by Sara Raasch
Kill her? Who? What did Angra show him?
Angra clucks his tongue. “He did, little prince.” He pulls back and watches Theron squirm as the black magic retreats into the staff. “We’re the same.”
“Meira!”
I bolt upright in a haze of flickering yellow, clenching fistfuls of fabric that tug against my grip. I’m in my cottage in Gaos, the brown walls misshapen and cracked enough that cold air darts inside. The small room holds nothing more than a cot and a few tables, but on every table, candles burn. Dozens of them, and I blink at the light, my eyes darting from flame to twitching flame faster than my brain can process a reason.
The fabric in my fists tugs again and I start.
Sir is here, his hands braced on either side of my legs, and I clutch his collar as if I might draw him into a fight. Theron is here too, hovering at the end of the cot, an unlit candle in one hand and a match in the other.
Angra. The memory. I cave forward, head to my knees, releasing my grip on Sir. Why did I see that? How did I—
“The magic chasm,” I pant and burst upright. “The door—there was a barrier—”
It all rushes back to me: the stone door, the keyholes in the carvings, the sensation of being burned from the inside out. A barrier prevented us from approaching the door. A magic fail-safe that launched both Theron and me away, but only hurt me.
Since I am magic, maybe it reacted badly. Maybe it collided with the nearest person and dredged up memories, ricocheting my magic out in a frenzy. But Theron isn’t Winterian—how did I affect him? Or was it not me so much as the barrier’s magic reacting to my own? Whatever it was, whatever the reason, it’s only a spark in the fire of this horror.
“Whatever magic is down there, we can’t touch it,” I declare.
Theron gapes like it was the last thing he expected me to say.
“Here, my queen. Drink this.” Sir tries to hand me a goblet of water, but I shove it away.
“We found the magic chasm,” I state, forcing myself to hear it, to feel it. “Something’s blocking it—a barrier of some sort. We cannot take down that barrier. If we access the magic, if it spreads out to everyone—”
Theron pitches closer to my cot. “That’s exactly what needs to happen.”
I hesitate. The sight of Theron before me clashes with my memory of him writhing on the floor of Angra’s dungeon. Was what I saw real, though?
Hannah. I stretch out to my magic with tentative, uncertain thoughts. Was it—
Cold sparks up my chest. A normal reaction to seeking the magic, but where it usually flares and fades, this time—it doesn’t quiet.
It spurs higher, plummeting down my limbs, gathering speed and strength as it races to launch out of my body. I rear back, slamming into the wall beside my cot.
No, I will it, screaming in my head. STOP!
It doesn’t listen. Not in time anyway—it leaves my body a beat before I fling my will out to it, spiraling out of me and into—who? Where?
Sir.
He flies to his feet, mouth popping open in a choking huff like someone slammed a sword hilt into his lungs. “What—” He gags. “What did you—”
He stumbles back, boots slipping on the wooden floor, and bumps into the closed door to the rest of the cottage. His hand drops to the knob and he shoves, but instead of twisting under his fingers, the entire thing breaks apart and clatters to the ground.
I leap off the cot, hands out.
Sir ripped the door clean off its hinges.
No—I did it to him.
I drop back onto the bed. I’ve seen the magic give people strength before—but enough to endure a day of labor, not rip apart planks of wood. And it always reacted how it should—uncontrollable, but it did what my people needed it to do.
What happened?
Sir flexes his hand and shoots a questioning gaze at me. “My queen. Why did you do that?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t mean to. The magic down there—that barrier—it did something. I don’t feel . . . right.”
My chest is so cold. My heart is ice, my limbs snow, my every breath should be a cloud of condensation. The magic felt awakened before, but now it feels—unleashed.
Sir eases forward. “We’ll figure it out, my queen. We’ll send someone else down there, someone who isn’t connected to a Royal Conduit.”
I launch to my feet again. “No, it’s too dangerous. No one can go down there.”
