Snow Like Ashes

  “Did they outlaw shirts in Cordell?” I mumble, and face the target, tipping my head down to my chakram to hide the blush creeping bit by bit up my neck.

  Theron chuckles but bites it away when neither Mather nor I say anything else, and he shifts uncomfortably beside me, twirling the ax in his palm. I can feel him eyeing Mather, both of them caught in an awkward web surrounding me. I’m at the center of this, a weird possessive feud between the Winter king and the Cordellan prince. How in the name of all that is cold did that happen?

  But I feel no sympathy for Mather. Not as he steps closer to me, his boots swishing over the grass, his breath exhaling slowly, painfully. I’m all-too aware of how much attention is on us when he stops beside me, close enough that I can feel him if I shut my eyes.

  “Can we talk?” he murmurs.

  The hair on the back of my neck stands up straight. No. Why should I ever talk to you ever again?

  But I’m not supposed to be mad at him. It’s all Sir’s fault.

  I look back at Theron, who isn’t looking at me anymore. His body has pivoted to face the target beside my pole and he pulls his arm behind him, every muscle in his back tensing as he winds the ax around. Winding and winding, tighter and tighter, until all of it breaks in a single thrust that sends the ax flipping end over end through the air. It whacks into the center of the target, the handle wobbling from the force.

  Theron turns to me, half his face alight with the beginnings of a smile. “My weapon of choice doesn’t matter,” he says, continuing our conversation like nothing happened. His eyes flash to Mather over my shoulder. “No matter what I use, I always hit my mark.”

  My eyebrows launch skyward. Mather sucks in a breath behind me. Every single body in the entire training yard holds still in curiosity, and alongside that curiosity is a tension of warning, the gentle nudge of a fight about to start.

  Mather steps closer to my back, his voice low and controlled in my ear. “Meira, please.”

  Theron glances to the side, his eyes locking onto mine as he beams, full and bright, and turns to walk down the long line to retrieve his ax. He’ll hit his mark no matter what he uses. No matter what situation he’s thrust into. No matter how little control he has over his life.

  I can’t fight my laugh as I turn to Mather and holster my chakram. “What can I do for you, my king?”

  Mather blanches. Running a hand over his face, he regroups quickly enough, and a determined stiffness washes over him. He nods to the barn. “Come with me.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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  13

  HALF OF THE barn is made up of stables with horses poking their curious heads out of enclosures, while the other half is a wide room filled with oak tables and cabinets and rusted iron weapon racks. The open barn doors make the place airy and cool, while the light dusting of straw on the stone floor gives it a distinctly masculine feel.

  Mather struts determinedly into the room but stops when he comes to the right wall. He stares up at it, arms crossed, and juts his chin out. “I thought maybe when Winter has such a place …” His voice fades, his eyes losing a bit of their annoyance from moments ago.

  I stop beside him and mimic his arms-crossed stance. A map covers the wall. Detailed and practically life-sized, it shows every part of Primoria from the northernmost Paisel Mountains all the way down to the southernmost Klaryns. The Eldridge Forest and Rania Plains sit in the center, a splotch of green and yellow with the Langstone and Feni Rivers nearly cutting the entire map in half.

  What makes this map unique though is the way the kingdoms are portrayed: a small illustration of each Royal Conduit shines in the center of its respective kingdom’s territory lines.

  I groan. “This is what you want to talk about? Geography?”

  Mather shakes his head, his brow pinching. “No, I—” He stops and runs a hand down his face, grappling for the right words. When he starts talking again, he’s angry, his words clipped and tight. “I wanted you to see this. To see everything. I wanted to explain to you—snow above, would you just listen to me?”

  I snarl at him. “Because you deserve to have me hear you out?”

  “No,” he admits, and I start. “Because you deserve to hear what I have to say. You deserve it, Meira. This doesn’t have anything to do with me.”

  I roll my eyes but make no move to leave or to speak again, which Mather takes as permission to talk. He looks back up at the map, his eyes lingering on Cordell. In the center of Cordell’s territory lines, a dagger gleams beneath a scripted M for male-blooded.

