?” I asked.

  Kye shortened the distance with half a step. “There’s no place for secrets in this world. All they’ll do is get you hurt.”

  “I have to disagree.”

  Another step. “Why’s that?”

  “Because the more people know about me, the more they appear to want me dead.”

  Their gaze moved downward from my eyes. “That’s a shame, because I’ve been dying to know more.”

  “You’re welcome to ask, but I can’t promise an answer.” My mouth felt too dry. Stupid girl, get out of this while you’re in control.

  I stayed fixed to the spot, watching Kye’s every move.

  Honey eyes rising to meet mine, they said, voice soft, “Truth for a truth. You’ve gotten plenty of truths from me, I want one as payment.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “A secret.”

  “I don’t give out my secrets.”

  I could feel the heat of them, count their individual eyelashes. They held up a finger. It almost brushed my jaw. “You’re not afraid of what I might do with just one, are you?”

  “There are very, very few things I’m afraid of, Kye, and you’re not one of them.”

  “Prove it.”

  There was pure challenge in the two little words, quiet and deadly. A dare. I knew better than to react to it. Yet I wet my lips and wracked my mind for what to say. “When I was young I tried to ride a wild horse that Mother had ordered the stables to tame and train,” I said. “To see if I could. What it felt like.”

  Something tugged at Kye’s lips. “And?”

  “And looking into that horse’s eyes felt like looking into my own. Until she nearly trampled me.” I’d known it wasn’t safe to go into that enclosure, not on my own. But knowing the horse was there had driven me out of my mind—not from pity or worry, thinking of her pulled from the wild and shut up alone, but because she was wild. She was apart from Acalta. Different from the honed edges and clean perfection of my life, and maybe back then part of me knew something about me wouldn’t fit there.

  I didn’t tell Kye that much, but what I had said was the truth. I had found myself looking from the raging filly’s eyes, and for a moment—a brief, terrible moment I’d all but blocked from my mind—I’d known and feared the potential my mother loved so much, and the danger that lurked inside me. As the years passed I’d put it aside, the worries of a little girl ascending into her training. Now I wondered if I’d been smarter then.

  Silence for a heartbeat. Two. And then Kye pulled away and looked to the weapons. “Here,” they said, removing a sheathed knife from the collection and holding it to me. I took it. “Even if you’re already armed, it doesn’t hurt to have on you.”

  I tugged it free and noted the light and wicked sharp blade and then secured it to my belt. “Thank you.”

  “You know how to use it?” they asked.

  I didn’t—not well—but I could handle it during an emergency to buy myself time. I’d admitted that I’d killed without magic, there was no point in undermining the threat that implied now. “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  A pause as they surveyed the weapons, and I hovered behind them doing the same. While no fully stocked armory, the collection was sizable and served a shock, considering the circumstances. “Are you trained in all of these?” I asked as Kye pulled another knife free to check it.

  A flash of a fierce smile. “Every one of them.”

  Wha
t kind of training had the North offered? No doubt an unpleasant but effective one.

  I leaned on the wall. “How many have you killed?”

  “How many have you killed?” they echoed without missing a beat.

  That was a difficult question to answer, and a more difficult one to decide what way to spin it. “I don’t count them,” I settled on.

  Kye said, “Me, neither,” then took the larger of the bows. “Now let’s go set some witch traps.”

  The plan was to avoid magic as much as we could. Once I’d mentioned that witches could taste it in the air, Idris, Kye, and I had agreed it would be best to leave as few traces around the tunnels as possible. If my sisters did pass through in search of me, they’d go straight for any lingering magic. We were weighed with ropes and weapons as Rayick, Idris, and I waited at the entrance.

  Kye had gone ahead, using the last light before sunset to sweep the area from above for danger—with every day I got more anxious, ready for Sarafine to appear and have it done with—but from the way they landed now, not bloody and intact, I knew they’d found none. Dusk was almost faded, but their feathers clung on for a few extra seconds.