“We found it, Meira,” Theron intercedes, his voice hoarse. “The magic chasm, after all this time, and you don’t want to at least investigate it? The world hasn’t seen such power in centuries. Imagine the good we could do with this!”
“And imagine the evil!” I shout, unable to keep my worry at bay. “Did you see what I just did? My magic could’ve hurt Sir! And you want more? Even if we could get to it, the world won’t receive magic the way you want it to. You believe your father would use more magic for good? Maybe in Cordell’s eyes, but how will it affect my kingdom?”
Theron drops the unlit candle and match he had still been holding and steps closer to me. “The world needs this,” he states. “My father isn’t the only one with plans—we could see to it that the magic would benefit everyone. Your people would all have their own magic. They’d have the strength needed to keep anything like Angra’s takeover from happening again.”
“You can’t tell your father we found it,” I beg. “I know why you fear Angra, but we are stronger than him. You are nothing like him.”
Theron’s eyes narrow in confusion, darting over my face. I pause, waiting for understanding to pull forward his memories, but he only cocks his head, perplexed.
Doesn’t he remember what Angra did to him? Wasn’t that real?
A door opens deeper in the cottage and voices slam into us.
“Is she awake?” Nessa asks.
Dendera chirps when they stumble into the room. “What happened to the door?”
While Sir, Nessa, and Dendera drop into quiet discussion, I draw closer to Theron, lowering my voice. “Please don’t tell Noam.”
“My men saw it too. Your people know we found it. He’ll find out eventually.”
“Only a few of your men were down there, and my people will keep it quiet. Please, Theron. Just give me time to figure out what to do.”
My heart knots up in the pause that follows.
“When you were asleep—” Theron finally says. “You sounded like you were scared.”
He didn’t agree to anything. He changed the subject.
“I dreamed of Angra. And you.” I hesitate, not wanting to hurt him, my words hammers and him a porcelain vase. “In Abril.”
Theron jolts back from me.
I try to wave it away. “It was just a dream—”
He snatches my hand midwave and holds it, every muscle in his body stiff.
“I don’t remember much about it,” he whispers, each word weighted by three months of keeping it inside. “Whole days just . . . gone. But I do remember Angra telling me what he planned to do with you. What he planned to let Herod—” Theron’s voice cracks. “Angra used magic on me in Abril, that much I do know. He shouldn’t have been able to—Royal Conduits can’t affect people not of their kingdom. And if magic like that exists, we need protection.”
My arms twitch to lean forward and wrap around him. But despite his pain, despite the memories throbbing in my mind of Angra’s torture, I can’t agree to what Theron wants.
“Then it’s even more important that the door stays closed. If it’s used wrong, it could aid the very magic you fear.”
Theron grimaces. He’s unconvinced, but Nessa rushes over to me.
“My queen, how are you feeling?”
She doesn’t ask what happened, or anything about the mine shaft, and I assume Sir filled her in enough. Conall and Garrigan take up their places guarding my room when Sir says something about going to check on Finn and Greer. He doesn’t stay to make sure I’m okay; he simply tells Dendera
to “ensure that the queen rests.”
No help from him—and no help from Theron either, who also leaves. I try to go after him, but Dendera shoves me onto the cot, scolding me to lie down. Theron doesn’t notice, vanishing without another word. What did I expect him to say, though? What could he do?
He could help me in this. He could stay, help me deal with . . . everything.
No—Theron is broken because of me. Because he came to save me. I saw what he went through—or at least, what he might have gone through. Even if he doesn’t remember what happened, there’s no way to know whether or not what I saw didn’t happen. He doesn’t need to help me; I need to help him. I have other people who can—
Sudden awareness drowns every other thought.
Hannah never responded. The moment I reached out to her, my magic erupted.
