Winterspell (32 page)

But what good was shelter against dragons?

* * *

Shining black and brass with clockwork between patches of mottled white scales. Metal spikes for tails and long spearheads for teeth. Dragons, impossible. Dragons,
everywhere
. They threw black-tipped darts from their tails and spat blue fire from their mouths with terrible mechanized clicks. Black smoke spewed from the crevices webbing their bodies.

Faeries rode them, perched on their backs and shooting arrows, on the hunt.

A terrible hopelessness settled over Clara. “It was a trap. We were
herded
up here.”

“Dragons?” Bo sounded lost, tiny. “But . . . the dragons live up north. Faeries don't like the cold.”

Nicholas swept her up into his arms, his face hard with fury. “Clara,
move
!”

She did, looking back over her shoulder at the unimaginable monsters in the sky, trying to find Erik in the chaos. There he was, and Igritt and Herschel, too.
Please let no one else die because of us.

It was a futile wish. Behind her the wounded and old were swallowed up by dragon fire, pierced by arrows rained down on them as though from the devil himself.

Maybe the devil is a faery,
Clara thought wildly, her lungs burning as the air turned acrid, flooded with the stench of burning oil and metalwork.

They reached the ruined village, survivors huddling behind half-collapsed cottages and blacksmith forges, beneath animal troughs and piles of rotting feed. Nicholas pushed Bo under a stone bridge, low over a dry riverbed, and shoved Clara in after her. He then turned and ran back onto the tundra, where the dragons circled and the faeries shot stragglers with their arrows like it was a grand game.

“Where are you going?” Clara cried.

But she knew. They needed help, and he would not fail them, not this time. Erik, crouched behind a nearby well, watched Nicholas go. Clara saw the stubborn surge of pride in his face and was not surprised when he leapt out to follow Nicholas, calling for some of the others to join him. And they
did
, for Nicholas was leading the way, unsheathing his sword, jaw set, dark eyes blazing. He was their prince, and he was, in that desolate moment, beautiful.

Despite everything, Clara felt a small thrill that had nothing to do with the cold, and her heart swelled with dangerous affection.

“Please don't leave too,” said Bo, small at her side, and Clara bent to hold her but then staggered, clutching her own head. She could hardly see for the burst of silver in her vision; she was going blind. It had hit her like a fist through her core, and now it was pulling her inside out with icy fingers.

She fell to her knees. “Oh, God help me, not
now
. . . .”

“What's wrong?” Bo crouched beside her . . . and then pulled back. “Clara, your
face
.”

Clara reached up to touch her lips, her cheek. Her skin was cold, and it stung her fingers like a mild electric shock. “What is it?”

“It's
changing
. . . .”

Then Nicholas screamed. Clara spun to find him, searching—there he was, buckled over on the ground, blood seeping from a wound on his leg.

A dragon hovered over him, the thin metal plates of its hooked wings glistening with oil and sweat.

“What's this?” the faery riding it called out. He leapt to the ground and grabbed Nicholas's chin, forcing it up for inspection. The dragon reared back, as if in sudden confusion, and the faery whooped, ecstatic.

“It's His Royal Highness, the prince!” The faery laughed, waving up at the other riders.

The faery kicked Nicholas right in his wound, and Nicholas screamed a word in agony—was it Clara's name?

Regardless, Clara knew what she had to do. Instinct overtook her. She left Bo gaping and ran toward Nicholas, heedless of the fallen, of the smoking debris. Pain stabbed her behind her eyes, in her midsection, up her legs at every step. A great force was tearing her in two, and she sobbed in agony, but she did not stop.

Dimly she heard the faery laugh—no doubt amused at this crazed girl attacker. She ran toward the sound, lashing out with her bare hands as if to strike the faery across the face, realizing that she had not even thought to take out her daggers.

Something hit the faery's face—she heard the impact, heard the faery scream and fly back—but it was not Clara's hand.

