I hated him for it. We all did. I’d see Dendera exchange glances with Alysson or Finn snarl to Sir’s retreating back, and I knew everyone felt, on some level, the same maddening urge to shake Sir into realizing that we already knew the dangers of our lives. If anything, his hesitancy to let us help dragged out the worst of it.
And I did the exact same thing. I tried to force a specific life on Nessa.
A guttural, scraping noise fills the bedroom, and Dendera’s eyebrows rise at me. It’s me—I’m laughing. I brace my hands over my mouth but I can’t stop it, insane giggles bubbling up my throat and erupting into my palms until I’m doubled over, unable to breathe through the absurd twist that I’ve become Sir.
I collapse on the floor, my stomach cramping. Everyone in the room just stares, which only makes me laugh harder.
Nessa kneels beside me, her anger fading to a slight tint of red on her neck. “Meira?”
I lower my hands, laughter fading under the sudden trembling of my pulse. “You called me Meira.”
She sighs, but her smile blinds me again, the kind that sends chill deep into my soul. “You’ve always been Meira,” she says like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
I shake my head as Dendera joins us, kneeling next to me on the floor.
“I tried not to be,” I say, the words coming before I can consider a response.
Dendera takes my hand, her face blank, waiting. “Why?”
Her question, or maybe the dream, or maybe just months of being consumed with fear, breaks me, and it all pours out, every reason I cling so tightly to Queen Meira.
“When I got the locket half and led Angra’s men straight to camp. When I fought marrying into Cordell even though it would’ve solved so much. When I barged into Noam’s office and risked destroying our one alliance. Even in the Abril camp, when I brought down the ramps, I could’ve killed my own people. Everything I did, every selfish act, was impetuous and risky and I hurt everyone.” Tears stream down my cheeks, hot, branding tears. “I was queen, all along, every moment of my life, and I could have helped everyone—but I didn’t. I was so selfish. I could have done more, I could have—”
Saved everyone. I could have saved everyone in Winter, if Hannah had let Angra kill us both. But she didn’t—she sent me away. She couldn’t go through with it. She was weak, or maybe strong—I don’t know what, but she didn’t do it, and I’m just like her. I’m weak and scared and I try so hard, but it’s never enough.
No part of who I am is enough, so I tried to be someone else.
Dendera silences me with a hand on my cheek. “You listen to me, Meira Dynam. Yes, you have made mistakes, but I have watched you succumb to this role over the past few months, and that, I believe, is the biggest mistake you have made. The biggest mistake we all made. We’ve all been afraid, and Meira, you look at me. You saved us. You, this beautiful, wild girl before me—you saved us. So be you again, and whoever that is will be exactly what we need.”
You saved us.
Her words dangle before me, tempting, alluring. I haven’t thought that . . . ever. I’ve never let myself bask in the good I did, only the good I could have done.
But . . . I saved us. I saved us.
I inhale, and this time, I feel it. This time, it rushes through me, life-giving and fresh and cool, filling me up with Dendera’s and Nessa’s certainty.
Dendera stands and moves to the trunk against the wall. Endless bolts of fabric sit within, some half-made articles of clothing, and she scrambles through it. When she pulls her hand out, the air I managed leaves my body in a gust that sends me scrambling to my feet.
My chakram in its holster, the great circular blade glinting sharp and polished, the handle worn smooth through the middle.
“My queen,” Dendera says as she passes it to me, bowing over the weapon.
I ease my fingers around the chakram, my hand curving into place in its natural stance, every muscle unwinding in a ripple of peace. I never should have been without it. This is me, whoever I am when I hold my chakram. Both the thoughtful, careful queen I’ve forced myself to be, and the wild, passionate girl who pushed her kingdom to teeter on the edge of defeat—but also snatched it back from that edge.
A warrior queen.
I can be both. I will be both. I’m tired of fighting myself—I have far too many enemies, far too many obstacles, to spend so much energy wrestling myself into submission. I have far too few friends to alienate those closest to me. I need to start trusting them. And if they break . . .
We’ll just have to pick up the pieces together.
I lower my chakram to my side and turn to Nessa. “All right, I’ll explain everything. But first—” I exhale. “There’s someone else who needs to hear the truth too.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Mather
CONFRONTING THE CORDELLAN soldiers must have been the final blow to William’s resolve, because ever since, Mather had been swarmed with tasks. Menial, mundane tasks, when for the weeks prior, he hadn’t been missed. William gave him chores sent through other channels—Finn telling him that planks of wood needed sanding, Greer recruiting him to scrub dishes. Mather didn’t see William at all, and in not seeing him, he grew more infuriated.
Mather deserved to have William shout at him for the defiant thing he had done—not that he regretted it, but had they been back at their nomadic camp and Mather had stood against him, William would have made him learn firsthand the meaning of the word obedience. That was how he punished them—well, mostly Meira, in all honesty: by making sure they learned how each soldier needed to be perfect for a mission to be a success.
But in this new life, William did not reprimand him. He didn’t scold him or revisit what had happened—he just moved on from it, dismissing the event without a backward glance.