I almost call out to her again, but my chest seizes, and I can’t tear my eyes away from the splinters of the door that Nessa brushes into the corner. Our connection was always mysterious—maybe the barrier severed it. The coldness inside of me throbs as if sensing my dilemma, knowing I’m moments away from trying to rekindle my magic.
I’m afraid of it. But I can’t be afraid of my magic. Now that the chasm has been found . . .
I can’t be afraid of anything.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Mather
“BLOCK!”
Mather’s sword cut through the air a beat behind his command, but even as the word left his lips, he knew how this fight would end. His opponent would stumble on the barn’s uneven floor as uncertainty flashed through his eyes; then he would realize his mistake, overcorrect, and end up on his back with Mather’s wooden blade pressing into his collarbone.
Seconds later, the man blinked up at Mather from the floor. “I’m sorry, my lord,” he mumbled, and rolled to his feet, passing his practice sword to the next in line.
Mather exhaled, watching his breath collect in puffs of white in the afternoon air. At least his next opponent, a boy named Philip, was his age. A nice change from the older men, who stared at him with a mix of fear and desperate eagerness.
Of all the Winterians rescued from the Spring work camps, only six hundred had lived in Jannuari. Two hundred had come from western Winter, seven hundred from the center forests, and a mere one hundred and fifty from the southern Klaryn foothills. Of those who had formerly lived in Winter’s capital, little more than three-fourths of them had chosen to repopulate Jannuari. The rest couldn’t bear the sight of their war-shattered homes and had dispersed three months ago into the now-untamed wilds of a new and unknown Winter.
Sweet ice above, Mather couldn’t believe so much time had passed. How had it been three months since they’d returned to Jannuari? Three months since the battle in Abril where he had broken Angra’s conduit and the Spring king had died. Three months of freedom.
And less than a month since William and Meira and a contingent of others had departed for the southern mines. In hours—moments, heartbeats—they would return, along with Noam coming back from one of his too-short breaks to Bithai. The Cordellan king would amble back into Winter’s capital like the stuffed-up, overconfident ass he was, and swipe what riches the Winterians had been able to extract.
The rattle of armor jerked Mather’s attention to the door of the barn. A pair of Cordellan soldiers sauntered past on their patrol through Jannuari’s inhabited quarter, mocking grins spreading over their faces as they eyed the scene within.
Mather’s grip on his practice sword tightened. But he found he couldn’t hate the borrowed soldiers for laughing—what the Winterians were doing was laughable, training people so soon after years of imprisonment, expecting everything to instantly heal and fall into place. Most Winterians had only recently begun looking like people again instead of starved slaves. Making them fight when their eyes spoke of terror and memories still raw . . .
Mather turned to Henn. “This is too soon.”
Henn leaned forward from where he propped against the wall, observing the training in William’s stead. “We’ve only been at it for a few weeks.” He nodded Mather along. “Spar.”
An order. Mather growled, the sound bubbling in his throat. Orders were all he had now. Orders from William, orders from Henn. Orders from his queen.
A jostling near the door tugged at Mather’s awareness again, but it wasn’t Cordellan armor. Boots, the rustle of fabric, and a voice Mather knew by heart.
“We’ve returned.”
William.
No one seemed to notice the way Mather darkened at William’s arrival, an event that should have made him fake a smile, at the very least.
Henn launched away from the wall, closing the space between him and William like a man intoxicated. “You’re all back?”
Mather saw the unspoken questions ripple across Henn’s face—Is Dendera safe? Is she well?—because similar questions filled him.
If you’ve returned, William, it means Meira is back too—is she safe? Is she well?
Does she miss me at all?
Blotches of red covered William’s cheeks, telling of the cold winds that had chased their party all the way from the mines. He smiled at Henn, dusting snow from his sleeves. It scratched at Mather wrong whenever William looked like that. After sixteen years of William being stoic and hard and unrelenting, happiness looked awkward on him.
“Yes,” William started, one eyebrow rising. After a pause, he waved at the door behind him. “Dismissed. Go to Dendera. She’s just as eager to see you.”