There was a great explosion, a rush of cold wind, a searing pain through her arms as though the knives that had been cutting open her insides had suddenly burst out. She knew where Nicholas was,
instinctively, and threw her arms around him, sheltering him from the worst of the storm that she had created.

That she had created.

She had thought of it as she'd been running, a thought born from some primal impulse that had come into her mind of its own volition. She had thought of a storm ripping the dragons from the sky, flinging the faeries to the ground, blasting them with cold and power and rage and ice—and now it was happening. She could hear the storm exploding around her, and she felt so afraid, huddled there with her face buried in Nicholas's shoulder, his heart pounding against hers, his hands in her hair, holding her to him. It might be the last time she was allowed to touch him. It might be the last time she would be allowed to
breathe
. The pain was unbearable; releasing some of the energy within her had seemed only to exacerbate the torment of it. And what would everyone do to her when they realized what she was? She knew now, without any doubt, that what Godfather had said was true.

Silence fell—the hush after a storm.

Clara opened her eyes. Silver remained, glowing at the edges of her vision. Through it she saw the faery bodies strewn in pools of blue blood across the tundra. The fallen dragons twitched mechanically as the lights behind their eyes went out—some dismantled, others charred beyond repair.

Fresh snow surrounded them. It fell from the sky even now.

Nicholas helped her to her feet, holding her at arm's length. He said nothing, but the look on his face was one of wonder and horror. And . . . gladness?

Clara's cheek smarted. She put her fingers to it, and they came away red.

Red tinged with silver.

Erik limped toward them, his face ashen. Others were beside him, including Igritt; they saw the blood on Clara's hands and recoiled.

“What are you?” Erik growled. “What did you do?”

“I . . . My mother was a mage,” she began weakly, clutching her side. The pain was getting worse. Why would it not
stop
?

“Never seen mages do
that
before. Make storms out of nothing, pull lightning from the sky.”

Ah. Hence the charred dragons.

“Please,” she said, “let me explain.”

“Only the queen's got that much power,” came a hushed voice, from a man with a gash on his arm and snow in his hair—
Clara's
snow. “Only the queen can do things like that. Make things out of nothing.” The man's face darkened with suspicion. “The air smells the same as her too. Tastes the same.”

“But the queen is a faery,” Igritt pointed out quietly, “not a mage.”

Bo peeked out from behind Erik. “Yes. See, Erik? Silver blood. Mage's blood. We like mages, remember?”

Erik moved her aside. “Silver or blue or bright purple, I don't care. It isn't red, is what counts. I know that magic. That's the queen's magic, or as good as.” He paused, his face ugly—angry, yes, but also, Clara thought, afraid. “You were waiting for them to attack, weren't you? You led them right to us. May the serpents draw you into black waters.”

“No, Erik. Please, you have to believe me. I didn't do that. I wouldn't. I
stopped
them.” She turned to Nicholas. “Nicholas, you know me. You know all I want is to find my father and then leave. Please, tell them that's what I want.”

The survivors had gathered around them, some gaping at the destruction, some glaring at Clara, all of them afraid. And frightened people, Clara knew, were more likely than most to turn vicious at a moment's notice.

“Did you know, sire?” said Herschel softly. He seemed lopsided, standing there, without Jurian at his side. “Did you know what she was?”

The unsaid word hung in the air:
abomination
. Did you know, sire, that you had brought a monster from old tales into our midst?

Nicholas had been quiet, his expression unreadable—until now, when something shifted on his face. Clara's heart sank.

He
had
known what she was, or he had at least hoped. But he would not tell them that; better for them to think she was a liar than him.

His face was stern as he took a step away from her. Was that an apology in his eyes, a plea for understanding?

Probably not.

“I did not know,” he said, “but perhaps, if we are careful with her, we can use her.”

I
t was agreed that Clara was dangerous, that they should keep her under close watch until a plan had been decided upon.

“She could help us,” Clara heard Nicholas saying to the others. “I'm reluctant to trust her now, but . . . I think you'll agree that this could give us an incredible advantage against Anise.”

