The Ruin of Snow

by Lacy Sheridan

  The slants of sunlight were a darker gold when Kye broke the comfortable quiet in a whisper.

  “I was taken by Shadowfen.”

  I blinked, and then winched when what they meant sank in. I’d studied the little Northern territory as much as any of the others during my lessons, and I’d read and heard of the things they did. The vicious treatment of the people outside their borders, and the people within. None of the Northern territories were kind places, but there was a reason the other lords avoided Shadowfen like the plague. Of the children they dragged from their beds to fight for them, the stories said, few survived a year.

  Kye had survived ten.

  “What happened?” My voice was tight.

  They would tell me or not, their choice, and I wouldn’t push it, but from the way they stared at the clearing, the reflection of sunlight tracing their profile, they were going to. Maybe they needed to, after all these years, needed to tell the story to somebody, and I was the one here to tell it to. Maybe because nobody had ever asked.

  “It’s a long and terrible story,” they warned me.

  “I know.”

  They drew a deep breath and then began, their voice as velvet-soft as the sky, and I listened to every word. “I was born in a village called Orynx, just outside the edge of Shadowfen’s land. My mother was Selliiran, my father from the North. I’m not sure why they stayed there—they knew how things were—but they seemed happy. I always remember them being happy, even with the danger, the fear, the raids. Maybe because I was too young to know differently, but I like to think they were.

  “You know I was seven. I had a sister, two years older than me. I woke one night to her sobbing. A man had pulled her out of bed, pinned her to the floor. He had a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming while he…” They voice cut out, but I knew what they left unspoken.

  Nine years old.

  Kye blinked. “I tried to stop him. I hit him, I screamed, I did everything I could think of, and he knocked me into the wall so hard I couldn’t see. My sister ran. The man dragged me with him and caught her outside. He threw her into the street to be trampled by the horses, and threw me into a cart with the others they took. In the time before the doors closed and locked, I saw what they’d done—fires and blood, bodies lying in the street. I never knew what happened to my parents, and I never saw Orynx again.

  “They took us to a village—a camp, really—in Shadowfen. I know it wasn’t the only camp they had for us, but it was the one I lived in most of the time. There were some twenty or thirty of us there at first. I think the largest group got to about fifty. Some stayed for years, some for a few weeks. Some died the first day. When we arrived, they hauled us from the cart and lined us up on our knees in the dirt. One of the lords met us and said one of us was going to die then and there—to show us how generous he was. That he’d only kill one, when he could kill us all, or left us in our village to starve or freeze or bleed out. He had a sword, a heavy sword with a bear’s head pommel. Its eyes were red jewels, and I remember how they caught the light when he moved. He walked up and down the line, looked each of us in the eye, and swung his sword down on the head of the boy next to me.”

  The way they delivered it was—blank. Voice empty and hollow, and yet edged with something raw and ragged and broken. “The first thing they did was brand us. Dragged needles through our skin so everybody in the North—everybody in the world—would know who we belonged to. At the time, I thought it had to be the most painful thing in the world. It went on and on.” I looked at their arms, the swirling, winding designs. They weren’t simple brands—they were designed to take ages to complete. To hurt. “I learned better. The training came after that. If we let our weapons fall too low, we died. If we didn’t learn fast enough, we died. If we argued, even hesitated, we got a beating on a good day. Sometimes they would pit us against each other, to the death. We slept on the floor, barely with enough warmth to survive the nights. They fed us to keep us alive, but not enough to be strong to fight back. Once, when I was so weak I was afraid I would drop my sword in practice, I stole an extra piece of bread. Just one. I knew they’d take my finger for it, but it was better than dying. They left me in the snow after they cut it off, to take care of it myself.

  “But the worst—the worst were the battles. I would have lived all my life in camp if it meant never having to face another battle. I counted how many I killed the first few times. I thought somehow that would make it better, would redeem me if I remembered how many there were, if I remembered their faces and voices. I lost track after a while, and decided that knowing the number wouldn’t change what I did. I killed children, some younger than me, because I was told to. Because they would have killed me, and none of us had the option to lay our weapons down and agree that we didn’t want it to happen. Either some of us lived, or none of us. And I knew…after the first few weeks, I knew I had to be good at what they wanted me to do, or I was going to die there. I knew if I was good enough, I could live long enough to find a way out. So I was. I made sure I was the best.”

  I knew, without asking, that right there was what haunted Kye the most. Not anything the lords had done, no cruelty they had inflicted—the decision to survive at any cost. What it had taken from them.

  If witches had to sacrifice their hearts for their magic, Kye had sacrificed their soul. The jagged, gaping hole where it should have been was reflected in their eyes when they looked at me. The shadows ran deep, deeper than the ink on their skin. “How did you survive it?” I whispered. “Not the battles but—how did you keep the will to survive it?”

  Their throat bobbed. “Sometimes, when I didn’t think I could, I would climb to the highest place I could get to. I’d stand there, with my arms out and my eyes closed, and think about letting the wind push me over the edge. Either I would fly away, or I’d fall and be done with it. Enough of us did it, the ones who couldn’t stand it any longer, and it worked for them. Then I’d take the breath that I said would be my last, and I’d remember there were places besides Shadowfen. Places where it was peaceful and beautiful, where people were kind, and that if I could make it long enough I might be able to go there. I’d remember that if I died there, Shadowfen won.”

