Ice Like Fire

  “There is still an us,” he tells me. “There will always be an us.”

  I heave back from him. “No,” I state, voice hard. “There will always be a separation.”

  Theron’s arms hang open in front of him, and he pants, yanking his hands up to rip through his hair.

  “You need to stop doing this,” he growls.

  “Doing what?” Because I have no idea which part he’s talking about. The lying? The choosing Winter over his own goals?

  One of those I refuse to stop doing.

  He groans to the ceiling. “Pushing me away. How do you expect—”

  I throw my hand up. “Wait—you’re upset because I won’t open up to you?”

  He nods and fresh anger pools into the myriad of emotions in my stomach.

  “I don’t open up to you? I’ve tried, Theron. I told you how I feel about the magic chasm; I told you how I feel about your father. But you push away all the bad and ignore everything but your own hope. You do not get to be angry with me. I have to hold myself together because no one else is capable of handling the truth.”

  “You have to open up to someone,” Theron continues. “I understand why you can’t in front of your people, but you need someone. And I thought . . .” His words trail off as his tenseness eases, hesitates, waiting on the words that will follow. “I thought you would . . .”

  Something changes in his eyes. Like an idea occurred to him, a shocking, ghastly idea that causes him to pitch up straight, snarling.

  “Mather,” he growls. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

  “Mather?” I stagger, his name a gust of wind that lashes chill across my body.

  “All this time,” Theron snarls, “I knew you loved him, but I thought you’d moved on—”

  “I do love—I mean, I did love him once, but I—”

  “—and I thought things would be better now. Everything is better now! We have the magic chasm and your kingdom is free and we can be us—”

  “I can’t do this anymore!”

  I stop. Theron stops. We both gape at each other in the agonizing silence.

  Theron exhales. “Do what anymore?” But he doesn’t let me answer. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you—you don’t have to keep holding back. I’m here for you, and I—”

  He talks so fast, and despite the comfort his words try to form, his shoulders droop and everything about his posture says he’s talking merely to keep me from countering him.

  “No, Theron,” I whisper, and his jaw bobbles open, his words falling flat. “I can’t . . . be with you. Not like this. I think I could, someday, if Noam requires our marriage; if it’s in Winter’s best interest. But I can’t be with you now. Not when we’re divided by so much.” I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes as a warm wave of tears puddles against my lids. “I think I’ve known for a while, but you were hurting, and I couldn’t add to that. I’ve caused you enough pain. But now I’ve only caused you more.”

  I lower my hands, sight blurred so I only see the hazy outline of a boy before me. “But I don’t know how to fix you. I don’t even know how to fix myself. You may think everything’s better, but it’s not, Theron. I can’t go along with what you want. I don’t want the magic chasm opened—and I will do everything I can to keep it shut. We aren’t united on this journey.” My heart scratches at my throat, choking me, but not the ache of regret—the choking of words that needed to be said long ago. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you, but I didn’t want . . .”

  I scrub my fingers over my eyes until he comes into focus, and when he does, a part of me shrinks. He watches me, his face hurt and distant and hard, and the combination drives nails into my gut.

  “I didn’t want to hurt you,” I finish.

  “That’s the only reason you’d love me?” Theron spits. “If my father ordered you to?”

  “That’s all you took from what I said?” I wheeze, but as soon as I do, his face collapses. The wrong thing to say, and he angles forward, body coiled.

  “I took that you were using me. I thought you of all people understood what it’s like to be used so violently that you wonder if there are any pieces of you left. But you’re just like my father.” He gasps. “You’re just like—”

  “I am nothing like Noam,” I snap. “Because I’m sorry, Theron. I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry for everything, but I don’t know anything anymore, and everything I do is my instinctual reaction to what I think will keep Winter safe. Has your father ever once apologized for the things he’s done? No. So don’t you dare compare me to him. I am not Noam.”

  Piece by piece, Theron’s anger breaks, revealing the boy beneath. The trembling shadows we all harbor within our all-too fragile shells, terrified someone will one day see.

