Ice Like Fire

  Is she that kind of person? Jesse seems to think so.

  I blink, surprised at myself. It seems I’ve gotten better at thinking through politics. I don’t know if that’s something I should be proud of.

  Jesse hunches over papers on the floor, talking still. “. . . men stationed just out west, who are loyal to me, I think.”

  All this swirls around me, the chaos of such heated politics rearing up out of what seemed a beautiful, picturesque kingdom. I turn to Dendera and to my surprise, she nods.

  Accept him? I mouth.

  She nods again.

  But something about this still doesn’t sit right. Unease seems to be my constant escort.

  “Why now?” I swivel back to Jesse, who pauses in his sorting to look up at me. “Because I need allies too, King Jesse, and if I agree to this, I will need support quickly. Why is it so imperative you find allies to fight your wife now?”

  His face drains of color. “Because she . . .” His voice fades, his jaw bobbing.

  Every nerve in my body flares to readiness, a feeling that shocks me with memory.

  I was four or five, young enough that my recollection consists of hazy flashes of images that may or may not be real. A canopy of heavy, wet leaves in the Eldridge Forest; Alysson’s arms around me as we sat near a fire; and a sound, a violent, shattering noise—a branch snapping.

  On its own it wasn’t anything unusual; branches snapped all the time in the Eldridge. But something about it felt heavier, louder than any noise I had heard yet. Because just after it, Alysson shoved me off her lap and fell over the sprawled body of Sir, lying motionless in the undergrowth of the forest. He didn’t move for so long, seconds that felt like days, until finally, finally, he turned over and murmured that his partner had been killed by Angra’s men.

  As I watched him, and his wife hovering over him and people running in a frenzy around me, all I could hear was that branch snapping over and over, the branch he’d stepped on as he collapsed by the fire. For years after, every time I’d hear a branch snap, my heart would drop and my eyes would tear and I’d expect death to come roaring at me.

  Now, as I stand in the center of the Ventrallan king’s study, I feel the noise before it happens. Not a branch snapping, but something just as commonplace—a noise forever warped into signaling that something’s coming, something I can’t control.

  Two thumping knocks on the door.

  I spin, the tulle of my gown whooshing against the force. Jesse leaps to his feet, his face sickly gray as he dives forward and yanks open the door.

  Lekan stands there, fist up to knock again, sweat gleaming on his bare face. He sees Jesse and flinches—physically, violently recoils, lips curling, body hunching back.

  “I need the Winter queen,” he snaps.

  Jesse sags against the door. “Where is Ceridwen? Have you seen her? Can you—”

  “I need the Winter queen,” Lekan echoes his snarl, and shoves Jesse aside. Shoves the Ventrallan king.

  I gape at Lekan. I know Jesse is Ceridwen’s . . . whatever he is, and Lekan is her friend, but that was bold. And this coming from someone who once locked herself in the Cordellan king’s office.

  Lekan’s glower intensifies. “I need your help.”

  “I’m popular today,” I say as Jesse leaps in with “Where is she?”

  I squint at Jesse. The moment he saw Lekan, he asked where Ceridwen was. But . . . they are involved, aren’t they? Wouldn’t he know where she is? Or did something happen?

  Is that why Jesse is so panicked to find allies?

  “She does that at every turn—infects potential allies until I’m left with . . .”

  Snow above. Did Raelyn do something to Ceridwen? She’s left her alone for however many years, but maybe . . . maybe she finally acted against her husband’s mistress.

  I nod at Lekan. “Of course.”

  Jesse presses a moan back, torn between wanting me to help Ceridwen and wanting me to help him. But he relents, almost instantly, his eyes latching on to mine. “Please, Queen Meira,” he gasps. “Consider my proposal. We can discuss this after we—”

  Lekan turns on Jesse as the king reaches for a sword hanging on the wall. The pattern on the sheath and the jewels on the hilt scream “decoration only,” and the lack of weapons on Jesse’s person at all says he isn’t a fighter.

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Lekan growls. “Stay here. Do nothing. You’re good at that.”