  “Paisly’s female-blooded shield,” Mather says, almost to himself, a soft hum of noise as his eyes travel the map. “Ventralli’s male-blooded crown. Yakim’s female-blooded ax, Summer’s male-blooded cuff, Autumn’s female-blooded ring, Spring’s male-blooded staff, and—”

  He steps forward and stretches his palm out to rest on Winter. Flanked by Spring to the east, mountains to the south, Autumn to the west, and the Feni River to the north, Winter’s locket dangles over the expansive mass of land, the heart-shaped pendant etched with a single white snowflake in the center. The F just above it is mocking, dominant. A visual representation of one of our lifelong struggles.

  “Between meetings, I’ve hardly had time to breathe,” Mather says. “But a few days ago, I came out here to get some air, and I saw this. Captain Dominick said they put this map here to remind the men of Cordell’s place in the world. So they can look up and always know who they are. A piece in the bigger puzzle of Primoria.”

  I frown. “That doesn’t sound like something Noam would encourage.”

  Mather’s shoulders tighten. “Noam didn’t commission it.” He glances back, his hand on the picture of the locket. “Theron did.”

  The way he says Theron’s name puts a nick in Mather’s otherwise reverent tone. Like that one detail is a black smudge in a beautiful tapestry.

  Mather curls his fingers on the map, tugging against the drawing of the locket. The back half of the real one sits around his neck. Next to the palm-sized picture, it looks sad. Empty.

  “Noam may like to pretend Cordell is the only kingdom in the world,” he continues, his voice getting progressively harder. “But part of what makes his men so passionately Cordellan is this map. This reminder that they could be Rhythm or Season, Yakimian, Ventrallan, Summerian—but they’re not. They’re Cordellan. And that fact is what pushes them to fight for their land.” Mather smiles in a sad way that isn’t really a smile. “I want Winter to have that.”

  He pulls back from the map and steps toward me, close, closer still, until he’s barely a hand’s width away. We’re alone, all the other soldiers out in the training yard.

  “I didn’t want this,” he whispers, the words cutting between us. “I want Winter free, but I don’t want—I don’t want him. For you. I don’t want you to think that you’re worthless, that this is the only place for you, because it’s not, Meira—it never could be, not with everything you are.”

  My pulse thuds against my ribs, anxiety and anger rolling through me, and I can’t bring myself to look into his eyes. Just stop talking. Just please stop talking, you giant, stupid—

  “I don’t know what else to do.” Mather’s breath blows across my face. “Before we left camp, Sir took me aside and told me what I was going to do. It hollowed me out in a way I’d never felt. It was the first time I truly understood how much we have to sacrifice to overthrow Angra, how much our lives don’t matter in the bigger task at hand. I always thought we would find a way to … to overcome this. To be together, and I swear to you”—Mather takes my chin in his thumb and finger and pulls me to look at him—“I swear to you, I will find a way to fix this. I told you I’d restore balance, and I will.”

  “No.”

  The word hangs in the air. I blink, confused, but I know I’d say it again. Why? I’ve wanted him to sa
y this forever, haven’t I? Why would I feel anything but Yes! in the wake of his words?

  Mather squints at me. “I will. I can. I won’t let Angra destroy even more of our lives. No matter what William says, there has to be another way—”

  “No!”

  I shove back from him, a part of me tearing off and staying in his hands. Each word hurts. It piles on top of Sir’s words last night, churning together in some great wave of confusion. And all I know is that Mather’s hope for another solution is a taunting, all-consuming temptation that I can’t afford to feel; already I can taste the first waves of relief cresting over his words. But there is no other way. No other hope. Sir spent fourteen years trying to find another path to take. Letting myself believe that Mather might be able to save me, only for me to end up still in this marriage game …

  I don’t think I’d survive it.

  “I’m doing this, Mather,” I say, my voice thin and weary. “For our kingdom, for our people. For you. We need Cordell. We need this.”