  After another long second of neither of us knowing what to do or say that could make anything better, he slides back a step.

  “The treaty,” he whispers. “If Giselle agrees to sign it, will you? It is what’s best for your kingdom.”

  “Yes,” I say before he can go on. The treaty doesn’t matter, honestly—if that will appease him, I’ll sign it. But I hold, waiting for him to ask how I’ll proceed on the next issue, the biggest one, the goal that makes him touch his pocket absently.

  He still has the key I found in Summer. He doesn’t know I found the one here yet.

  I fight to keep from touching my own pocket, but I can feel the heavy weight of the key on my thigh. What will happen when he searches on his own and doesn’t find it? Will we still press on for Ventralli?

  “Can we at least agree to share what information we find?” Theron adds, his voice quiet.

  “Information?”

  He tips his head. “Information regarding the pursuits that might bring you to this library.”

  I swallow. He’s never used that tone with me, a distant, emotionless timbre that plants clear expectations between two people—politics and propriety, nothing more.

  My body hums with the magic still swirling through me. It isn’t fed by anger now—it’s fed by grief, bright and hot and expected, like now that I’ve outright admitted what Theron and I are, my body unwinds in resignation.

  No more lying. He knows what I want with regard to the magic; I know what he wants.

  So I don’t tell him I have the key. At least, not directly.

  “We should continue to Ventralli,” I manage. “As soon as the treaty is signed.”

  Theron’s brows launch skyward, understanding written in shocked lines over his face. When I don’t elaborate, he snorts in incredulity and runs a hand through his hair, pausing with his eyes on the floor, his shoulders stiff.

  “You’ll see,” he starts, “when the chasm is opened, that everything I’ve done has been to keep you safe.”

  I didn’t think it possible to hurt more than I do, but an ache thuds in me, pounding where my heart should be.

  “I don’t need to be safe. I need Winter to be safe.”

  Theron drops his hand and looks at me. “You’re more than that kingdom.”

  He’s trying so hard to be sweet, to be the Theron I fell for in Bithai. But sweetness isn’t all I want anymore. I want . . . Winter. I want someone who thinks of protecting Winter first and me second. Not the other way around.

  “No,” I say. “I’m really not.”

  Theron gapes at me, but snaps away his shock with a curt shake of his head.

  He turns and marches toward the door without another word.

  I watch him go, waiting for my grief to rear so high it paralyzes me, waiting to crack into pieces and fall apart. And at one point in my life, I think I would have. But knowing what he wants with the magic chasm, I feel more certain than I have in a long time.

  There is very little that I would choose over keeping Winter safe.

  And Theron isn’t one of those things.

  I reach into my pocket as the door shuts behind him. My fingers close around the key, a resolved, firm grip. I have one of the keys. I have a wa
y to—

  The old metal grinds against my skin, and I know as soon as I touch it that I was wrong. Whatever magic these keys possess—it isn’t simple; I don’t have it figured out.

  Numbness launches up my arm, spreads across my chest, sends me toppling to the floor. I can’t do more than reel as I tumble, too annoyed at myself for touching the key to be scared.

  “My queen!” Henn’s face darts into view. His lips move, saying something to me, but the magic is swift, a mad rush of sizzling nothingness that yanks a shadow over my eyes.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  Meira

  THE MAGIC COATS me in chill through a tangle of confusion that amplifies when a voice lights me up, a sun rising over night-drenched landscape.

  “The magic must not be reached by someone of corrupt heart. No, their heart must be pure—no, good—no, no, none of those. The magic must be reached by someone of ready heart. They must be ready. And these tests—these tests will make them ready.”

  “What tests? Ready for what?” I ask. But who am I asking? No one is talking—no one but me is here. This is just in my head, knowledge coming up from—the key?

  I think I’m holding the key. Asleep, somewhere, I’m holding it, and it’s using my voice, droning on and on.