  Jesse’s chest sags and he drops against the door frame.

  The old Meira appreciates Lekan’s brazenness, but Queen Meira chokes. “He’s the king of Ventralli,” I half gag, half laugh.

  But Lekan just grabs my arm. “He’ll get over it.”

  And we’re running, leaving Jesse with his hands over his face, his conduit dangling uselessly from his hip.

  The halls of the Donati Palace are maddeningly long.

  I’m already half out of my dress by the time I burst into my room. Conall and Garrigan close the door, and Dendera dives at the trunk in the corner, ripping out clothes more appropriate to search for someone. Nessa scoops it all out of Dendera’s hands and shoves me behind a dressing screen.

  “She loves him,” Lekan starts. My heart fractures. “She has for four years. Well, more than that, actually—before he married Raelyn. But that’s not important—she went to him just after you all met them in the throne room. She said she was done, that she wanted to end things. She’s tried in the past, but something about this time felt different.”

  “What?” Dendera asks. “Why would this time be different?”

  “Because Ventralli has started to sell people to her brother.”

  I bend forward, one hand bracing on the dressing screen.

  The Ventrallan man who was murdered in the wine cellar.

  Not only was his death upsetting for humane reasons, but it was also upsetting politically. His presence in Summer should have struck me oddly—I knew only Yakim and Spring sold to Summer, but I was too wrapped up in my own issues to see anything outside of myself.

  Ceridwen should have told me how Summer’s situation had evolved. What stopped her? Pride? My constant babbling about my own problems?

  Dendera sighs. “He betrayed her.”

  Her words slant sharply, and I close my eyes as if that will stop them from hitting their mark. I don’t need Dendera’s observation to connect how similar Ceridwen and I are—both in our doomed relationships with Rhythm royals.

  But Lekan grunts. “I don’t think so. I think it was his wife. She’s manipulative, to say the least, and she’s always after ways to boost Ventralli’s economy. And Jesse isn’t heartless. He may be weak, but never heartless.” He pauses, exhaling slowly. “But Ceridwen wouldn’t listen to me. She went to talk to him, and that was the last I saw her. But the servants said that she hurried back soon after, and changed out of her gown and into . . . weapons.”

  That was why Jesse was so riled. Ceridwen ended things with him, probably told him of his wife’s arrangement to sell Ventrallans to Summer, and left.

  Nessa folds my dress once it’s off and I’m in my normal clothes, the black pants and white shirt I wore in Summer. The key, still wrapped in cloth, goes into my pocket while my chakram sits on my back, and as I step out from behind the dressing screen, I tighten the straps of the holster.

  “I know where she went,” I say.

  Lekan flinches forward. “What? How?”

  “Because I know where I’d go if my heart had broken,” I tell him, “and I’m beginning to think Ceridwen and I are similar in more ways than one.”

  I know where I’d go if I had ended things with a man I loved, if my kingdom was constantly threatened by an evil far stronger than me. Weapon blazing, I’d march into war. It’s what my body has screamed to do since I finally relented to who I am, a warrior and a queen. To face everything without hesitation, to seek out the fight instead of cowering from it.

  I know we need to press on for the Order, for a
nswers. But if I let someone I care about slip through the chaos, I’ve lost no matter what I do. I’d do the same for Nessa, or Mather, or Sir—drop everything to race to their aid. The reckless part of me, the Meira the orphaned soldier-girl part—that’s all she is. Someone who acts impetuously, but always with good intent.

  I will be that girl and the queen, all the parts of me. I will help Ceridwen and my kingdom—I can save everyone.

  I can save everyone.

  That’s it.

  I blink up at Lekan, shock cooling me. I know what question to ask the conduit magic.

  But it barely takes any effort to shove that to the back of my mind, the bulk of my focus going to Ceridwen.

  “But where did she go?” Lekan asks.

  My face tightens. “She’s gone to stop her brother.”