  Mather pulls back like I slapped him. Redness creeps up his neck, sweat glistening on his forehead. “You want to marry Theron?”

  My eyes narrow. “What?”

  “You want to marry Theron,” he says again, and everything in his body sags. “You don’t—”

  Want me.

  His unspoken words drape over me, weighing me down and down until I think I might crumple onto the straw-covered floor.

  “You’re an idiot,” I spit, though I hear how loudly I didn’t refute his accusation. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s about allies and saving our kingdom. You have to stop—nothing’s changed; nothing’s different between us. It’s just as impossible as it always was, and this is how it has to be.”

  “I’ll find a way around it,” Mather returns. He steps toward me, I step back, a weird dance through the barn. “I was always going to find a way. I told you before we left—I told you I would fix this!”

  “How was I supposed to know that’s what you meant? All I ever got was Sir’s voice hammering into my head that you were too important to waste on me!”

  “I never felt that! You’ve always been everything to me. I didn’t know how to handle how much I needed you growing up—snow, I still don’t, all right? I’m trying, though. Do you think I’m that arrogant? That I let William make me believe I was too good for you?”

  “What else was I supposed to think?” I’m shouting now, my voice tearing at the barn’s rafters. I step back once, twice, knowing I’ll never be able to get far enough away from him. “You may be able to look beyond the reality of our situation and imagine some other outcome, but all I ever saw, all I ever see is a reminder that our lives aren’t our own.”

  “You think I don’t know that our lives aren’t our own?” Mather grabs the locket in a fist. “I’m the king, Meira!”

  I cup my hands over my ears and shake my head, blocking out anything else he might say, anything that might make me stop talking. “None of it matters. It doesn’t matter what I want or need or love, because Sir will always be there to remind me that Winter has to come first. Winter always has to come first!”

  Mather stops. His face relaxes, one small muscle, and around my hands cupped over my ears, I hear him echo one of the words I said.

  “Love?”

  No, I didn’t say that. I’m not that stupid.

  A footstep makes me fly around. Behind all the other sounds, men grunting in the yard and swords clanging and arrows firing, it shouldn’t have mattered, shouldn’t have stuck out.

  Theron stands in the doorway, body hardened like he caught us rolling around on the floor. “Is everything all right?”

  I throw a hand up, mouth hanging open. Yes. No. It never was, it never will be.

  Theron doesn’t wait for an answer. He turns to Mather, the gleam of sweat on his skin glinting in the sunlight behind him. “King Mather.” Theron steps forward. Steps back. Looks like he wants to run out to the training yard and start hacking at someone. “I heard you have skill with a blade?”

  I frown. This can’t be good.

  It isn’t. Mather pauses, maybe considering how furious Sir will be, but a moment later he flashes a tight grimace that makes me fear for Theron’s life.

  “Don’t worry, Prince Theron. I’ll go easy on you.”

  I pull at Mather’s arm but he shrugs out of reach and marches at Theron, ducking out of the way at the last second to move around him and into the training yard. Theron follows with his own hard stomping.

  The training yard again falls into a shocked silence when the three of us parade toward the sword rings. Mather ducks under the rope of one ring and rips a training sword out of a case, huffing around the perimeter like a penned bull.

  “You can’t do this!” I grab Theron only because Mather’s already in the ring. Theron is my betrothed, after all. I should be worried for him. More worried for him. Right? “Don’t do this. You’re both—um—important.”

  Theron’s mouth relaxes and I think he might back down. But a voice rings out, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from grabbing my chakram and slicing off one of the soldiers’ heads.

  “Show him, my prince!” the soldier calls from the opposite side of the sword ring. “Show him how we fight in Cordell!”

  Theron closes his eyes in a quick, almost pained grimace. When he opens them again he puts a hand over mine where I cup his arm. “If you want us to stop, we will.”

  More men are cheering him on now. Shouting his name—“Theron!”—so loud and so confidently that I can see Mather deflating before me.

