Winter Glass

by Lexa Hillyer

  It takes a fraction of a moment for her to understand. To see what he has done. And then for the sensations to flood into her; the agony in her leg is debilitating. She’s sick, swaying, about to faint. Will she ever walk again? Fresh rage rips through her throat in a roar only she and Heath can hear. She can no longer think, can only feel. Fire consumes her; there’s ash in her breath and blurring her eyes.

  The ax comes down again and she rolls in a split second across the water, hearing the ax meet the hard stone floor with an ear-shattering clang. He is coming after her. With a speed she didn’t know she possessed, she manages to get back to standing—leaning only on the right leg. She then flings herself at Heath, her drenched hair and clothes spraying water, her left leg dragging helplessly and bloodily at her side. She has grabbed him around the neck. She has the knife at his throat, but he drops the ax and grabs her around the waist. She swivels while still clinging to him, causing him to lose his balance. They both go down.

  She only managed to nick his throat, and the knife has fallen, obscured again by the rippling water, which is now tinged with their blood. She is on top of him, but without a weapon. Something moves through her—the tiny kernel of almost-love buried deep within her is breathing new energy into her anger, her hatred, her desire for revenge. How dare he hurt her. How dare he become a monster. How dare he manifest everything she most fears becoming herself.

  Around them, the water begins to harden toward ice. It is the cold of her dark magic, pulsing out of her. She reaches into the water and grabs a fistful of it—it becomes icicles as she pulls her hand out, and she flings them at his face.

  But it is not enough. He manages to flip her, and now her back is submerged in the water, which is so cold, freezing all around her, about to seal her into its shallow coffin. Somehow he has gotten hold of one of the chains—his or hers, she can’t tell—and thrusts it up under her chin, pinning her once again. She starts to gasp, to lose her breath. She chokes on icy water and saliva. He is strangling her.

  She looks into Heath’s eyes and sees no sign of the person he once was—the boy who dreamed of another world, who plotted and studied and mapped the Borderlands, who chased after the dwindling game and expertly brought home catch after catch to keep his extended family alive. All of that seems like another life ago—another world ago. And it was. A dream world. Her vision swirls. Behind Heath’s sweating, dripping, bleeding face swim the masks of the Vultures.

  Her breath is gone. Water fills her ears, hardening into ice inside her. She is so cold. Impossibly cold. And weak. She feels herself going limp. Blackness fills her vision.

  Death comes.

  But only for an instant.

  Through the darkness and the muffled sound, a distant whistle pierces.

  Suddenly the pressure on her throat is gone. The water softens and warms, though she is still shivering uncontrollably.

  Hands wrap around her shoulders, pulling her backward and away.

  She blinks, gasping. The skylight above, releasing a faint silver light, seems blinding. Where is Heath? She hears struggling and focuses, focuses. Across the arena, Heath is being dragged back by three Vultures. It takes a minute for her to comprehend that the fight has been called. Malfleur, it seems, saw that her favorite new pet was going to die, and saved Aurora. That can be the only explanation.

  All the fury of the fight has seeped out of Aurora’s body. She feels as though she’ll never be able to lift herself out of the shallow water, as if it is mud clinging to her and weighing her down.

  The Vultures haul her to her feet, but she still cannot stand. Her left leg doesn’t hurt anymore—she lacks the sense of touch now that Heath is so far away—but something is very, very wrong with it. Two Vultures have their arms under her, helping to carry her away. She limps with them toward the exit but hears a commotion and turns her head.

  At the opposite exit, Heath is struggling against his guards. He claws at them, trying to break free, swings with a hidden blade. There’s a tearing sound as his knife meets the thick, tight leather of one of the vulture masks, slicing a hole in the side. Through it, bright red hair, slightly wavy, slightly curly, peeks out. The Vulture swings his head away from Heath and away from danger, momentarily locking eyes with Aurora.