  In the short time I’d been with them, the shift to human wasn’t as instantaneous as it had been. None of us said so, but from the stiff looks Rayick and Idris exchanged they knew it too. If I didn’t work fast—or make good on my end of our deal—I was going to lose my allies to the animals hidden beneath their skins.

  Maybe I’d work something that could slow it.

  “It’s clear,” Kye said as they gathered their things, left near the entrance, and hung back to wait out the fading light. “A few animals, but they shouldn’t bother us. I doubt even the most desperate would come close to a group.”

  “My family could shield themselves from your attention. We should still be careful.”

  “Keep your taste buds alert for magic then, witch,” Rayick shot with a playful grin and started off. Idris followed, leaving Kye and I to take the rear. Nobody spoke as we walked and worked, laying ropes beneath the snow. Aurynn had given me a quick and brutal lesson in laying traps and snares, and we’d used her principals and adjusted them for humans. Nothing lethal, in case some unforeseen traveler passed through, but sufficient. Or so I hoped.

  They would be able to slow Sarafine or Mother down—tip them off that somebody was nearby, but better than them showing at our door ready to kill. I hoped they’d be focused on seeking and avoiding magical traps and not look too closely for non-magical ones. They were hunting a witch, they’d assume I’d use my magic, the greatest advantage we had.

  When we’d covered the area closest to the entrance, we split, Rayick and I in one direction and Kye and Idris in another. We stayed quiet as they went out of sight. The forest was silent but for the sharp call of a night bird or rustling of the wind. Rayick asked, “Do you really believe these will stop your sisters?”

  “Not stop them,” I tightened a knot. “But it will slow them. Either they’ll be caught in one and, Lady willing, we’ll have time to prepare, or they’ll sense them beforehand and move cautiously. Maybe think nothing of it, if I keep the magic off, and move on without bothering us.” That would be nice.

  “How likely is that?”

  I couldn’t stop a breath of laughter. “Not very.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  After another stretch of silence, he asked, never looking from his work, “Why do your sisters want to kill you?” If I may ask.”

  “Witching families are not known for our close sibling bonds.”

  I caught Rayick’s flinch, and he muttered, “That’s far from murder.”

  “Not in my family.”

  “What is your family?”

  The question no one had asked yet, but I knew they all wanted to. There was no hiding my noble lineage—they were bound to be curious as to which noble family had witches. “It’s better not to say.”

  “Would they be punished for your magic?”

  “Almost certainly. But they’re as innocent in that crime as I am. The only innocent one was my brother, and he’s long dead.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. He would have suffered growing up in that house.”

  “So that’s why you ran? Your family is awful?”

  I lifted a shoulder, focusing on my work. “Living in a cave with a band of…whatever you are is far safer than living with my family, let’s leave it at that.”

  “Nobility isn’t what the common people dream it is, is it?” Though I couldn’t see his expression in the dark, I heard an amused smirk curl his voice, “We tended to be whatever those with money needed us to be. Within reason, of course. We tried to do good as much as we could.”

  I paused. “Such as?”

  “Sometimes we protected people. Sometimes we enforced the law where it was missed. Sometimes we righted wrongs. Call us moral scoundrels for hire, I suppose.”

  I filed that into my mind. An interesting way to live—and not one I’d heard of before. I’d heard stories, of course, of thieves and bandits and killers who tried to do good. Those who stole from the rich to give to the poor, or who hunted criminals that slipped through the cracks in the city guards’ efforts. They always sounded false and far-away. Fairytales. “How did that happen?”

  “We all have a different story. Idris got sick of serving in Acalta’s guard and started it. Picked the rest of us up along the way.”

  “What’s your story, then?”

  He paused for so long I wasn’t sure he’d answer, and then he uttered, “I was a knight.”