  I looked away before their eyes, the soft, raw honesty in their voice, led to something dangerous. “What was your sister’s name?” I asked.

  A pause, and then, “They didn’t like names there. We weren’t supposed to have them. We’d be whipped if they heard us call each other by name. One of the first days they tied me up and asked me my name, again and again, asked my family’s names, until I learned not to answer. I think sometime around then I forgot, so I wouldn’t answer by accident.”

  “You remembered your own.”

  A faint smile crossed their face, but it wasn’t happy. “I think my mother said it in my dreams. I’d wake up and whisper it to myself, as many times as I could before they came to get us, so I wouldn’t forget it, too. That was what I was scared of, more than dying, more than being hurt—scared of losing my name. I gave everything I was to them. My name was the one thing I had that was mine. On the worst days, I could daydream that mine would be the last name the warlords would think before they died.”

  A surge of warmth rose through me, chasing the chill from my fingertips. I smiled, even as my throat tightened. “Did you ever make that happen?”

  “No. I’ve thought about it—going back and somehow putting an end to it. Getting some kind of revenge for myself and the other children they’ve taken. But I was lucky to get out alive the first time. I suppose, like you said, I prefer clear skies now. I’ve seen enough of the North for a lifetime.”

  Kye lifted a hand, brushing the back of one warm finger across my cheek. I blinked at the touch, at how it singed me.

  “You’re crying.”

  It was the simplest, and yet the most startling thing they could have said. I swiped at my eyes, but Kye continued. “I didn’t tell you to make you cry. I don’t want symp
athy, I just wanted…”

  I drew a steadying breath and met their eyes. “Wanted what?” I asked.

  They searched my face, eyes wide and shadowed, dark but almost glowing. “I wanted you to know. What was done to me. What I did.”

  “Why me?”

  “Because you’re the one here. The convenient choice,” they said.

  It was the first lie Kye had ever said to me. It meant volumes more than the truth.

  Maybe they knew that.

  “What was it like,” they asked, “to be raised in the noble squares? It struck me as a cold place when I was there.”

  “It is,” I admitted. “Cold and ruthless, a different kind than in the North. The fighting is done with words and gold and magic.”

  “There are other witches there?”

  “More than most would think.”

  “What else?”

  “It…” I took a deep breath. So many things I could say, good and bad. I loosened the words that had never left the darkest corners of my mind. “When you’re born noble, your life isn’t your own. Especially if you’re a woman…or a witch. You’re meant to do as you’re told, to be married, to bear children, to serve. If you’re a witch, all you get is a choice of what kind of puppet to be.”

  “That’s no choice.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s not.”

  “What kind of puppet were you?”

  I closed my eyes as I thought. Had to count my breaths and choose my words. “Shadowfen and Acalta aren’t so different, in some ways,” I said, my voice a breath. “I was the best puppet of them all.”

  “But you got out, too.” It wasn’t a question, but I shook my head.

  “There’s no getting out, not when you’re someone like me. There’s only holding off the inevitable.”

  “It’s inevitable that they’ll beat you? Drag you back or kill you?”

  Days ago I would have scoffed at the idea. Would have told them without a shred of doubt that nothing would ever beat me. But now I couldn’t say. Not really. I murmured, “It may be.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “What do you believe, then, Kye?”

  “I believe that you’re the kind of person to see the strings they put on you and rip them to shreds every time.”

  I’d lived with those strings for eighteen years and never seen them. But maybe I could try to be that person. I wondered what Kye saw in my eyes. Every day I found something new in theirs, every day I searched them, but I’d never thought until now, now that they were looking at me like I was the one person in the world, that maybe they were searching, too. “I hope I am.”

  Twenty-Two

  I knew something was wrong when I awoke. I knew the heavy feeling in the air—the deathly-still feeling that had persisted for days. But nothing happened at breakfast.

  Nothing happened when Aurynn and Rayick went to hunt an hour later.

  Nothing happened when Wesley vanished, off on one of his hunts for entertainment in the forest.

  Nothing happened when Idris and Kye left to check for signs of people passing through.

  I could have practiced. I should have; I’d slacked off for hours yesterday with Kye. I couldn’t bring myself to. Half of me felt the lingering warmth of Kye sitting beside me, much as I tried to cool it, and the other half was knotted with apprehension. I sat on my bed, turning a bone over and over and wondering what in the Lady’s name was wrong with me.

  I was Neyva Morningspell, one of the deadliest witches in Acalta. I was too quickly losing my head over a cursed Northern warrior.

  A warrior who had broken and been sealed together with sunlight and wind and ink.

  I was smiling at the hare’s bone when the shout reached me. “Neyva!”

  The warmth vanished, worry taking over. I closed my eyes, breathing in the too-still air, and braced myself. Whatever I felt for Kye wouldn’t solve what was coming, and I needed to put it out of my head.

