Winter Glass

by Lexa Hillyer

  It was a warning shared by all the women in her family since before Wren could remember—a caution never to question the sanctity or the bounds of Sommeil. Never to disobey the queen’s wishes and whims. Though Wren was never sure whether she should believe it or not, it was what made her wary when Heath tried to push on the truth, tried to seek escape. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to discover other worlds, didn’t want to leave their dying one, but that she feared she couldn’t.

  And she was right.

  Now it may be hopeless. It may be too late for her. Aurora’s curse wasn’t ever lifted—only amended. She explained it all to Wren during their journey to LaMorte, and despite Wren’s attempts to keep her distance from the princess, she listened carefully.

  She recalls that one faerie—a duchess in Deluce—had been able, if not to fix things, at least to help. She had altered the curse from one of death to one of gentle sleep.

  And that faerie’s name was Violette.

  17

  Isabelle

  Against his better judgment, the messenger allowed Isbe to ride with him through the afternoon and into the night toward the war camp outside of La Faim. The rhythm of the horse is rough between her legs; her knees ache, her whole body is sore. She clings to the messenger’s cloak—he rides faster than she has ever ridden on her own.

  The density of the forest has given way to open fields loud with crickets on either side of the road. Urgency courses through Isbe’s veins; her skin prickles with it. Rain has left the air cold, and she feels naked and exposed—even in the dark.

  Isbe expects the camp to be quiet with sleep by the time they arrive, but a disturbing chorus of sounds greets her as they dismount at the edge of camp and move forward on foot: the injured whimpering, wives weeping over the dead, oxen shuffling, men awake all night digging fire pits, or latrines. Or maybe graves.

  The smells too assault her: the swampy blend of sweat and stale meat, cattle and wet canvas, rust and waste. She’s overwhelmed with a sense of ordered chaos, of death as an industry, as an art. The messenger helps her weave through the disarray, avoiding the makeshift shelters, wagons heaped with tentpoles and spare arms, cooking kettles and stores of supplies, narrating the terrain in his hoarse but practiced manner.

  Finally they move toward higher ground; the muscles in her thighs twinge as they march uphill, to where the knights’ tents are slightly wider spread. When the royal guards hold open the flaps of the royal tent, something lurches in Isabelle’s chest.

  She hears rustling movement, the quick intake of breath, the hiss of a flame consuming a lantern’s wick, and she knows that William has not been sleeping.

  “You shouldn’t be here.” His whispered voice reaches out to her, and suddenly she’s in his arms, his lips urgent against her bare neck.

  “I had to be sure. I heard the worst had happened,” she says, emotion pushing up into her throat, tempting her to burst into tears of relief, even as her cloak falls back from her shoulders. She buries her face in his chest, feeling as he tenses his muscles, then relaxes into her.

  It isn’t until this moment, holding William hard against her, that she realizes how deeply she feared losing him. Some part of her was convinced that he might die or even disappear, smokelike. She has lost everyone she loves. Sometimes it seems inevitable that she will lose him too.

  After a minute, he pulls back. “But really, you shouldn’t have come. It’s so unsafe.” He touches her face. “And in the middle of the night?”

  No matter that she’s been riding for hours—she can’t sleep now. “Tell me everything that happened.”

  And so he does, the terrible words muttered across her skin, even as he peels back her layers, his fingers fumbling with the strings on her muslin tunic. He tells her he would rather be dead than face his men now. She tries to kiss him, tries to take away what he is saying. His face is wet beneath her fingertips, from tears.

  The new cannons—his special design—backfired. Literally. He tells her of the screams as men were devoured alive by the flames of their own weapon, how horses reared, throwing their riders. The mayhem; the bitter, choking black ash that clouded the air, causing confusion.

  “William, you couldn’t have known.” She hesitates, almost afraid of him now, fearing that he too will somehow explode at her fingertips. She thinks of the model cannon he showed her back in the royal palace of Aubin—how she’d felt the crack in the marble and wondered at the beauty of his imagination, and the violence he’d been submitted to. Ever so gently, she touches her lips to the scar on his jaw. She tastes him, tastes ash.

