He’ll find the stone. He’ll take it away. Then he’ll destroy me.
Herod’s fingers grope across my neck, my arms, trailing down my body as he searches for objects. His fingers leave numbness in their wake—until he brushes over the lapis lazuli.
“Don’t—” I start, my body twitching involuntarily.
Herod smirks up at me as he eases out the stone. I fling myself forward, my fist sliding through air, but he easily ducks my exhausted attempt at fighting and jams his arm back into me. I crash onto the obsidian floor with a dull thud, pain cutting through my elbow and hip.
But none of that holds my attention more than the thoughtless way Herod chucks the lapis lazuli ball to the dais, where it clatters at the feet of his master. All I can do is stare at the stone, that brilliant blue piece of rock, and see the day Mather gave it to me. How certain he was that I should have it, a remnant of our lost kingdom. I never thanked him. Not enough.
My insides crumble as Angra curls his fingers around the stone, closing his eyes for a moment as if trying to absorb its magic himself. He looks at me, a grin tearing across his face. “Was this the magic, girl?” he asks. “If so, it’s empty now. And if it wasn’t what you’re using, believe me, I will find the source and rip it out of you.”
His words break my panic. It’s not magic? It was all just Hannah? One last vision before she has to leave me alone in Spring? Loneliness swells inside me, cutting through every nerve, leaving me holding back sobs in the horrible nothingness around me.
History, the past, whatever Decay Hannah fears—it doesn’t matter anymore. Because it’s gone, every bit of it wrapped up in Angra as he grips the stone in a powerful fist. There’s nothing left to help me now.
Herod grabs me off the floor, the look on his face telling me he isn’t done yet, not this easily.
Breathe, Meira. Don’t think, don’t analyze, don’t even react.
Angra relaxes into his throne. “Not now, general,” he orders, and I freeze as if I know what he’s going to say. I do, don’t I? I’ve known since we first entered Abril.
“Take her to them,” Angra growls. “I want them to break her before you do.”
Herod pauses next to me, his disappointment silencing him as he flings me around and the two guards march me back down the dark hall.
The dusk sky seems bright compared to Angra’s palace, even with the light streaming into his throne room and the encroaching darkness out here. I blink it away and notice, heart dropping, that the Winterian slaves are gone. Only their shovels remain, sticking out of the dirt. I have a feeling I’m about to find out where they were taken.
“Put her with the rest. Oh, and Meira?”
I keep marching down the stone path, my body jolting with each step. I’m healed, but Angra’s magic made me unsteady, wobbling with each footfall like a leaf on the wind.
“I will see you again,” Herod calls after me. “Very soon.”
He laughs, voice fading as he returns to the palace. The doors slam and the smallest bit of tension unwinds from my muscles. He’s gone, for now.
The guards take me through Abril’s slums, the buildings getting worse and worse the deeper we go. Rotted wood collapsing into rooms, piles of rancid garbage littering street corners. Spring citizens watch us as we pass, smirking at the newest Winterian prisoner. But the lives around them—their collapsing houses, the dirt smudged on their children’s faces. How can they be proud of destroying one kingdom when their king doesn’t even care for his own?
The soldiers and I reach a barrier of spiked wire that vanishes into the city. Its high walls cut off the slum from what I can only assume is a—
“Winterian work camp. Welcome home,” one guard grunts, and unlocks the gate.
It takes all of my remaining strength to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, as they close the gate behind us. These aren’t even buildings; they’re cells. Just like Herod said. Cages with three solid sides, a roof, and one gated door, small and cramped and stacked on top of each other like blocks. Some are empty but most hold hollow, vacant Winterian prisoners watching with soulless eyes. They don’t care. How could they? Angra’s beaten any care out of them, left them to rot in these hovels until he needs them for work.
The soldiers shuffle me down the long row of cages. Dust coats my boots, the wind sings in my ears like a desperate wail. Cages stretch for rows and rows, so many that my stomach aches with nausea again.
Three other camps like this sit throughout Spring. Angra really did imprison an entire kingdom, enacted the worst dominance over his victims by turning them into slaves. As a child it was always impossible to imagine—so many hundreds of people locked away? But now . . .
How did we let this happen?
