Winterspell (40 page)

W
hen Anise fetched her that night, Clara ached with tension. Would the queen know what she had done? Had kambots spotted her? Would Anise sense the lingering magic of Clara's Doors?

She did not. The queen was exultant, radiant with some secret joy. The sudden sight of her in the light of the Door made Clara's breath catch—with fear, yes, as there was always fear with Anise, but also for the beauty of her, so fine and fierce.

In Anise's chambers, once the Door had closed, the queen held Clara's hands and kissed them and spun her around. Clara caught herself on the bed, breathless, as Anise pulled out gown after gown from her wardrobe, and when she clapped her ringed hands, music began. It drifted down from piped funnels at the corners of the ceiling, much like the music on Pascha's terrace.

“My queen,” Clara said, nervous and deeply curious, “what's happening?”

“I've convinced them, Clara. I've
convinced
them. Dear one.” She hurried over, pressed Clara's hand to her cheek. Her eyes held a wild glitter, and Clara fought against an urge that left her torn—to flinch away or to turn and kiss Anise's palm. The queen's obvious joy was infectious; the air was sweet with sugar vapors, teasing Clara's senses to greater heights.

“Convinced who? And of what?”

“I'm throwing a party to show you off. The grandest party I've ever had. You will meet my courtiers and dance with them, and they'll love you, and they'll fear you, and we'll no longer need to pretend at this nasty torture business.”

A party? Clara felt blindsided. “They'll
love
me? I doubt it.”

“If we show them, Clara, that we're united, we two, that together we are doubly as powerful as I've ever been alone, why, that will convince them. They'll have no choice but to accept you.” She spun away from Clara, swaying to the feverish music, careless. “Perhaps they'll be so distracted by your loveliness that they'll forget my hunting parties have so far failed to find your loathsome little princeling.”

Nicholas.
Astounding how quickly Clara's confusion slipped through the cracks of her heart and became a piercing terror.

Anise was hunting Nicholas. Of course they were. Had she expected Anise to sit idly? Maybe she should not care about his fate, considering what he had done, what he had wanted to do—but she did care. Her whole self
ached
with caring.

“You and I, united?”
Tread gently, Clara.
She could not show how spectacularly unhinged she thought Anise. She could not betray her sudden agitation, how Nicholas's name danced on her lips. “I'm afraid I don't understand.”

Anise knelt before her, eyes bright, hair mussed. “You know, I always thought my mother was an idiot. And yours, too.”

Clara stiffened, but Anise grabbed her hand. “No, don't pull away. I mean it. You see, when I was conceived, my mother lost her power. She was a faery, but she was no longer magic folk. And I always thought it so stupid of her. She could have saved herself, if she'd still had her power. Surely my father wasn't
that
skilled a lover. I've seen pictures of him. Grim, reedy lump of a man.”

“But I thought,” Clara said, startled, “that unions between humans and magic folk were simply taboo. Not actually
dangerous
.”

“Taboo for good reason. People don't pay much attention to the old
stories anymore. They don't remember why they're so prejudiced. They don't remember that there's something in the blood that does it—that if a human and one of the magic folk mate, then the magic folk loses her power. How
terrible
, isn't it?”

It surprised Clara how much the thought of giving up her power in that way, of losing this frightening new piece of herself, upset her. “But why does that happen?”

“No one knows. My old nurse once said it was the world's way of maintaining a balance of power.” She made a face. “I think the world knew it could be difficult to handle someone like me. Like
you
.”

Clara thought of her mother, her powerful mother, leaving her troubled kingdom behind—and leaving her power behind too, the thing that had always defined her. And for what? She felt a wave of sadness. “That
is
terrible.”

“Oh, but it isn't! At least, not for us. I see that now.” Anise sat on the bed beside Clara. “Both our mothers did it. For love, Clara. For
love.
And because they didn't care what anyone thought of them. Don't you see, Clara? By doing what they did, they brought us together. They wanted us. They
made
us.” She cupped Clara's face in her hands. “They made this moment between us, this moment in time.”