  “I could have—and I should have.” The pain in his voice is so intense it makes her feel out of control, untethered. Stray tears streak salt into her lips. He kisses them.

  “I’ll never forget these horrors as long as I live.” His voice shakes, comes at her low and powerful, like thunder. “I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “You have to. Deluce needs you.” He lowers her onto a pile of blankets on the floor. “I need you,” she says, both hating the words and knowing they are true; they cut through her. She arches her back.

  He holds on to her, shudders against her. His hands are at her lower back, then one on her leg, one on her hip. He moves over her, leaning in to her, kissing her neck again, even as he repeats that she shouldn’t be here. She gasps. A sound comes out of her like a whimper, and she’s not sure if it’s one of pleasure or pain. She doesn’t want to let go of him, imagines yet again that he will explode into dust just like the cannons, will disappear into thin air.

  He cries into her hair.

  They stay that way, striving for breath, kissing, moaning, gasping.

  When it is over, she cries too.

  And that wasn’t even the worst of it, he tells her later, in and out of sleep.

  Malfleur’s Vultures are using magic against them. A kind of fire that eats right through iron in a breath, dissolving swords and shields and burning off their soldiers’ skin, leaving screaming skeletons.

  The image sends terror through Isbe, and she fears she will be sick.

  “Retreat,” she whispers, surprised at the word. “Come back with me.” She kisses his jaw, right near the scar. Then his eyebrow. “We’ll return to the palace together, where it’s safe, come up with a strategy from there.”

  “Isabelle . . .”

  “You need rest. You need a break. Come back with me.” I can’t have you die on me, she wants to say.

  “I can’t just leave, not now.” And then, after a beat, “There’s still a way. We’ll find a way. You must return. I must think. The army needs me. Deluce needs me, like you said.”

  “But I want to help. I want to be needed.”

  “You are needed.” He pauses, and she feels his chest rise with breath. “I need you,” he says, an echo of what she whispered to him before. His hands find her tangled hair, and he’s kissing her again, his mouth warm and hungry against hers. He pulls back. “I need you alive. You must go.”

  “No. I’m not leaving you.” The promise feels uncertain on her tongue, a branch trembling under the weight of snow.

  They sleep at last, but fitfully, the ground hard beneath them. She tosses and turns, her limbs entangled in his.

  By morning, she knows how she can help Deluce. Despite what she promised him, she must leave him. And she must hurry, before it’s too late.

  Deluce is losing the war. The reports have been flooding in, now that she’s back at the palace.

  A string of towns have fallen, there is no border protection to speak of.

  Hurriedly, Isabelle stuffs her fur-lined capes and hooded coats—ermine and fox and marten—into a giant chest.

  The king consort’s cannon caused a blast that decimated some of his regiment’s strongest men.

  Thick underlayers. Leather boots with sable trim. She will need to stay warm.

  If another wave of Aubin’s reinforcements don’t arrive soon, they’ll have no hope of turning the tides.

>   In the midst of the frantic news, Isabelle is packing, preparing for a trip north, to the Îles de Glace, to seek conference with the Ice King. It’s a rash, wild plan, of course. The Îles de Glace are notoriously neutral and have been for centuries. And no one has heard from Verglas in ages. Many think he, like the North Faerie, may be dead.

  But after hearing of the horrible magic William told her about—Malfleur’s deadly fire that can melt and destroy armor in seconds—she had felt helpless. Afraid. How could she possibly save her kingdom now? All she had were her words, and a useless symbol, a slipper made of winter glass. But then she thought of Binks, and how he’d wanted to trade men for the slipper—and then of Olivier, who’d expressed such a grave interest in it too. If the viscount is right, and the slipper is indeed made not of glass but of enchanted ice, then the person who must know more about it would be King Verglas. Malfleur’s father. And possibly the only faerie whose power could match hers.

  What Deluce’s army needs, after all, is a kind of magical weapon that cannot break and cannot melt.

  What their army needs is winter glass.

  It’s time to speak to Verglas. He may be the answer to how to win this war.