The guards shove me into an empty cage on the bottom row. There’s nothing in here, no cot or food or furniture. Just a dirt-covered space with a view of more cages across from me.
“Don’t get comfortable,” one guard spits. “We’ll be back for you.”
I glare at them through the bars, fingers tight on the iron. “Go ahead and try,” I murmur, but they’re gone, the newest Winterian slave already forgotten.
I’m alone now. And I don’t have to bite my tongue or stay strong or not let them see me break. That sad freedom rushes at me, and everything that’s happened, everything I’ve seen and felt, bubbles up in my throat. I back to the wall and slide to the ground, pulling my knees up and burying my face against them. The Winterians across from me are watching. They’re gaping and wondering and whispering,
That is one who lived out there while we were in here. Why hasn’t anyone saved us?
Because we failed. Because I let Sir die. Because our only ally is rolling in the desecration of their own kingdom. Because we only have half of Hannah’s locket, and it took us this long to even get that. Because Angra is so much more powerful than we ever knew.
My shoulders tremble and I pull myself tighter, fighting sobs. Sir trained me better than this, but I don’t have any strength left to keep myself stoic and calm. Mather was always the one who was able to hide his feelings no matter the situation. And if Mather is on the run, and Theron, and Bithai fallen, and Angra as ancient and evil as Hannah said—I’ll probably die in here.
I force a soundless scream into the cave of my legs, gripping my hair and squeezing into myself. No. This isn’t how it was supposed to end—
The lock on the door clicks, but I can’t find it in me to care. Let Angra come for me, or Herod even. There’s nothing else they can take from me.
Feet shuffle in and the door locks again. Someone’s in here with me.
A second passes. Two. Whoever it is kneels beside me. I keep my eyes shut, sniffing in the darkness of my knees, and stiffen when a hand unfolds on my shoulder.
I look up. It’s the Winterians from the palace, the two men and the girl who got whipped in the dirt. She has the marks on her arms to prove it, jagged cuts caked in dried blood. But she’s smiling, a comforting smile, and light shines deep behind the bruises around her eyes.
She drops a half-empty bowl of stew on the ground, forgotten in the way she stares at me. “You’re here,” she breathes like she’s just as shocked as I am. Like this is some dream come to life, and she’s afraid if she doesn’t say it, I’ll vanish.
The two men sit behind her, their eyes on me, a dull flicker of interest hiding behind their wounds as they sip at their own bowls of stew. They’re more wary of me than the girl is, but the weight of their lives sits even heavier on them.
I exhale, inhale, still unable to believe the girl touching me is real. They’re all real, and here, and alive. Seeing them from a distance was hard to accept, but this is impossible.
The girl says nothing else. She sits next to me, our hips touching, and curls her arm around my shoulders. She’s so thin that I’m afraid I’ll break her if I touch her at all. But we just sit in silence, the men staring through the bars, the girl holding me or me holding her.
As sunlight fades over the work camp, a small voice resonates from the back of my mind, something that makes the horrors not quite so overwhelming:
You will understand how to use all this when you are ready.
It really was Hannah, talking to me. And if she thought it was important to tell me about the past, to try to help me figure out something, then maybe there’s still a way to win this.
The girl shifts. She’s asleep now, her head on my shoulder and her breathing slow. I lean my head onto hers and close my eyes.
Sir and Mather and Theron might be lost, but the Winterians aren’t. And as long as they live, I’m not entirely alone.
THAT NIGHT, SLIPPERY,
fleeting dreams suck me down like a hungry wave. Dizzy and disorienting, soulless eyes and faces from my past, and darkness, always darkness. From that blackness come monsters, clawing fingers and bloody teeth lunging for my throat—
I fly awake, every nerve tight. But there are no monsters here. At least, not in this cage.
My panic fades a little at the sight of the three people staring at me. The two men, both at least ten years older than me, and the girl. Her blue eyes gleam, set in a sunken, pale face, and she studies me like she can see my whole life story written across my forehead.
“I’m Nessa,” she says, and points over her shoulder. “Conall and Garrigan, my brothers.”