  Conall and Garrigan protest when I order them to split up. Garrigan to stay here with Dendera and Nessa, should anything happen while I’m gone, and Conall to come with Lekan and me. Conall argues that Garrigan should accompany me, since Conall’s arm, while not broken, is still sprained. That’s the reason I want Garrigan to stay, though—he’s more capable of protecting Dendera and Nessa.

  Besides, I have my chakram now. That’s all the support I need.

  Nessa gives us a little wave as we slip out of my room, the soft, worn leather of my boots noiseless on the marble floor. Lekan knows where the Summerian caravan set up, so the moment we break free of the palace, he rushes in front of Conall and me and takes off down the twisting cobbled streets of Rintiero. He wears baggy orange pants and little else under his rough brown cloak, but he makes no move to grab different clothes or more weapons. I hope he’s as prepared as he needs to be. Even Conall only needed to remove his mask before he was ready.

  I follow Lekan as he ducks down an alley, scales a wall, drops down another street. Maybe we should have gotten more of Ceridwen’s allies to help—didn’t she have at least a dozen bandits when I first met her outside of Juli? Surely she brought more than just Lekan with her. But if she didn’t plan on attacking her brother, maybe she doesn’t have her whole retinue.

  The odds of the four of us against one dozen, two dozen, an endless number of soldiers remind me of the other issue at hand: the question I want to ask the conduit magic.

  As Lekan, Conall, and I twist back and forth through Rintiero’s medley of colored buildings and parks, as we pass Ventrallans wandering through markets or sweeping patios or drawing water from wells under the afternoon sun, the question surges through me, tight and relentless, until it’s all I can think, and I can’t believe I didn’t ask it sooner.

  Cautiously, desperately, I roll the words through my mind and push them one by one into the waiting ball of ice and magic and wonder.

  How do I save everyone?

  Because I want to save the world, not just Winter. I want everyone in Primoria to be free from Angra and magic and evil—to at least have a chance against such threats.

  Maybe asking this question will give me a way to save Ceridwen from her brother’s men. Maybe it will show me how to help Winter without needing to find the Order. Maybe it will fix everything, it will fix everything, because it is the right question. I know this through every part of me, even the parts that still quiver and quake in fear of the magic. This is right, just like what I’m doing now. This is how it was always meant to be.

  The magic hears my question. I feel it react to me, to the way I relax in the wake of my words, a gentle surrender that shakes through me. The answer pushes into my head like I’ve known it all along, an instant recognition that consumes every other thought I’ve ever had.

  I stop running, unable to move beneath the answer. The answer that will save everyone. The answer that I wanted . . .

  No. No, I don’t want it. I don’t want it, and I fall to my knees, gripping my head as if I can dig into my mind and pull out the knowledge.

  Hannah asked how to save her people, and the magic told her how to save Winter. She let Angra break the locket and kill her because she wanted to share the magic with everyone in our kingdom. She sacrificed herself without realizing there was another question to ask, a bigger sacrifice that could be made.

  Sacrifice.

  The word undoes me, and I think I feel Conall’s hand on my arms, Lekan’s voice telling me we’re only a few streets away. My body moves while my mind whirls, and I’m running again, flying through Rintiero.

  Magic is all about choice. Choosing to use it, choosing to surrender to it, choosing to take it from the chasm—choosing to let it break in defense of a kingdom. The most powerful magic of all is choice, and of that power, the strongest choice anyone can make is an act of sacrifice.

  People took magic from the chasm. Just like it never occurred to anyone but Hannah to surrender to their conduit, it never occurred to anyone to put the magic back.

  That is the most powerful choice anyone can make: relinquishing a conduit back to the chasm. Saying that I would rather be weak and human than stronger than others. I would rather the world be safe and magic free than deadly and powerful.

  That ultimate of choices, an act of selfless sacrifice, returning a conduit to the magic chasm, will force the chasm to disintegrate and all magic with it. And since the Decay is magic, it will be destroyed too.

  It should be easy, for a conduit-wielder who wants to save the world. Just finding the chasm, tossing their conduit in, and walking out into a new existence.

  But I am Winter’s conduit.