  “A knight?” Cities held their own guard, like Idris had been a part of, and plenty of nobles families employed a small private one of their own—but the knights ranged through Selliira, noblemen who would never gain the wealth and standing of their fathers and so gave their lives to the royal family instead. Respect and honor rather than remaining unwanted and useless. “How did you become a knight?”

  “I’m the highest-born of us, aside from maybe you.”

  I snapped my attention to him. With his scars, his rough, strong features, I never would have guessed he was anything but common-born like the others, “How high-born?”

  Rayick shrugged, forcibly casual. “My father was a low-tier lord, one of the ones scattered throughout the country. I visited the noble squares once or twice. And I was his fourth son, before you think I had any sort of noble birthright.”

  Noble, but barely so. In Acalta there would have been scoffs and hidden laughter at his standing, but here I couldn’t say I wasn’t impressed. “Why did you leave?” I asked.

  A beat of silence. His voice didn’t soften, ringing genuine, but the truth in it was raw. “I was sent to the North—where Idris and I met. I saw hell there. Pure, unending hell. Villages wiped from the earth. People dying in the streets. Starving children. I can’t imagine how Kye survived. I realized after the first week that no matter how strong I was or how good with a sword, I wasn’t made to stand that. A month after I returned to Selliira, news came that my father had fallen gravely ill, and I was allowed to be at home until he’d recovered or passed. That was where Idris found me, sent word with his condolences and an offer to vanish with him. It was better than going back.”

  The story sat in the air as we finished the last trap. The minutes stretched but somehow they were comfortable, and I tied off the last knot and straightened, “You were wasted as a knight.”

  He looked away to hide his smile, and I understood there was no reason behind saying it other than that I was certain it was true.

  He cleared his throat and jerked his head toward the tunnels, rubbing his hands together. “That should be plenty to deter any murderous witches. I hope. I’m ready for a fire.”

  My fingers were numb as well, and I followed him . “It should give us an advantage.”

  “You’re the expert on witches.” He ruffled my loose hair with one hand, and I jumped on instinct, earning a loud laugh.
“Come on, kid. I bet Enaelle has some soup left for us.”

  Seventeen

  There was a strange mood in the air at breakfast. Kye was buried in writing and hardly ate. Idris cast both of us fleeting glances, as if he was waiting for something. Rayick, Wesley, and Enaelle kept the conversation as lively as ever and didn’t appear to notice that Kye had checked out of it. I did my best to relax and join but couldn’t hide that I wasn’t paying full attention. Aurynn and Tamsin were quiet as usual but watched the flow of conversation as if they hadn’t noticed Kye and Idris.

  All I could assume was that something had happened the night before when they’d gone off on their own. Something they hadn’t bothered to mention. Trouble?

  Nothing about Kye’s posture hinted at worry or anger—it was contemplative. I watched the soft, smooth strokes of their pen and my thoughts spun in time with it. Most of them revolved around what they were writing.

  “Where’s your mind gone, Neyva?”

  I blinked and moved my attention to Enaelle. “Oh, I was thinking.”

  She popped a thin slice of apple into her mouth, eyes bright. “About?”

  “The cure. What will break the curse.” The first thing to enter my head.

  No sense in disclosing my curiosity. What point did it have? What was it about Kye that made me wonder?

  Foolishness. It was foolishness that made me wonder. I knew what I needed to know. I knew enough to trust them to help, but to still be cautious and safe.

  “How is it coming?” Idris asked.

  I’d done nothing with it. Beyond gathering some ingredients that might prove useful, I hadn’t bothered to try much. I didn’t know if it would be possible to break it at all, and I didn’t know how it had come to be in the first place. Besides, all I needed was their help to be sure I was safe from the threat of my family. After that I could go on my way, and if they remained cursed it was their problem. But they didn’t need to know that.

  I forced myself to lift one shoulder casually. “I haven’t made much progress yet, but I’m working on it. Magic can be finicky.”

  Tamsin eyed me. “Are you sure you can make it?”