This was the final blow to Mather’s resolve too. The final bit of proof that he was exactly where Winter needed him to be: building a defense. Because with leaders like William avoiding everything, it wouldn’t take more than a handful of soldiers to tear down Winter.
And they already had far more than a handful of soldiers among them.
Mather ducked down a narrow alley out of some lingering instinct to make his path scattered and chaotic so he couldn’t be followed. Not that it would be difficult to figure out where he had been going every night after he finished his list of chores—there were only so many inhabited streets. But he still took his time until he popped out two buildings down from the Thaw’s cottage and allowed himself a small sigh of relief.
His sigh bit off when he noted the figure slouched over the steps, shuffling around, metal clanking. A Cordellan soldier? Had someone finally found their secret trainings?
Readiness calmed Mather’s nerves, the still of attack. He launched forward, grabbed the person’s neck, and flung them out into the darkening street.
But he had felt long hair on the person’s neck. And not armor on their shoulders, but linen, and when the intruder hit the ground they released a cry that sounded much too . . . feminine.
Though the sun had started to fall toward the horizon, enough light remained that when Mather’s eyes locked on the intruder’s face, he sprang forward and swooped her to her feet.
Snow, not a soldier at all—Alysson.
She blinked in a daze, her eyes catching his and crinkling in an unspoken question.
He grimaced. “I thought you—” he started, bit back the end of it. “I’m sorry.”
Alysson put one hand on his shoulder like she wasn’t steady until she touched him, made sure he was all right. “You thought I was a Cordellan?”
Mather frowned as the door to the cottage burst open. Phil stumbled out, everyone else behind him, but he didn’t get far before his foot caught on a bundle leaning against the top step. The bundle Alysson had been crouched over.
Phi
l stopped, one of their mock swords clutched in his fist. They must’ve heard Alysson’s cry of surprise during their self-led training, and as Mather looked up at them, all the blood in his body surged downward. Alysson was here, staring up at Phil and his wooden sword, and she would see just how much Mather had disobeyed William.
But Alysson didn’t seem the least bit aghast. In fact, she seemed amazed.
Her hand went slack on Mather’s shoulder. “You’ve gotten these results using splinters?”
Mather’s jaw swung open, shut, open again. “What?”
“Hey!”
Rattling, the dull thump of iron. Phil bent on the top step, rustling through the bundle. A thick blanket fell away, revealing weapons. Swords, daggers, a bow, and a fistful of arrows.
Everyone gazed at the weapons spilling in a deadly waterfall down the stairs. Mather especially, his hungry eyes calculating how many swords, how many knives. Seven swords. Eight daggers—four sets.
He turned back to Alysson, who now had her arms crossed as she watched the Thaw pick their way down the steps, maneuvering around the weapons as though disturbing them at all would cause them to vanish.
“Where did you get these?” Mather asked, his hands shaking as if he already knew her answer, already felt the repercussions wafting through him. “How did you know?”
Alysson turned a soft smile to him and opened it in an almost mocking laugh. “I spent sixteen years in a camp surrounded by fighting. You think I can’t recognize when a group of children, who should be just as scrawny as the rest of the malnourished Winterians, have the beginnings of muscle definition? When they should be unsteady and weak, but hop down the street with, dare I say, grace?” She clucked her tongue. “I know I never picked up a sword myself, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t pay attention.”
Mather choked. “You knew? You know? Who else—and where did you get—”
Ice above, just finish a sentence.
But try as he might, Mather couldn’t get more than half-formed words to blubber out of his mouth. He knew the Thaw would eventually show physical signs of training, but he’d assumed everyone else would brush off the way his child warriors had begun to fill out their clothes more than they should as the effects of rebuilding cottages. But Alysson had noticed—Alysson, who had never done more than glance at a sword ring.
So who else knew?
She seemed to read the calculating horror on his face and put her hand on his cheek. “Of course William knows, but he’s not seeing a lot of things lately that he should.”
Mather shook his head, afraid he had misheard her. “You don’t agree with him?”
But even as he asked that question, understanding burst through him.
“He doesn’t know you brought these weapons.” His mind rang with the softest vibration of regret, and he realized that he wanted William to know. He wanted William to address this, to see what he had done, for William’s eyes to fill with the pride that Alysson’s held.
That last bit made Mather gape. “But why?”
Alysson squeezed his shoulder. “You need them. And you’re my son, as much as you struggle to accept that. You have always been and will always be my son. That’s how relationships work—when one person is blind, the other must see for them. When one person struggles, the other must remain strong.”
Mather touched her wrist, amazement coursing through him.
Here Alysson stood, this woman he had always taken advantage of as someone who had helped the Winterian resistance in their camp, not the frontlines. Honestly he had never viewed her as a guiding source of strength. That had always fallen on William.
But Mather had been wrong.
About a lot of things.
“You shouldn’t have to be the one to put us all back together,” he whispered. The Thaw filled up the abandoned street in front of the cottage, testing weapons, laughing at how much heavier a sword was compared to their thin lengths of wood. He didn’t want them to hear, didn’t want to break this small, delicate area blossoming between him and his mother.
His mother. Frigid snow above, he’d almost thought it without balking that time.