  “And these tests—these tests will make them—”

  The nothingness lifts, unfurls like curtains drawn away from a window until all around me is white: walls paneled ivory trimmed in silver.

  Winter. I’m in a study in the Jannuari Palace.

  “I have to do this!”

  Hannah stands in the center of the room, her body pivoted away from me as she talks at a man with his forehead pressed to the wall.

  “You don’t understand,” she growls. “This is the only way to save them.”

  Seeing her now makes me realize how much I’ve missed her. She doesn’t react to me, though—not when I say her name; not when I stand right in front of her, forehead pinched.

  “They need this, Duncan,” she says, and her voice breaks on a sob.

  I turn, but the man stays facing away from us, his long, white hair brushing across his back as he buries his face in his hands. Duncan. My father.

  “I asked the magic,” Hannah continues. “I begged it to tell me what to do. I don’t want to just save them from Angra—I want to save them from all the dangers of the world.” Her sobs abate, and she tugs her shoulders back, hardening. “I asked how to save Winter.”

  I know this already. The magic told her that when a conduit breaks in defense of a kingdom, the ruler becomes the host for the magic. They become their own conduit, a limitless supply of magic for their people. That was why she arranged for Angra to break her locket—she wanted to save our people from him.

  “I have to let him kill us,” she states, trying to convince herself as much as Duncan.

  Kill us?

  As I watch her, the rest of the story unfolds in my mind. One piece in particular jerks out in an uncomfortable lurch that rips the breath from my lungs.

  How did I not see this before?

  Hannah arranged for Angra to break her locket—but she also arranged for him to kill her. That was part of her deal with him—she promised him an end to the Dynam line, not knowing that she was pregnant, and that that meant killing her child too.

  “When a conduit breaks in defense of a kingdom, the ruler of that kingdom becomes the conduit. And if the conduit were to break again—if that ruler were to die in defense of their kingdom as the last of their bloodline—the magic would seek out the next host linked to it—the citizens of its kingdom.” She stops, winded. “They’ll—you’ll—never want for anything. I have to do this, Duncan. He has to kill us so Winter can be saved.”

  Us.

  No—this is wrong. This is a trick—

  “They must be ready. And these tests—these tests will make them ready.”

  My voice again, taunting me. I tangle my fingers in my hair, shaking my head to keep the information from sinking into my mind. But it does, and everything unravels.

  If what Hannah said is true, if I hadn’t been born—if Hannah had let Angra kill us both all those years ago—

  Our ruined kingdom would be whole right now. Sir would have raised Mather as his son. Nessa and Garrigan and Conall would be filled with power, and Spring would have fallen, and the Decay would be a distant memory beneath all of Winter’s conduit magic.

  That’s what the key wants me to see? How my very existence kept my people from safety?

  “A ready heart,” the magic says. “These tests will make you ready.”

  I bend forward and scream frustration, exhaustion, everything I have left. I don’t even scream words, just noise, how tired I am of fighting a war when I can barely see one step ahead, how tired I am of being the only one who even sees the war.

  And now—what? I should just let it all kill me so my people become their own conduits? This can’t be it. This doesn’t even have anything to do with the magic chasm—and these tests are supposed to help me reach the magic chasm, aren’t they?

  But the visions I saw when I touched Theron didn’t have anything to do with the magic chasm either. He didn’t see anything, though, and he touched the key—if he did see something, I would’ve noticed him react. So why just me? Because of my own magic? Why would the Order have set up the keys to be conduits that only react with a conduit-wielder? No one without magic can open the door? None of this makes sense.

  “What is going on?” I shout. “Why do I need this? WHAT DO I DO?”

  I’ll never forget the first blizzard in Winter. Days after we returned, the weather kicked up as if celebrating our return. Snowflakes cut through the air, clouds darkened the sky, the temperature plummeted even more. Every Winterian in Jannuari ran outside to greet the gale, absorbing the chill with stunned ecstasy.