Anise's closeness was overwhelming. Clara could hardly breathe. “But . . . why give up so much? Just for love? To rebel against society?”

“Maybe . . .”

“Or,” Clara pressed on cautiously, only just considering it herself, “because they thought the world could be better, that it
should
be better, and in that better world there would be no hate?”

A chill swept across her.

Anise's eyes were wide. She looked so young, a mere girl. What would she have been without the war that had raised her? “No hate between humans and faeries?”

“And no hate between humans and mages,” Clara added quietly. “No servitude, no politics.”

After a moment Anise leapt from the bed and paced, savage. “It's a wild thought, Clara. Too wild, I think.”

“Have you never thought about it?”

“No. Yes.
No.
”

Clara gripped the bedpost, frightened by her own boldness. “Isn't that what you're doing by being kind to me? Because you're different from everyone else, and have been for so long. Then you found me, and you like not being alone.” She paused. “What if there were more of us?”

Anise turned at the terrace windows to glare. She stood there for a moment, her foot tapping restlessly. The music played on. At last she returned to her gowns.

“The party is tomorrow,” Anise said brightly, her face hidden. “We have to select the perfect gown for you, something outrageous. We faeries love beautiful things. If you're stunning enough, maybe my court won't be so keen on killing you.”

Clara slumped, defeated. For a moment it had seemed as though she had reached some frightened, lonely place inside Anise—something closer to the child she had once been.

Clara went out onto the terrace, instinctively seeking the fresh air. Outside, the night was cold and dark and full of snow. She watched it, feeling the approach of a distant menace she couldn't name. Somewhere out there was Nicholas, and her captured father, Godfather's bones, and tiny Bo and a whole kingdom of frightened people, tearing one another to pieces and full of hate. Not much, she reflected sadly, was different at home. Just another sad world of hungry people fighting for food and power, and Felicity was stuck there, alone. Even if—
when
—Clara returned to her, it would be more of the same. They would flee Concordia for another city, trapped in another nasty web, or Plum would catch them before they could.

Of course, first there was a party to survive. A
party
, of all things, where faeries would drink and dance and hate her. What a mess it all was.

Anise joined her at the door, huffing impatiently. “What are you thinking about? I've gowns for you to try on.”

Clara was weary, her heart heavy. “I'm thinking of how I'll ever survive in a world so bent on destroying me. How will any of us?”

For a long moment Anise was quiet. Then she took Clara's hands. “You'll remake it,” she whispered. “We both will. Like our mothers tried to, except we actually
will
do it. Because we're unstoppable, Clara, you and I. I think we could be. I think our mothers knew it, and I think that's why they made us. That's why I've . . . Oh, Clara, it was murder to hurt you. I don't want to hurt you. I want you to be here, with me. I want you to help me.”

As if triggered by Anise's passion, the palace shook. They looked to the horizon and saw, in the distance, a rolling electric storm, and the palace's western wall crumbling. Clara felt ill, imagining the soldiers manning the wall, the slaves and prisoners beneath it.

Anise turned to her, the lines of her face suddenly pinched, and still she was dazzling. “You see, I don't think I can do it much longer on my own. I've tried to make my country what it should be, but it exhausts me, such constant work. I feel so drained. One little half-breed, remaking an entire world?” She laughed, looking out bitterly over the crumbling landscape. “It would be easier, I think, with two.”

A pause fell between them, thick with confusion and possibilities. Anise's fingers burned Clara's skin. It seemed the queen's blood ran as hot as Clara's blood now ran cold.

“Come on.” Anise released her, began stripping off her own beautiful black velvet robe. “Take off your clothes.”

Clara stepped away. “What?”

“Just do it. We two and the world, the world we'll remake exactly like we want it to be. Come
on
.”

Reluctantly, Clara stepped out of her tattered dressing gown, as she had each of these nights in Anise's chambers. She flinched as the cold hit her body, as she caught her reflection in the windows' glass and
thought, stupidly for such a moment, of how improper it was. Her hands flew to cover herself, but Anise caught them.

