A low growl resonates in Herod’s throat. “No. The thief who stole half of the locket.”
Boots descend the dais and glide across the floor. I don’t move, hands around my torso, eyes closed, neck bent. Sir trained me for this. For Angra, for Spring.
They make decisions; they mold your future. The trick is to find a way to still be you through it all.
Theron’s words run through my head, his smile, his gentle surety. I cling to that image, to anything that will help me remember that I am Meira, and they cannot take that away from me.
Angra stops beside me. I can feel him there, a warm presence just beside my huddled body. He bends down, his staff making a heavy clunk as he adjusts it on the floor.
“She’s hurt,” he says. The booming echo is gone from his voice, reduced to a whisper that rolls over me.
I open my eyes and a desperate wail bubbles in my throat.
This man doesn’t just look like the king who bonded with the Decay in Hannah’s vision—this man
is
that king. The same translucent green eyes, the same pale skin, the same gleam on his face when he tips his head and adjusts his grip on his staff, black through and through, with a hollow ebony orb on its tip. This is the same king.
How is that possible? Could Hannah’s visions have been more recent than I thought? No, I
felt
how long ago it was. But Angra doesn’t look any older than the man in his twenties he was in Hannah’s vision.
I know Angra was the one who led the charge against Winter when it fell sixteen years ago, but this man couldn’t have been old enough to ransack our kingdom. Now that I think about it . . .
I don’t know who was king before Angra.
Sir’s lessons never touched on Spring’s history beyond our war with them. Is this mystery that cloaks him part of the Decay? He never leaves Spring. He never shows himself in public. It would be all too easy to hide this power, this immortality, from the world.
I pinch my mouth shut to hold in the wail, my need to scream fighting me like a wild horse pinned inside a gate. If this is all true, what else is he capable of?
Angra stares at me, unconcerned. His pale green irises flicker and his yellow curls bounce when he moves—the same wild, untamed locks of the boy in the paintings. Was that him too? He painted portraits of himself—and a woman?
He tips his head, his mouth lifting as he surveys me. He looks young, calm, filled with something that terrifies me more than Herod’s malice—an ancient determination and patience. And around his neck, dangling above a black tunic, hangs the front half of Hannah’s locket.
I gasp. It’s so close. The silver heart etched with a snowflake, its shine muted and dull on Angra’s skin.
“Would you like to be healed?” he whispers suddenly.
I frown, tearing my eyes away from the locket. He wanted me to see it. He wanted me to know he has it just like he has me, dangling and useless. But I hear his question, and my ribs scream out
Yes!
while the rest of me quivers in the dark, waiting for this all to shatter around me.
Angra leans closer. Madness dances behind his eyes now as he revels in the sight of me writhing at his feet. “You are in pain. Don’t you want me to heal you?”
“Go heal the Winterian girl,” I manage. “The one your soldier whipped.”
Angra smiles. He takes pleasure in me fighting back too.
I don’t have a chance to add anything else. Angra’s fingers curl around his staff and I’m thrown into a world of searing red, everything collapsing behind a single shriek that echoes off the walls. It’s me. I’m screaming, arching on the ground in breathless pain. My chest caves in, every rib cracking and bending under an invisible force that crushes me, presses me into dust. I scream again and all the bones pop back out, realigning and knitting back together. I can feel them healing, the bones itching and tingling, telling me exactly where they run through my torso.
It stops and I roll to the side, mouth open, unable to say anything, do anything. On top of the pain, more certainty makes me hum with fear. If Angra was just a monarch like all the others, and his staff was nothing more than a Royal Conduit, he wouldn’t be able to affect me, someone not of his kingdom’s bloodline. But he can use his magic to break me, to heal me—so he must have something helping him. Something more powerful.
Something like the Decay.
That thought is like the final blow of a fight, the one that makes me waver toward unconsciousness. Everything Hannah showed me—Angra’s true power—his agelessness—
It’s real.
“You still wish me to heal the girl?” Angra asks.
I shake my head, a spiraling migraine making the world shift.
Angra leans the staff down so I can peer into its black orb. “You are one of the few who escaped me,” he says. “You couldn’t have been more than an infant.”