  She gasps and swallows, knowledge pulsing into her. Those are the eyes of the same trainer who brought her to Wren. The knowing eyes. The known eyes. She does recognize him. The foxlike hair is a dead giveaway. It cannot be coincidence. Can it?

  Or maybe her mind is just desperately clutching again at the hope of something familiar, some reminder of her old self.

  As the guards pull her back through the doors and they swing shut behind her, she feels something shutting down within her too. A final narrowing. She has lost Heath—he is a monster. She has lost Wren, who believes Aurora is the monster. And the light of her old self is barely a glimmer in the distance now. If she focuses on it, it will wilt under the harshness of her glare. The faerie queen has taken everything from her, made her a pawn, just like she was when she was a helpless princess back in Deluce.

  She has leaped from one form of imprisonment to another. At least here her imprisonment is obvious and not hidden under the delusion of being special. Even Isbe treated her like a child back home, someone who needed to be protected. She realizes, in a wild surge of despair, that Malfleur is the only one who has ever been honest with her.

  The guards lead Aurora away through the dim-lit halls of Blackthorn, a weakened, bloodied shell. Everywhere her mind turns lie thoughts of bitterness and hate, ribbons and ribbons of darkness enfolding her, but between them, brief flashes of that pale, cruel face, intent and unsmiling: Malfleur, Malfleur, Malfleur.

  She must have her revenge.

  19

  Wren,

  Formerly a Maiden of Sommeil,

  Indentured to the Mad Queen Belcoeur

  She can’t die. She is the last hope of Sommeil, of the refugees imprisoned in Malfleur’s dungeon, stripped of their home, of everything they knew.

  And she is only seventeen.

  Wren is not ready to die.

  But the stone gathers her skin into a hardness, cropping up everywhere now, the curse tightening its way across her shoulder blades, making her stiff, and moving from her ankles to her knees, so it gets harder and harder to limp along.

  Still, at last, somehow, she has made it to Violette’s mansion, which sits in a field of vibrant emerald grass, beside a vast and glimmering lake. The air is fresh, sparkling with moisture and the buzz of spring insects.

  No wonder Violette loves to tithe human sight.

  Wren knows, from the information she has gathered along the road, that she is right in the center of Deluce. She knows too that this is a kingdom at war, yet she has been helped at every turn by peasants seeking to do some good. And now, the vision of this grand estate moves her, makes her think that perhaps everything will be all right, that there will be spots the war won’t touch, like this. That evil can spread everywhere, but may never take the heart.

  As she makes her way on foot down a long private path toward the house, a carriage splashes past her. A man sneers down at her from the driver’s spot—a wealthy gentleman, from the looks of his dapper clothing and upright posture, though it would be odd for a lord to drive his own carriage. He passes her, in the direction of the house.

  So, she will not be Violette’s only guest.

  Only after she is let inside—with excessive caution, by a bizarrely coiffed and timid butler—does she learn who this other guest is. Another faerie—Lord Barnabé.

  The two are seated side by side in a large ballroom full of mirrors. There are so many mirrors that the room feels not like a room at all but like an endless and terrifying world of repetitions.

  The chairs seem like they’ve been hastily arranged in the middle of this otherwise empty room, with no other furniture around them, as though not only has Lady Violette rarely received guests but perhaps doesn’t really unde
rstand what it means to receive a guest in the first place.

  The lord looks down his nose at her. “I have private business with the lady of this house,” he informs her.

  Wren holds her ground. “So do I.” She has not come this far only to be intimidated.

  The lord bristles but turns to stare in a mirror and adjust his cravat.

  Violette walks in, guided by the awkward, overly groomed butler, as well as a maid. They each hold an arm, as though the lady can’t walk on her own.

  Wren sits up straighter. Whatever she expected, this isn’t it.

  The woman looks, well, insane. She has flaming red hair stacked high on her head, huge lips like two halves of a purple butterfly, drawn-on eyebrows, and a bustle so high it’s practically a hunchback. The sagging skin of her chin is literally pinned back by something like jeweled hairpins at the sides, giving the illusion of slenderness around the neck, stretching her mouth into something halfway between a smile and a grimace. It must hurt, but if it does, she must be used to it.