Garrigan nods but Conall keeps his eyes level with mine. His expression is a vibrant contrast to Nessa’s—she is open and willing, he is closed and decided. Decided, from the look of it, that I am just as much a danger as the Spring soldiers moving around our cage.
It’s morning.
I jump up, back scraping along the rough wall. Will Angra send for me? Will he let Herod torture me into submission, until everything about the past sixteen years comes tumbling out of my mouth? My chest fills with lead-hot pressure, pinching off air.
“I’m Meira,” I manage around a tongue that feels more sand than anything, my eyes darting between Nessa and the door, waiting for soldiers to burst inside and drag me out.
“If they were going to take you so soon, they never would have brought you here to begin with,” Garrigan offers. He holds some of Conall’s distrust, but his face softens, offering me the smallest bit of kindness.
“How can you know that?” Conall snaps, watching the door.
“The same way I do,” Nessa declares proudly, taking my hand. “She’s here for a reason.”
Conall turns a glare to me, like I’m the one who made her say that. I don’t have the strength to pull away from her hand, though, needing her small bit of comfort, and I just stare at him until he swings his gaze back to the door.
“Where did you come from?” Nessa asks, the question popping out of her mouth like she’s been holding it in since I got here. “Winter? No, of course not—they say no one lives there anymore. One of the other Seasons?”
“I was in Cordell before I came here,” I say. Conall’s glare makes me feel guilty for talking to her, like any word I say will only strengthen her slowly growing hope. Nessa still looks at me with a hint of caution, but the brightness in her eyes is . . . beautiful. It’s hard not to want to make her happy, and just that word lights up her whole face.
“Cordell,” she echoes, and releases my hand to face Garrigan. “That’s a Rhythm, right?”
Garrigan’s mouth twitches in a smile, cracking his face like he doesn’t do it often. “Our Nessa’s going to be a world traveler one day,” he says, and I can’t miss the pride that swells in him. Pride in his little sister, in her ability to still dream beyond these bars.
“Or a seamstress,” she amends, her face flushing red. Whatever blip of happiness she managed to hold on to vanishes, and she looks at me with a sad shrug. “Like our mother.”
“Quiet,” Conall growls, a bite of warning as keys rattle in our door.
I pin my body to the back wall. No matter how Nessa and Garrigan tried to reassure me, or how uncaring I was last night at the thought of Angra coming for me, dread still churns in my stomach, a flicker of survival that’s impossible to snuff out entirely. They can’t take me. Not until I figure out . . . something. Some way to escape a long, slow death at Angra’s hands, a way to help the others around me escape the same fate.
The door swings open. Conall and Garrigan march into the sun and Nessa grabs my arm. “Don’t worry,” she whispers, and guides me forward. “It’ll be all right. It’ll be—”
“You.” A soldier turns from shouting at Conall and Garrigan to watch me emerge from the cage, his eyes a dark sort of greedy, and my stomach turns.
But the soldier nods toward the end of the road where the uncaged Winterians have gathered. “With the rest for now.”
Relief surges through me. Angra hasn’t called for me today.
Nessa pulls me forward and shock fills me up like it’d been waiting outside the cage for me all night.
This is the first time I’ve seen the Winterians of the Abril work camp. Of
any
work camp.
More Winterians join us from the second layer of cages, gathering into a haphazard cluster to march down the road, dust swirling around our shuffling feet. Dozens of people crowd around, frail bodies in tattered rags, clothing brown from years of sweat and dirt. Children too. If Angra had wanted to simply slaughter all Winterians, he would have done so long ago—it would have been a kinder fate. But instead he keeps them locked up, letting families grow and generations spawn in captivity. It’s a cruel victory to show dominance over another by destroying them—but it’s crueler still to do so by destroying their families.
Winterian children watch me as they stand stoically beside their parents. Their faces say they’ve learned not to show weakness. Weaknesses get used until all you can do is scream at the unfairness of a life like this, a life of living in cages stacked atop one another, of growing up in a place where you aren’t even seen as a person. A life of waiting in torment for the twenty-five mythical survivors to set everyone free.
I meet a woman’s eyes. She’s Dendera’s age, her top lip curling at me, and I flinch back. A man beside her echoes her grimace, and another beside them, so many looks of derision that I feel no safer here than in Angra’s palace.