Some immediately agreed, others protested, but they all huddled around Nicholas, fervently attentive. Only Bo glanced after Clara, distressed.

How nice,
she thought as those charged with watching her dragged her away.
He seems to have found himself an army after all.

They bound her to a wooden beam in a barn with no roof, open to the sky. They took the dagger at her hip, but not those from her boots, for which Clara was deliriously grateful. But she was cold and bare-armed, her shoulders wrenched back, her torso bound so tightly to the beam with multiple belts, donated eagerly by their owners, that she could hardly breathe. She would never be able to reach her boots. It occurred to her that she could try bringing another storm down from the sky, or burn her bindings off. But even if she could somehow set aside the pain making her retch onto the dirt, any demonstration of . . . what was it? Her
magic
? She almost laughed. Any such demonstration would surely seal her fate with these refugees. She didn't blame them.
She
would have lashed out against someone like her too.

“Try anything funny,” Erik said after he had finished restraining her, eyes full of distrust, “and I
will
kill you, no matter what the prince says.”

Clara considered biting off his nose. It would not have been difficult, the way he'd positioned himself so stupidly close. He didn't really deserve it, but with the pain coursing through her and the humiliation compounding it, she might have tried it, had he not left then. Herschel, stone-faced, stood watch.

Nausea kept her head spinning. Every few minutes it sharpened to a stabbing pain that surged through her body in waves. The combination of pain and exhaustion threw her in and out of feverish hallucinations. Herschel made a point of looking away from her when this happened, as if to demonstrate that he didn't much care if she was in pain or not.

Ugly browned light filtered down through the storm clouds, and the barn creaked around her in the wind. Night was coming quickly in this land of tumultuous skies, afternoon fading into dusk. Sweat had soaked through her clothes, drenching her. When a convulsion hit her, she seized against her bindings, weeping from the pain.

“Stop,” she whispered, wishing she had something to bite down upon. Surely her teeth would shatter soon; she could not stop grinding them. “Please, stop. Leave me be.”

But her blood was insistent, and when the pain became so searingly cold that she felt sure she would die, she screamed, her throat full of knives.

Herschel flinched.

She had hoped Nicholas would come—she imagined it, him falling to his knees before her and begging forgiveness, apologizing for leaving her like this, kissing her tears away.

What a silly, stupidly girlish thought.

“Herschel, please, untie me.” It was a desperate move, but he was the only one near, and she would lose her mind if she didn't try. “I won't
hurt anyone, I swear to you. But I'm in enough pain as it is, and the bindings . . .”

She broke off, crying out. Herschel approached warily, but she saw pity in his eyes. Gentle, Jurian-less Herschel.

“What does it feel like?” he whispered, kneeling before her.

She could have wept; she
did
weep. “Like all of winter being forced inside me.”

Herschel was grave as he inspected her, grave as he reached to undo her bindings, and gentle with the sores they left behind on her wrists.

“Just for a while,” he said, and she nodded miserably, knowing what she was about to do. She fell forward from the post, undone now, and free. Herschel reached to help her up, saying something about Jurian, something forgiving, that it wasn't Clara's fault, that he understood. His words tore at Clara, but she did not hesitate. In her desperation it was easy to grab him by the shoulders, spin his slight body around, smash his head against the post to which she had been tied.

He dropped to the dirt without a sound, and after assuring herself that he was breathing and alive, she bound him hand and foot with the discarded belts. His mouth had fallen open, and she took one of his gloves and stuffed it inside, racked with guilt, unsteady with pain.

“I'm sorry,” she whispered, and left him.

Outside the shelter of the barn, the wind cut her like knives. It gave her pause; leaving the relative safety of this place was assuredly insane. The cold of this tundra, the loneliness of it—she could freeze, she could lose herself in the endless flat stretches of hard frosted ground.

She leaned against the barn wall, measuring the odds. They weren't good. Choice, again. Choice between awful and even more awful. She laughed, and the wind seized the sound, swallowed it away.