Henn slapped William on the shoulder and darted outside. Which left Mather as the sole person to report on the trainees’ progress, and when William turned to him, Mather found his mouth had dried more violently than the Rania Plains at noon.
“Report,” William coaxed, taking in the Winterians standing behind them.
What did he have to report? The most notable thing the Winterian trainees had done since they had begun was to eat a full breakfast and keep it all down.
“They’re not physically ready for this,” Mather stated, his voice level.
William’s smile didn’t flutter. “They will be. Training will help.”
“They need to heal first.” Mather angled his shoulders forward, all-too aware of how the subjects of their argument stood behind them, watching, listening. “They need to work through what happened. They need to understand what happened—”
Mather cut his words short. William’s veil fluttered, a crack that showed whenever Mather pushed too far. Like when William had tried to explain his reasoning for keeping Mather’s parentage a secret as a “necessary sacrifice for Winter,” and instead of accepting that explanation, Mather had demanded why. Because it made sense, yet it didn’t make sense, and while Mather had wept on the floor of the ruined cottage the Loren family had claimed, William had simply stood, told him it was in the past, and left.
But all William said now was, “No, they need this. They need to get into a routine.”
Which felt exactly like: It’s in the past, Mather. Look only to the future.
Mather panted. He couldn’t breathe, damn it . . .
He shouted a warning cry and dove at Philip. The boy launched backward with a shocked yelp and caught a few of Mather’s rapid blows before he tripped on a lump of straw and smacked onto the floor in an explosion of dust.
Mather wrapped both hands around the hilt of his sword. In one solid push of movement he leapt into the air, dropped down, straddled the boy, and slammed the wooden sword into a crack in the floorboard a finger’s width from Philip’s head.
Everyone in the barn held silent. Not a gasp, not a cry of concern. Just dozens of eyes watching Mather and Philip and the wooden sword wobbling vertically in the barn’s floor.
Philip’s eyes wandered down Mather’s sword, to the crack in the floor, and back.
“So.�
� His lips relaxed in a smile. “This means I lost, right?”
Mather spit out a laugh. The sound released the tension, and a few of the men waiting in line chuckled as Mather helped Philip to his feet.
But Philip’s eyes flicked over Mather’s shoulder and the laughter died, an absence of sound that ignited all of Mather’s senses.
He only had time to grab his sword out of the floor before William swung down on him. Mather slid to his knees, caught the blow, and danced around until he righted himself. William spun his blade and dove again.
Around them, Winterian voices rose in encouragement, Winterian cheers filled the air, so wondrously different from the life Mather had been living months ago that it saturated his every muscle, easing realizations into his mind.
If they’re all happy, maybe ignoring the past is worth it.
Mather threw every bit of his frustration into the fight, letting the cheers dissolve beneath his sudden need to beat William. He sucked the cold air into his lungs. Winter’s air. The kingdom he had been supposed to lead, protect, defend.
And it was all on Meira’s shoulders now.
He didn’t want to need her. But loving her was easy, something that had developed over time, like sword fighting or archery—a skill he had picked up methodically until one day he did it without thought. Needing a family, though? He would never in a thousand winters need it.
He would never be able to forgive William for letting him think he was an orphan.
Mather jerked to a halt. William’s blade continued through the air and slammed into his shoulder, knocking him flat on his stomach. Mather glowered and sprang up, sword thudding somewhere behind him as he propelled himself at William. His shoulder connected with William’s stomach, sending both of them down in a tangled pile of grunts and limbs and punches. It didn’t last long—in a few firm twists, William had Mather’s arms knotted behind his back, Mather’s cheek memorizing the feel of the rough wooden floor.
William bent down, his mouth to Mather’s ear. “It doesn’t matter if they fail a hundred times,” he said, barely panting. “All that matters is that we’re here. This is our future.”