  This is what Mather meant. What he wants for our people. Not just a poem murmured to two ridiculous trees or a map reminding them of their place in this world. Pride. Tradition. Something like the happiness on the soldiers’ faces when they returned to Bithai from Autumn, like the pride when they cheer now for their prince.

  Mather paces back and forth, tearing up dirt under his boots. The louder they cheer the angrier he gets. “Come on, Cordell!” he shouts. His voice pounds through the hollering men, drawing their cries to chaotic levels. “Show me what you can do!”

  I glare at him and his chin tips down, his intensity waning ever so slightly. But not enough. Not completely. He’s doing this.

  And Theron is too. His men are begging him to. Crying out for him, for Cordell. “Prove our strength, my prince! Prove our power and might!”

  No man can refuse to answer that call. And watching Mather across the ring, feeling just how alone and weak and small we are surrounded by people who have a kingdom and an identity—

  I’d answer that call. However stupid or selfish or wrong, I’d answer it. I wheeze in that realization, one hand going to my chest as I suck down gulps of sweat-heavy air. I’d answer the call of my kingdom, of the Winterians, crying out for me to prove myself to them.

  To prove that they really do come first, always, no matter what.

  When Theron releases my hand and pulls out of my grip, I don’t say anything. I should. I should beg him to turn away from this and walk back inside the barn and ignore the cries of his people, but my own voice screams in my head, warping the Cordellans’ words back at me.

  Prove yourself, Meira! Prove yourself to Winter. You want to matter to your kingdom, and you want your kingdom to matter to you?

  Then prove it.

  Do what you must. Not what you WANT. What you must.

  Prove it!

  One of Theron’s men hands him a practice sword. My eyes latch onto the movement as Theron hesitates, fingers twitching, and takes it.

  The moment Theron touches the hilt, Mather dives. Silent and deadly, he flings his body in a graceful albeit slightly too aggressive flourish, swinging the sword wide at Theron’s head. Theron ducks, rolls to the opposite side of the ring, dust swirling as he rights himself and uses the momentum to swipe at Mather’s legs. Mather’s left knee buckles just long enough for Theron to get traction to stand—and then it’s madness.
>
  It’s the kind of sword fight Sir has told stories about, with two opponents bent on chopping each other to pieces but both so equal that neither can get an upper hand. Theron beats Mather to one side of the ring—Mather kicks out Theron’s legs and drops him to the ground—Theron flips backward and slaps Mather’s blow aside—Mather uses that blow to catch Theron’s knee—

  The soldiers’ cheers grow with each strike. I don’t even know who they’re cheering for anymore, just that they’re thrown into a frenzy by two royals beating the pulp out of each other. The higher their screams rise, the more my heart throbs, caught up in the fever of the sword fight and how I’m teetering on the edge of those two words still jabbing into me.

  Prove it.

  Mather wraps his sword around Theron’s and yanks it free, hurling it over the tightly crowded heads. Panic flows into me, panic at it going too far, at the blinding insanity of the crowd, at the way the soldiers scream with anticipation and Mather slams his foot into Theron’s chest. Theron drops to the ground, the wind knocked out of him and Mather closes in, his sword in both hands over his head, moments away from cracking down on Theron’s skull.

  I’m under the rope and in the ring before I can breathe. “Surrender!” I scream as I tear toward them. “Theron, surrender!”

  Neither of them hears me. Neither of them flinches or breathes or sees anything beyond this fight.

  I stumble between them, my arms flailing out toward Mather as my legs brace over Theron. Mather’s sword shoots up through the air, rising and rising, cutting the breeze ahead of his final screaming threat as I reach for his arms, his sword, something to prevent this.

  It stops. The entire area freezes as if Noam stiffened every Cordellan with his conduit.

  I exhale, body still thrown out in one last feeble attempt to keep Mather from making a really, really big mistake, and the noise that silenced everyone comes again.

  “MATHER!”

  Sir. His white head bobs in and out of the tightly packed Cordellan soldiers, weaving his way to us through the throng.