He twists his hand and the pressure returns, collapsing on me like a boot pressing on a bug. I draw in a few quick breaths and focus on the light filtering through the ceiling.
Focus, Meira. Don’t—
I’m able to bite back a scream as the first few ribs crack, but it falls out of my mouth as Angra snaps the rest. The scream turns into a pathetic whine as the pressure rises, ribs reshaping and knitting back together with agonizing slowness.
“How, exactly, did a child manage to evade me?”
My ribs heal again. Sweat trickles down my face, and words come in broken gasps. “Two . . . children . . . escaped . . . actually.”
He twists his hand again. Quick this time, every bone snapping at once and knitting together in less than a few seconds. Stars flash over my vision, darkness and swirling light.
Angra glares up at Herod. “Where is the boy?”
I choke on Herod’s pause. “My men are pursuing him.”
The hope in those words makes it impossible to breathe. As long as Mather lives, there’s still hope for Winter.
Angra grabs my hair, forcing me to stare up at him. “Your resistance is crumbling. It’s only a matter of time before I kill Hannah’s son myself.”
The hope in my chest flares against his threats.
You’re wrong, Angra, because Mather is alive. There is still hope.
But it snuffs out as quickly as it came, as thoughts collide in my mind—
Sir is dead, and this war is worse than we thought.
Angra beams. “I thought so.”
His hand trails down my horrible, traitorous face, giving away my emotions. As his fingers touch my skin, his image swirls. His face contorts, darkness pulls in, and the blackness of his throne room fades to a milky white. As it did when Hannah touched me, my mind’s eye pulls me into a memory not my own.
A field of snow stretches into the distance, frozen white perfection beneath a clear night sky. The moon, a sliver against the speckled black night, sheds light on a small gathering of men and horses. One holds a lantern that casts light onto the black sun breastplates of Angra’s guards. And Angra himself, his appearance unchanged from how it is now, sits on a thick warhorse in front of his men. He wears a heavy, black cloak, and his staff sits in a holster on his saddle. . . .
Angra tears his hand off my face. “What did you—”
I stare at him, mouth half open. A voice in the back of my mind urges me to reach out, and I grab Angra’s hand with a strength I didn’t think I still had. The image returns, stronger now, as though I’m standing next to Angra on one of Winter’s fields.
Hooves beat in the distance as three riders come toward us. They stop, the field around us empty but for snow and this clandestine meeting of Spring and Winter.
Hannah pulls her horse forward and dismounts. She wears nothing over her gown but a bloodred cloak, the flow of scarlet on snow a shocking contrast. “Thank you for meeting me.”
Angra’s horse dances under the unspoken tension in the air. The guards behind Hannah hold weapons, ready to leap to their queen’s defense, while Angra’s men look furtively at their king for any sign to attack. But Angra just swings one leg over his saddle and dismounts.
“How could I resist, Highness? Especially after your enticing message.” Angra steps forward, black cloak swishing through the snow. “You said you had a deal I couldn’t refuse.”
Hannah folds her hands beneath her cloak and looks up, blue eyes shining in the weak moonlight. “I will lay down my life for my people.”
Angra’s face flashes with shock. “No riddles. What do you propose?”
The locket pulses white from Hannah’s neck before she speaks, her voice steady and sure. “I will let you destroy Winter’s conduit and kill me. I will let you end Winter’s line.”
“If?” Angra’s tone is mocking.
“If Spring’s army never sets foot in Winter again.”
Angra sneers, making my skin crawl. “This doesn’t have to do with how few men you have left? I know that our last battle left Winter weakened, but I never thought it would drive you to such desperation. Do you plan to make good on your end now?”
Angra pulls a dagger out of his belt and shoves it against Hannah’s throat so quickly I barely see it happen. Her guards fly forward, swords out, and Angra’s men ready their weapons. But neither monarch moves, frozen knife to neck with each other.
Hannah waves a hand at the men behind her and they back up. “Yes,” she whispers, and a gasp ricochets through them. Yes? She’s going to let him kill her now? But Hannah’s face doesn’t betray any fear, even with Angra’s knife moments away from slashing through her throat. “Does this mean we are in agreement?”