  And to destroy all magic I would have to willingly throw myself into the fathomless chasm of energy and power. The source of magic that, when people first made conduits, was found to kill people if they got too close.

  I would have to die.

  Lekan stops along a wall and I have no idea where we are. Somewhere deep in Rintiero, the sun pulsing above us, and I can’t see anything but the blinding light of late afternoon casting golden rays. It’s warmer now, not the sweltering heat of Summer, but enough that sweat breaks across my body—though I can’t tell if it’s from the sun or my own panic.

  Lekan’s eyes flick over my face. “Are you all right?”

  I can’t form a response. I can’t feel anything around the knowledge in my head, how much I hate it, and how much I hate Hannah now too. I want to collapse on the road and wipe the word die from my memory, because that’s all I can see now. Hannah intended for me to die to save Winter; the only way I can save everyone in Primoria is to die.

  If Hannah had never asked her conduit the wrong question, if she had never let Angra break the locket and kill her and turn me into Winter’s conduit, I could do it. I could save everyone and myself, and nothing would hurt as badly as my chest hurts now.

  I fall against the wall next to me, the rough stone tugging at my sleeve as I cover my face with my hands. I want to live. I want to find a way to save everyone and LIVE. Is it so horrible that I want to save myself too? Is that such an awful request?

  Lekan pulls my hands down. His eyes are soft, his brows drawn, and he tips his head to mask his words even more. “The caravan sits just around the corner. I realize this isn’t your fight, Winter queen, but I need your help.”

  The caravan. Ceridwen. I’m supposed to help her. She has the tapestry—the Order is still out there. Maybe they have a way; maybe they know something that could help me.

  Maybe, maybe, maybe. That’s all I’ve been lately, one big swirl of possibilities, never anything definitive or sure. I won’t waste time on maybes anymore. I’m done, I’m done.

  The only definitive thing I know right now is that Ceridwen needs me, and that’s all I can see. Not the new weight of the answer driving nails into my skull. Not the magic, trapped and confused and wanting to burst free now that I surrendered to it and asked a question and got my answer. But no, I am not surrendering to it anymore. I may have for a brief flash of a second, but I will not give in. I will not accept this.

  Tears glaze my eyes. “All right,” I tell Lekan.

/>   UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  Meira

  LEKAN BOWS HIS head in thanks and starts to say something else when a flash of movement makes me spin. Conall whips a dagger into his good hand as Ceridwen comes racing up the street behind us, her face alive with toxic anger.

  “What are you doing here?” she barks, but I can’t help but feel that her anger isn’t directed at us. It’s just a part of her, hungry and wild.

  Lekan steps forward. “We came to stop you from doing anything stupid.”

  I draw a shaky breath. Focus, focus. Don’t think about anything else. I am a soldier; Sir trained me to keep my emotions in check. I can do this.

  I don’t want to die. . . .

  “Lekan said you were missing,” I start, my hands in fists that grow tighter to counter the tremble in my voice. “I figured you were off doing something reckless—like stopping your brother from collecting more slaves.”

  Ceridwen’s lip twitches and she flicks her eyes from Lekan to me. “I’m not stopping a collection,” she says. “I’m stopping the collections.”

  Lekan realizes what she means before I do. He glances toward the road beyond our alley and cuts a snarl to her when he sees the way still clear. “You can’t take him, Cerie.”

  “I definitely couldn’t take him in Summer, but he only has a fraction of his men here. It’s now, or I lose the opportunity. You know better than I do that this has to end.”

  Lekan runs a hand through his hair, the red strands bouncing wild around his fingers.

  “How will this stop the collections?” But as soon as I ask it, I know the answer.

  She’s going to kill her brother.

  “Ceridwen.” I gasp her name like someone landed a blow to my gut.

  She glares at me. “Don’t. Don’t you dare judge me. He’s the last living male heir of Summer—if he dies, we’ll be free of magic. Summer will get a chance to be more than fogged with bliss, and if someday I have a son, I’ll make sure he’s a far, far better king than my brother. You have no idea what it’s been like, what he’s doing now, and I can’t—”