  “To what do I owe this pleasure?” Violette asks, gazing not at either of her guests but at herself in a gilded mirror on the wall.

  Wren shifts.

  “My lady,” Lord Barnabé says, sitting up straighter. “I must speak to you privately about a matter of mutual concern.”

  Violette looks startled—perhaps by his urgency, or perhaps by his presence, since she hasn’t really acknowledged that either of them is even here. She is still staring at herself in a mirror.

  “My lady,” Wren jumps in. “It is I who must speak to you urgently.”

  “Me?” The lady looks almost, if Wren is not mistaken, scared. “But . . . but . . .”

  “I have heard,” Wren says, beginning to doubt herself before the words even come out—could Aurora have lied about the tale? “I’ve heard you have great power.”

  “Me?” Violette repeats. Behind the makeup and the elaborate clothing, she seems like a nervous girl. She is still staring at the same mirror.

  “Yes,” Wren goes on, less certainly. “I was told you have the power to amend a curse. You did so once before.”

  “Once before . . . ,” Violette repeats.

  Lord Barnabé turns to Wren. “You know about that?” His face has gone suspicious. “Who told you that tale?”

  “I—it was—the Princess Aurora herself,” Wren replies.

  “So she knows, Binks,” Violette says, almost to herself.

  Wren juts out her chin. “Yes. I know you altered the curse on Aurora—a curse placed on her by Queen Malfleur—so that the princess would not die when she touched the enchanted spindle but would instead fall into a kind of trapped sleep.”

  Violette flinches but does not meet Wren’s eyes, even in the reflection.

  “I came to find out,” Wren goes on, desperation pushing up against her ribs and into her throat, “if you can do so again. For . . . me.”

  Barnabé—Binks, as Violette called him—stares at Wren again, then lets out a startling laugh that sounds more like a small dog barking in the distance. “You? I haven’t a clue who you even are, girl, but you must know the kingdom has more dire concerns than a cursed girl looking for a cure.”

  “A cursed girl,” Violette repeats, playing with her skirts, aligning them so that the silk catches the light and shines. Wren is beginning to wonder if the woman can think for herself at all or only repeats words she hears aloud. But then, just as Wren experiences that thought, Violette catches her eyes in the mirror—for just a fleeting second. “I can’t help you,” she says, so quietly Wren almost missed it.

  “Can’t? Or won’t?” she asks.

  Violette stiffens. “Of course I can.” She seems to consider what she has just said and as she thinks about it, she puffs up a little, shimmying her shoulders a tiny bit, as if to remove dust that has settled there.

  Hope leaps in Wren’s chest. “You’ll help me?”

  “No,” Binks says, at the same time that Violette asks, “What is the curse?”

  Wren stands up, but seeing how Violette flinches, she does not approach the woman, treating her instead like a deer that has frozen under the gaze of a hunter. She recalls the way Heath used to hold himself so still in the Borderlands before loosing his arrow through the silt-colored dawn. Heath. Her brother in spirit, in practice, in action, in every way that matters. She hasn’t seen his face in so long she is beginning to remember it only as a collection of fragmented feelings—confidence, patience, intensity, delight, and the perfect peace of spotting one’s prey within the line of sight, just before the arrow’s shot.

  She glances cautiously to Binks, then back at Violette. And then she begins to explain her story. Slowly and carefully, so as not to leave out any details that could be important. How Belcoeur placed a curse on her great-great-great-aunt, and in turn on her entire bloodline, a curse limiting their ability to ever leave Sommeil, to leave her. The curse said if they ever tried to leave, they’d turn to stone. She tells the story of Malfleur appearing in Sommeil and killing her own sister, watching as Queen Belcoeur’s blood became smoke and she writhed under her twin’s touch. How the trees changed and the whole forest seemed to disappear, replaced by another forest altogether, and she came to realize that Sommeil was over, was gone, and now she was here, in Deluce. And the curse on her had come true.