  18

  Aurora

  Malfleur’s magic fills Aurora like a heady wine; she imagines it rising up from her toes and knees to her hips and then her heart, then up her throat and into her head. She can call upon it but still cannot control it, cannot control when it will come or what it will do. But she feels it swirling inside her now, burning and bubbling in her ears as the sounds of the crowd through the closed doors greet her.

  They are somewhere at the center of Blackthorn Castle, and Aurora can hear the murmuring and shuffling of spectators through the double doors ahead. She tenses her body, flexing her arms and legs, before releasing and shaking them out. She clenches and unclenches her fists, stretching her fingers. Her trainer pushes the doors open, and she follows him through, into the rush of wind and sound.

  This is, she sees now, the same sky-lit stadium in which she had her initiation. Only now the cage is gone, and she can see in the shadows at the edges of the arena that there are risers and risers packed full with Vultures. Her muscles tremble with the reminder of the crows she was forced to fight off, but she shakes away the memory. The Vultures are just here to watch. The thought doesn’t bring much relief. She doesn’t know what they want—for her to live or die. It doesn’t matter; suffering is their sport. They’re in the middle of a war, and yet they find time to entertain themselves at her expense. It’s brazen of Malfleur—and suggests that she has army to spare.

  Aurora thinks of Isabelle and William. News of the war doesn’t really reach Aurora here, and she has no idea how far the Vultures have advanced by now.

  She scans the crowd until she finds the one unmasked face among them: the stark-white face of the queen, like a shattered plate, once perfect. Her gaze is intent and secretive. Nervous energy builds in Aurora’s chest—What does Malfleur have planned? She must steel herself. There’s nothing the queen can make her do that she won’t do, now, for the sake of passing her test, living another day, stalling until she gets close enough to kill Malfleur. And surely there’s nothing the queen can ask that’s worse than hurting Wren.

  But then she remembers: Wren escaped, and the queen must be angry.

  She will want her vengeance.

  She will want Aurora to pay.

  A long chain wraps around Aurora’s ankle, giving her enough length to traverse the arena but not enough to leap into the aisles above or escape.

  The floor shines like a silver-black coin, and when Aurora steps forward, dragging the chain behind her, she finds out why—it is actually a shallow pool, no more than ankle deep, with gently sloped sides. As she steps into it, ripples move outward, reflecting the dim gray light in widening rings. The chain disappears beneath the surface like the water snakes that used to swim in the river by Nose Rock.

  There is a second entrance on the opposite side of the arena, and fear creeps up Aurora’s neck when she sees a hulking figure being dragged in by several Vultures. They are struggling to restrain the creature, whatever it is, or whoever it may be.

  Aurora swallows. She has been given no weapons. Here she is, standing at the lip of the arena feeling like a complete and terrified fool.

  They shove her opponent into the open. It is a man—not a beast. She heaves a sigh, but her relief is short-lived. Light catches on his broad shoulders, muscular beneath his black leather and metal armor. There’s a bag over his head; he thrashes, splashing out onto the arena, causing water droplets to spark upward like flying diamonds. Through the sound of the water, she can hear a different sound: the man is snarling, like the wolf had been.

  Another shudder of fear moves through her.

  Two Vultures pull off the bag and nudge the man forward. His tangled, dirty blond hair sweeps down to his chin. When he shakes it out of his face, Aurora’s breath catches in her throat. There is a kind of awakening in her body as she recognizes him . . . him. It’s Heath. The same stubbled square jaw. The same arrogant face. But where his warm eyes had once kept him from looking too harsh, they now flash darkly, making his entire appearance seem sinister.

  Her heart curls up like a scared hamster, clawing with tiny feet at the sides of its cage. Something occurs to her just as he tenses and sees her: she is going to feel all of this.

  Of course. How very clever of Malfleur.

  Before she has time to react, he lunges, his own chain dragging with a high squeal along the floor, then muted by the water. He grabs her from both sides with an intake of breath, almost as if he’s lifting her into an embrace, and for a moment she feels the surge of his touch in every nerve ending. He throws her backward.