“We are. But I wonder, Highness, how far your deal extends.” Curling the knife into his palm, he backs up. His eyes slide down Hannah’s body and linger on her stomach, his face radiating amusement. “You don’t know yet, do you?”
Hannah’s hands move beneath her cloak, clutching her stomach as her lips part in confusion. “We have an agreement, Angra. We can end this!”
Angra pulls himself back onto his horse. “We do have a deal.”
“Then kill me. Break my locket and kill me. End this!” Hannah is pleading now, her red cloak rippling around her as she steps toward Angra across the snow.
“Don’t worry, Your Highness.” Angra glares down at her, his green eyes flashing. “I agree to this deal. But I will destroy you when I see fit, when it causes you the most pain.”
Hannah’s face collapses. “What do you mean?”
Angra smirks. “You aren’t the last of your line.” And he’s gone, plunging his horse across the snow with his soldiers riding hard behind him.
HANNAH SURRENDERED.
The truth makes it painful to breathe. Hannah handed herself over to Angra. In Bithai’s garden the night of the ball, Noam had been so certain that Hannah had yielded, and Mather had been just as certain that she had fought against Angra until the end. Noam was right, though. She did surrender—but not in the way he meant. It was a sacrifice, not helpless submission. A sacrifice like the one Mather tried to make for us.
Tell me how to save them. . . .
In my dream, Hannah asked her conduit to show her how to save her people. Is that what it told her? That the only way to protect them would be to die? But she didn’t know she was pregnant, and that the end to Winter’s royal line meant murdering her son too.
Angra’s staff barrels through the air and slams into my cheek, making my head smack into the floor and roar with electric fingers of pain.
“You brought magic into my palace, general.” His voice cracks through the air like his soldier’s whip.
Magic?
Terror lances through me—terror that Angra will take away whatever magic source I have, terror that I could actually
have
a magic source at all.
The stone? Hannah? Whatever it is, how am I using it? Hannah said she couldn’t speak to me once I got into Spring, that Angra would watch me with his dark magic. Was it really the lapis lazuli then?
Herod coughs a laugh. “Magic? She’s harmless.”
Angra swings his staff at Herod and knocks him to the ground before whirling on me. “Whatever remnant of magic you have, you’re out of luck, girl.” Angra stomps forward and pulls me roughly to my feet. He makes sure to only touch my armor, not allowing skin-to-skin contact again. “Your weakened magic cannot win here.”
Angra would never have been satisfied with ending Winter’s line, with breaking the locket, killing Hannah and Mather and letting us go about our lives. He wouldn’t have been satisfied until we are where we are now, his slaves, Spring standing on the fading carcass of Winter. Even Hannah’s sacrifice, something so much larger than anything I could ever do, wouldn’t have changed anything. But
why
? What was all of this for?
“What do you want from us?” The question spills out of my mouth, shaking and feeble.
Angra releases me, takes a step back. “Power,” he says like that explains everything.
I shake my head, fighting the urge to collapse in gasping sobs. “Winter isn’t powerful! We’re nothing now.”
Angra purses his lips like I’m a toddler throwing a tantrum. “Winter will not stand in my way,” he whispers half to himself. He nods at Herod before I can decode his senseless explanation. How are we standing in the way of anything?
He’s insane. There is no reason for what he’s done, nothing we can do to satisfy him. And knowing that makes everything so much more terrifying, because it means there is no end to his horror. There is no box it can be contained in, no way to predict what he’ll do.
He just wants to watch us bleed.
“Strip her armor,” Angra tells Herod. “Rid her of anything she has.”
I lurch back as Herod stands, grabs my arm, his face reddening, spit flying from his mouth. A rabid dog leashed to Angra’s wrist. He shoves his face into my hair, his breath warm and heavy from the battle and the long march to Spring.
“I’ll teach you your place,” Herod growls as he undoes the straps on my armor, the mess of padding and dented metal clattering to Angra’s floor. I’m left in a stained cotton undershirt, tattered pants held up by a fraying leather belt, and my worn boots. I hadn’t realized how much of my strength lay in having a layer of metal between Herod and me. My knees buckle, my insides rolling over like a whirlpool.