  Binks huffs. “Prove it.”

  With shame and nervousness, Wren lifts her skirt a few inches to reveal her stone ankle. She pulls at the shoulder of her dress to show a glimpse of the stone there as well.

  Binks’s eyebrows rise in shock. Then his face scrunches again in skepticism. “Don’t trust her, Violette. There’s a kink in your logic, my dear,” he says to Wren.

  “No—”

  He holds up a hand to silence her. “If what you say is true . . . if Belcoeur has recently died, the curse she made should have died with her.”

  “But that’s impossible. I saw her die. And yet the curse still holds,” Wren says.

  “Not impossible,” Violette says, her voice worming its way creepily into their debate. Both of them turn to face her. She looks back at them, frozen, as if exchanging with them directly, instead of through a mirror, is overwhelming, like staring at the sun. “You said your bloodline was bound to hers. Well, perhaps someone else of Belcoeur’s bloodline still lives.”

  “Someone . . . else?” Wren asks.

  Binks looks between Wren and Violette. “A descendant,” he says slowly. Confidence dawns on his face, and he nods. “A descendant,” he repeats.

  He stands up and begins to pace, his footsteps click-clacking through the ballroom. Wren notices he is wearing heels. The fae seem to care a great deal about appearances—though the result is not that any of them are at all pleasing to behold.

  “But—what does this mean for me? Can you amend the curse?” she asks, turning her attention back to Violette.

  Violette plays with her hands. “I . . . I . . . Why, perhaps I can! Of course! I’m quite sure that I can!”

  “Violette,” Binks warns.

  But thankfully, she doesn’t heed him. Instead, she ruffles herself up taller, like a posturing bird. She seems to concentrate very hard and then, as if with great labor, she forms the words.

  “To the blood of Belcoeur you will remain bound, never to fly free, your bond as firm as the stone you’re already starting to become . . . until . . .” She pauses, and Wren isn’t sure whether it’s for flourish or to make up her mind about something. Violette scrunches her brow. “Until true love softens the stone back into flesh and bone.”

  A strange tingling sensation showers over Wren, making her dizzy.

  She sits back down in her seat in the silence that follows Violette’s pronouncement, but Binks shifts uncomfortably and pulls at his collar as though it’s all he can do not to snort.

  Until true love softens the stone back into flesh and bone.

  A million thoughts swirl through Wren’s head at once. She sinks farther back in her chair.
True love. Does the woman even know of what she speaks? The amended curse is essentially the exact same one Violette performed for the baby Aurora sixteen years ago—and though it came to pass somewhat as she’d said it would, it certainly wasn’t by any magic of her doing, or any awareness of her own. It hadn’t even been actual true love that had awakened Aurora, but Charles Blackthorn’s crown, affectionately dubbed True Love by the mad queen Belcoeur—a fact Violette couldn’t possibly have known.

  Does true love exist at all, or had the very lie of it been at the heart of Violette’s words, and the reason they came about in such a strange and twisted fashion?

  What could this possibly mean for Wren—and how can it save her?

  Binks snickers.

  Wren doesn’t have the will even to glare at him. She is too heartbroken by the despair that has quickly settled in her heart. What if there truly is no way to save herself? Maybe she has come to the end of the road. Maybe . . .

  “My man will see you out,” Violette announces, turning back to the mirror.

  With slumped shoulders, Wren begins to follow the butler out of the room and down the hall. With a click-clack of his shoes, Binks follows them both.

  It is only once they are outside and the door has slammed at their backs that Binks suddenly grabs Wren’s arm.

  With a gasp, she turns to face him, sunlight dancing off the yellowed snags in his teeth, many of them, she can now see, filled with gold. His hands, though chubby and laden with an ostentatious amount of rings, are surprisingly strong.

  “Let go of me.”

  “Perhaps we can help each other after all,” Binks says. He lets go and she shudders, suddenly realizing something. . . .