  Water soaks her clothes as she catches herself on the floor with her elbows, preventing her head from cracking open, and she scrambles to stand before he is on her, pushing her down, one knee between her legs, pinning her shoulders, her head back in the water. The shallow water fills her ears, blunts the noise of his spitting and snarling. She’s frantic, unthinking—she claws at his face with her nails and he snarls louder, rearing. She rips at his hair, yanking his head to the side. She spits in his eyes—those muddy green-brown eyes that now seem like twin pits of darkness.

  What has happened to him to make him this way? Something rises in her to meet him, and she realizes he is feeling what she has been feeling: that same corrupting magic pulsing in both their veins. Another one of Malfleur’s pets. Only he is much farther gone than she—he must be, because he seems to show no fear at all, no hesitance, only brute fury.

  “Heath,” she whispers, testing her voice with him. None of the Vultures will be able to hear her.

  His hand moves to her cheek, and maybe she’s broken through to him. She recalls in an instant his first caress, how it scared her in a whole other way, how she feared she might lose herself in it. And now his thumb finds her lips and tugs them apart, wrenches her face to the side so that she is forced to gulp and choke on the dirty water.

  Everything in her shoots alive with excruciating hurt—her bloodied mouth, her banged head, her screaming wounds, the places where Heath has pressed against her to hold her down, the freezing water lapping at her face. Something in her splits apart then too—and that is a whole other kind of pain: the pain of betrayal, of powerlessness.

  She struggles and flails, but he is heavy on top of her, holding her down, and he will drown her or bash her head into the ground, she’s sure of it.

  But still she bucks against him, bites at his hand, snorts out the water that has gone up her nose and manages to wrench one arm free. She flaps against the water, fruitlessly splashing, and then her hand finds something beneath the surface—a jagged object, slightly larger than her hand. She grabs it—a big stone—and swings it up, bashing it into the side of Heath’s head. Blood comes out of his ear. He reels and pulls back—not far, but enough for her to squirm out from under him.
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br />   She is panting, heaving, crawling across the water away from him, dragging her chain by the ankle, but it’s heavy, so heavy. She feels something else in the water and grabs for it, unseeing, even as she can sense his hot breath behind her. She pushes up to kneeling, her muscles crying out from the effort; she turns just as he plunges toward her again. The object in her hand splashes out of the water, and she discovers what it is by wielding it—a morning star club, black and barbed with metal.

  The handle flies from her wet grip as she swings, the spiked ball rounding on Heath, smashing into his beautiful face before she has time to reconsider—not handsome, not heroic, but real and strong and so human, always, until now. Now it is twisted and inhuman and it hurts her to look even as he staggers backward, clutches at his bleeding cheek and mouth. The weapon falls into the water by his stumbling feet.

  She doesn’t waste any more time. She is all action. There are weapons hidden under the water, she realizes, shaking. She crawls around frantically, feeling with her hands. She had forgotten their audience until this moment. It occurs to her just how much effort was put into making this fight as entertaining as possible for the spectators. Of course. Because if there’s one thing she has learned so far in her training, it is that violence is the food and the fuel of evil. And the queen must keep her minions fed.

  All of this is for them—and for her too, meant to drive her to the peak of her dark power. She will only survive, she sees now, if she allows the magic to inhabit her completely. Aurora will only live by eradicating herself. Even now, a kind of coldness has possessed her, numbing her emotions—all the shock and hurt and terror of seeing Heath seem coated in a blazing ring of anger. It would feel so good, so right, to burn away those feelings, to be free of them, to be pure. To be like him. Merciless.

  He splashes toward her, just as she is reaching for another object in the water—she pulls up a knife, her fist around the blade, her hand a puddle of blood. She gasps from the shocking, searing pain of it, and the knife drops with a splash. She fumbles for the handle side, and is yanked backward just as she grabs hold. Heath is dragging her through the water. She pulls away and tries to stand. Falls to her knees. Tries to stand again but cannot. Why can’t she stand? A new fear flaps inside her chest. She sits in the water, stares at her left leg, the one Heath grabbed, and sees that something is wrong. Her leg is mangled. Bloody. Standing above her, Heath is holding a bloody ax.