Alysson’s smile faded. “You need me more. William too. It’s the nature of his position. I learned long ago that I have to be the one he leans on while Winter leans on him. And,” she hesitated, her brow rising conspiratorially, “if you want, someday I know you can do the same for Meira.”
Mather reeled. Alysson knew about that area of his heart too. Had anything ever gotten past her?
She leaned closer to him. “You’ve fought for Winter so spectacularly. I am more proud than I have ever been to call you my son, and I will do all I can to help you as you help our kingdom. But don’t forget to fight for yourself as well—there is no shame in that.”
Mather closed his eyes, dropping his head in a bow—of surrender? Of agreement? Of gratitude? Everything. His body swam with remorse, but through that, he felt the tightest flash of joy—the Thaw had weapons now. Real weapons, and Alysson’s support.
But he couldn’t get the image of Meira out of his head, her face when he had left her bedroom the night of the celebration. Her eyes wide and desperate, tears streaking in violent rivers down her cheeks. It had killed him to leave her—as it should have.
He never should have stepped out of that room. All the things he had wanted to do—run back to her, fight for her—were things he should have done.
He understood that now, understood through Alysson’s silent strength.
Sweet snow, he had known Alysson his whole life, and never once had he seen her break. The most he could remember were a few stray tears flying down her cheeks when other members of their group died. But that was it, all the pain she ever showed, and Mather’s other memories were of Alysson standing with her hand on William’s shoulder, or a silent, firm nod before someone went off on a mission. Quiet and steady, and Mather had never noticed, not once.
He’d been blind for far too long.
So when Mather opened his eyes, he intended to tell her. He intended to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness for being such an ungrateful son.
But the peaceful tone of the otherwise empty street was gone, replaced with a sensation he knew all too well: alertness. The Thaw held their new weapons with purpose, their bodies forming a U-shape toward an attacker across the street from their cottage. Everything blurred as Mather whipped toward the enemy, already reaching for the dagger he always kept in his boot.
Alysson saw his movement. He knew she did by the way her eyes followed him as he spun, arms out, dagger ready.
But she didn’t move, just wrinkled her brow, her mouth cracking open in a faint moan.
Mather couldn’t identify her expression. No, he refused to, pushed it from his mind even as it slammed persistently into his skull. He’d seen that look before—he knew that look—
His eyes dropped to her chest, to the growing blotch of scarlet that stained her blue dress red. The tip of a sword gleamed against her body like a morbid bauble on a necklace.
The enemy hadn’t been across the street. The enemy had crept up on them, close enough that Mather should have heard or seen or stopped them—
The blade ripped out through Alysson’s back and she pitched toward him, her eyes vanishing into her skull as she collapsed in his arms. Mather’s dagger tumbled from his hands, his heart surging numb shock through him as his fingers groped from Alysson’s head to her shoulders, searching for a sign of life, a sign of explanation—but he knew. He’d known the moment he saw the weapons she’d brought, but he’d hoped she hadn’t gone there, that she’d realized as he had what a suicidal thing it would be.
“She stole weapons,” a Cordellan soldier confirmed from where he had stood behind Alysson. He was the same one who had threatened Feige days ago and his blade, heavy with maroon blood, glinted in the twilight. “And thieves will not be tolerated in a Cordellan colony.”
A scream. A bright, piercing croak of noise, and Phil burst
out of the ranks of the Thaw, sword blazing overhead. Mather shouted as the Cordellan soldier pivoted toward Phil, shouted because he couldn’t fathom losing someone else, not now—
The soldier’s blade swung up, the end poised at Phil’s neck. Phil stopped a beat before he would’ve been pierced through, his chest rising in a desperate gulp of air.
Mather didn’t have long to be grateful, though. The Cordellan sneered at him as shouts went up, as the clanking of armor ricocheted down the street and cries of victory echoed through the city. A horn blew, long and loud, a pulsing tear of noise that signaled—
. . . a Cordellan colony.
Noam. He’d officially taken Winter.
No, the only thing this horn would signal would be the end of Cordellan occupation in Winter. This ended now, tonight.
Arms tugged at Mather, voices shouted through his sudden, deadly fog.
“We have to run!”
“There are too many here—get up!”
Mather growled, pushing away whoever tried to grab him. Everyone was an enemy, everyone would die for this because Alysson’s blood coated his hands and her body lay motionless where he arranged her on the ground. He scrambled to get his dagger again, his eyes swarming with murderous red as the Cordellan soldier ran away from him, the coward, to regroup with more soldiers that appeared at the far end of the street. Cowards, every Cordellan was a coward, and Mather would kill them all.
A face came into focus. “There are too many,” Hollis pleaded. “You taught us that. You taught us to assess situations, to fall back if necessary. We have to run now.”
Awareness sparked through him. A line of Cordellans spanned the street to their north, blocking off any retreat into the abandoned parts of Jannuari. At least two dozen soldiers marched in steady, taunting steps toward them—they were being corralled into the center of Jannuari. From the shouts and cries of alarm ringing through the rest of the city, Mather guessed the same thing now blocked every street out of the inhabited areas. An unbreakable circle of Cordellans finally preying on the Winterians.