  Standing in the courtyard of the palace, arms to the sky, cold numbing all other senses and wind deadening all other noises, I closed my eyes. I had never, in all my life, felt so remarkably alone. But it was a perfect kind of alone, a delicate, dreamlike peace.

  This feeling now, as I awaken, nearly drowning in my fear, blood roaring in my head—this is the exact opposite of that. Alone, but desolate and swirling deeper into oblivion.

  I bolt upright, the canopy around my bed in the Yakimian palace jostling with my force.

  “My queen?”

  Nessa holds my hand in one of hers, the key lying on the quilt beside me, my fingers cramped from being pried open by her. I suck in air, lungs screaming like I held my breath for the entire dream. Or nightmare, more like, but I yank free of Nessa and scramble off the bed, eyes on the key, body shaking from head to toe.

  “What happened—” I start to ask, but I know. I feel the knowledge all over, every muscle aching and drenched with it as I pace, my wrinkled gown swaying around my legs.

  Nessa stands. “Henn said you collapsed in the library. Dendera fetched a doctor, but he couldn’t find anything wrong with you. You were so still, though, and I couldn’t believe it was nothing—nothing natural, anyway. So they all left, and I said I’d watch you, and I saw your fist all clenched up. It was that key—it did something to you. What is it? It has to do with the magic chasm—”

  “Nessa,” I stop her in a biting rush.

  Hannah planned for me to die too—but couldn’t go through with it, for whatever reason.

  I have no idea how to find the Order of the Lustrate. Not beyond these keys. There’s something more to them, something I don’t understand, and it terrifies me.

  And if I tell Nessa any of this, it will give her even more fuel for nightmares. Theron already broke, and I can’t handle her hurting more too—

  “I can’t tell you—”

  “Why?” She ducks around the bed, closer to me, glaring, her cheeks red.

  “Because this
isn’t your fight.”

  Her glare hardens. “Liar.”

  That makes me start. Nessa, my Nessa, is mad at me.

  “I know you’re hiding something,” she continues. “I’ve known since we got back to Winter. Everyone else was happy and you were miserable—we won the war, yet you looked like you did in the camp, scared and waiting for something to break. It’s the magic chasm, isn’t it? Something about it has you worried. Noam? Cordell? What is it?”

  I shake my head, whether in response or because I cannot, will not, admit this to her.

  “Stop keeping it from me! I grew up in misery. I don’t know why everyone thinks I’m so fragile. I can handle the truth!”

  The door connecting my room to the one beside us opens. Dendera, Henn, Conall, and Garrigan run in and freeze at the sight of Nessa shouting at me.

  “You shouldn’t have to,” I tell her. “This shouldn’t be your life. I’ll make it better.”

  “That isn’t your responsibility!”

  “I’m the queen—of course it is!”

  “No, it isn’t.” Nessa jabs a finger at me, every muscle in her face tight. “It’s your job to make sure we have food and houses; it isn’t your job to make every one of us happy. I deserve to know what’s going on. You aren’t the only one who loves Winter and wants to protect it.”

  “But I’m Winter’s conduit, Nessa.” My voice breaks. “I’m the only one who can—”

  “Stop it!” Nessa waves her arm around the room at everyone gathered here. “You are not the only one. This is my kingdom just as much as it is yours. This is my war too!”

  “This is my war too, Sir! You have to let me fight. I can help, I know I can!”

  My own voice echoes back at me from Nessa, and I can’t do more than blink at her. All the dozens of times I yelled at Sir, the exact same words.

  I clap my hands over my mouth, shock freezing me in place. Dendera and Henn realize it at the same moment I do and their concern melts into the sad, hard set of truth.

  I did to Nessa exactly what Sir did to me for years. What he did to everyone. How he tried to single-handedly accomplish the most insane tasks—raids to get the locket half, scouting new camps, meeting with potential allies. He was always alone, stoic and hard and removed from our lives until he desperately, unavoidably needed us. He tried to keep the weight of our failures on his own shoulders so we wouldn’t have to deal with the painful, wracking truth of what our lives were.