  It had been coming for days. I’d known, so why did I hesitate to cross that safe barrier?

  “Neyva!”

  Tamsin met me in the tunnels, panting, his face flushed from the cold, eyes wide and panicked. “They’re sprung.”

  I stared at him, lost. “What?”

  “Your traps.” My heart stopped, Kye vanishing from my head. “They’re sprung.”

  “By animals?” My voice came out with none of the calm authority I’d intended, and my pulse echoed the question.

  Animals. Animals. Please, animals.

  Tamsin shook his head. “I didn’t see or smell any.”

  “How many are sprung?”

  His voice wavered. “All of them.”

  My head was too light. Stupid, stupid girl, what have you gotten yourself into? Letting yourself get distracted? Forgetting what you’re really doing here?

  No more. This wasn’t a game; I saw the fear in Tamsin’s eyes, felt the eager shifting of the magic in my chest. Something was very, very wrong, and I ensured my knife was secure on my belt before bolting past him toward the makeshift armory. He followed. “Where are Rayick and Idris?” he asked as I snatched two more knives and studied one of the swords. Could I use it effectively, or would it be a hindrance?

  “Out. So is Kye.”

  Curse them. Curse my luck. I’d said that storms brought trouble, and the air had been nothing but a warning since. I should never have let myself think about anything else.

  “And Aurynn?” he guessed.

  “Yes,” I gritted my teeth. Everybody who could fight well was gone, except for me, and I had no doubt whoever had found me knew it. I was alone with a cook and a half-trained boy. If she got in here, she’d kill them both. The others would return to find three corpses. If my sisters were merciful enough to leave my body, that was.

  Tamsin eyed his bow but didn’t touch it. “I’ll go with you.”

  “No. Are you good with that thing?”

  “Good enough.”

  I lifted the bow. “Take it, and whatever else you can use. Find Enaelle and stay here. Stay together. I can face off with them; I should be fine. But take them in case.”

  His throat bobbed but he took it. “And if you’re not fine?”

  “Hopefully they won’t bother with you.”

  “But you can’t guarantee?”

  “I can’t guarantee anything, Tamsin. Just go.”

  He hesitated, then slung a quiver over one shoulder, grabbed a pair of knives, and took off. When he was out of sight, I headed for the entrance. My throat tightened, but I squared my shoulders and drew a deep breath, then crossed into the sunlight, boots crunching on the snow.

  A week since the storm and still the forest was buried in ice. It dripped from the bare branches and what undergrowth peeked through. The picturesque scene was gutted, gouges cut through the snow where the traps had been sprung, no trace of footprints around them. The ropes were stiff and frosted—the knots fastened, the loops closed on nothing. I froze, eyes darting from one detail to the next.

  Tamsin was right; no sign of animals. None trapped. No tracks but the ones he had left. Nothing alive in sight, like the entire forest had died. Even the air was as motionless as it had been, the cold pressing like stones. Like it meant to crush me.

  This wasn’t to avoid the traps. This was bait. A taunt.

  I watched, waiting. Only the clouds of my breath moved. The spark kindled and grew, swirling as it prepared to work. The taste danced on my tongue, stirring with the faint whisper of wind.

  “Sarafine?” I guessed. “No puppet this time?”

  Eyes pricked the back of my neck. “Lucky guess,” she accused.

  “You have a habit of letting your prey know you’re coming,” I said as I turned. She stood beneath a towering pine, needles stretching over her like they meant to crown her.

  “A little taste of fear. I like it, when I’m in the mood.”

  “I hate to disappoint, but I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Is that why you ran?” />
  “It’s called choosing your battles. Knowing when to live to fight another day.”

  “This is where you choose to live?” she laughed. “In a cave like some rat? I saw that little cat run in there to warn you. Cute pet you’ve got yourself, sister.”

  “I don’t want to have to hurt you, Sarafine. Go home and leave me in peace. I have no intention of returning to Acalta.”

  “Not alive. You made that clear with poor Katherine.”

  I ignored the comment, shoving the fresh surge of guilt down. I might have sent the killing blow, but it was Sarafine’s fault she was dead. “Honestly, I would have thought you’d be happy to have me gone. Less competition.”

  She sighed, stepping forward. I didn’t move. Not while those thin little shields I’d used against Wesley were building around me, silent and unseen. “That’s the problem, Neyva. No challenge. You were the best of us, and the game is boring without you. Only Tulia to play against.” Her lips spread into a pretty, chilling smile. “But this game is better.”

  “I’m sure you’re enjoying yourselves immensely,” I replied. “But standing t in the cold to talk is getting old.”

  Another step forward. I tasted the magic gathering in the air, crackling against mine. She had better control of hers. I couldn’t predict what she would do with it. But now I knew how strong it could get. “You never had to stay with us, if you didn’t want to, but you should have at least finished what you started. You’re running out of time.”

  “Running out of time?” I echoed. Time for what? Waiting for them to kill me?

  She folded her arms. “You don’t know, do you?”

  My heart pounded, but I forced my expression to stay indifferent. She was trying to shake me, get me reckless. “Enlighten me, then, sister. Or are you stalling for time?”