“No. Don't be ashamed. They're just bodies, and they're ours, and they're
powerful
.” Anise pulled her farther out onto the terrace, into the swirling snow, and ran ahead of Clara, throwing out her arms. Clara followed, arms folded tightly about her middle. She longed to run back inside and fold herself into the warmth of Anise's bed, but Anise's insistence, her beauty in the snow, was a terrible magnet. The terrace expanded before them, mechaniks moving out obediently into a scrolling iron railing, into metal plates that created a stairway to the tower's roof. Gasping with delight, Anise dragged Clara after her, pulling her on faster and faster, until they were both running at breakneck speed. Anise was unearthly in her grace, and Clara, stumbling after her, felt like a child—a child's awkwardness, yes, but also, as the warmth of Anise's hand melted her inhibitions away, a child's freedom, a child's breathlessness. She found herself laughing, to Anise's obvious delight, and she uncurled, stood taller, let her free arm fall away. The clouds shifted, and starlight hit her skin. Terrifying, this bareness. It shook her and stamped out her shame, replacing it with giddy contempt for the Clara of only a few minutes earlier, her old, shivering self. It was not a completely comfortable feeling, rather like being thrown into icy waters and realizing that, yes, you can swim after all—but struggling futilely for anchor regardless.

At the tower's peaked roof, on this new terrace made of a million tiny machines, they stopped. Anise threw up their clasped hands and crowed into the night. Heat rolled off her in waves. The snowflakes, when they hit her skin, melted immediately. She was a column of flawless white flesh and tiny whorls of steam.

“Here we are, the two-blooded monsters!” she cried, joyous, defiant. “You are our world, and we will make you our own!”

Anise's excitement was infectious. Clara found herself laughing along with her, nervous energy bursting out in gasps.

“Say something!” Anise said, drawing her close. “The world is listening.”

Clara did not even pause to think. The words exploded out of her as if they had always existed, waiting. “You think you can beat us, but you're wrong! You'll try to break us, and you'll fail! You got our mothers, but you won't ever—
ever
—get us!”

She had surprised herself. As though she were no longer in Cane, no longer on the roof of the Summer Palace but instead back home, high above her poor, ruthless city, she had screamed out to the world that it would not stifle her. No, she would rise above its violence. She would transcend it and make it her own.

Anise was quiet, her eyes shining. She leaned closer, and her gaze fell to Clara's lips, fondly, and for a moment, for a
moment
 . . .

Clara held her breath. She wasn't sure if she was glad at the idea, or disgusted, or had simply gone as mad as Anise was. There was a power between them, and it was not their magic; it was this night, the cold and the stars, their reckless nakedness.

Anise spun around, and the moment between them danced away with the snow. Anise yelled obscenities and glorious promises into the night, and Clara noticed that her promises were full of the same blood and violence that was tearing her kingdom apart. It saddened her, but it did not surprise her. Perhaps a child raised by war could never truly leave it behind. They all—Anise, Nicholas, herself—might be doomed to stay trapped in the wrecks of the worlds that had shaped them.

Oh,
Nicholas
. The memory of his touch shot through her, and it stung with betrayal—with his, and with hers, this sudden treachery of running naked alongside the woman bent on killing him.

Of course, he deserved it for what he had done. If Clara decided to stay here, at Anise's side, maybe she could eventually persuade Anise out of her violent ways, arrange her father's release, and provide for her family's safety, all with Anise's fervent support. Certainly that was worth betraying a man who obviously thought so little of her.

She glanced sideways at the queen. Such devotion on her face; such a tenderness as she hugged Clara close, as though they were girls whispering secrets.

Would anything ever make sense again?

Her conflicted thoughts lingered, even when she and Anise were back in the queen's chambers, where Anise swept aside piles of potential party gowns and pulled Clara with her into bed. They lay there, a worn-out tangle of limbs and melting snow.