Snow Like Ashes

  No, I’m in Abril, not in Jannuari. I’m in Angra’s palace and the Winterians need me and Nessa will die if I don’t stay conscious. I’m not magic; I’m not anything special. I’m just Meira.

  No, not just Meira. I’m—I’m something—

  It’s so cold. I love the cold.

  Tell me what you want most in life, Meira. I will use your weaknesses. I will warp your mind until you shatter in my hands. I control you, Winter, everything.

  Angra reaches one hand up with agonizing slowness and rests it against my forehead. More snow, falling and falling, peaceful flakes lulling me into Jannuari where it’s quiet and calm and I’ve never felt so safe in my life.

  The locket. Angra still wears half of the locket around his throat, the white snowflake on the silver heart. We’ve been looking for the conduit for so long.

  I will break you now with what you want most. Your perfect world.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  26

  ANGRA’S THRONE ROOM fades, the blackness disintegrating into a city. No, not just any city—the Jannuari from my patched-together memories.

  AND IT’S SNOWING.

  I turn, the cobblestones slick with ice, and the cold that shoots through my bare feet infuses me with euphoria. The earthy aroma of coal and refining minerals coats the air, turning everything a hazy gray. I belong here, in Jannuari. How could I have ever been anywhere else?

  The skirt of my pale gray dress is tattered, stained with use and poverty. The thin cotton lets more cold rays shoot through and wrap around my body as I stand in the street, smiling at a figure running toward me through the snow. Nessa.

  “Meira, supper’s ready! Your mother sent me to fetch you.”

  My mother. Something pushes at my mind…. I don’t think I have a mother.

  No, of course I do. I’ve always had a mother.

  “Meira, come on!” Nessa grabs my hand and pulls me up the street. She’s so happy, so healthy, filled with a life of love and safety, her eyes gleaming as snowflakes stick in her hair.

  I lift my skirt in one hand and together we run up the street, passing Winterians tidying up displays in shop windows or Winterians banging out horseshoes in a blacksmith’s shop. Jobs they should be doing, not like—

  They’re wrong too. Wrong like my mother. Nessa is even a little wrong, and this city is wrong, though I know it exists.

  “He’s coming to dinner tonight,” Nessa whispers, her tone seasoned with joy and gossip.

  “Who?”

  Nessa laughs, the sound making the air glitter even more. She pulls me up a path to a small two-story cottage and throws open the door, warm firelight falling out into the snow-filled path. Yellow mixes with the gray of Jannuari, warmth meeting snow. It’s not a bad warmth though—it’s perfect.

  “There she is!” a voice cries as I step across the threshold. The fire pit on the left holds a bowl of orange coals that heat a cauldron of stew. Conall sits at a wooden table with a small bundle cooing from his arms, a woman behind him resting her hands on his shoulders—his wife? She must be. Garrigan crouches in front of his wife too, along with two little boys who stare in awe while he relates some story that involves mock-stabbing an enemy.

  Behind the table, a small, graceful woman emerges from a backroom, locks of white hair curling around a face smudged with flour. “Meira, come! He’s almost here,” she says. Alysson.

  Nessa falls into a chair at the table. “Your mother’s been cooking all day.”

  My mother. Alysson is my …

  “Hurry, everyone! His carriage is pulling up.”

  A booming voice rolls out behind me. I turn as a man stomps in, dusting snow from his hair. The loose flakes melt into my skin, raising shivers that tingle along my arms. I know him. His dark-blue eyes and gray-speckled beard and white hair pulled back in a tight knot …

  Alysson is my mother—which means Sir is my father.

  Joy chokes me, hot tears pool in my eyes. He’s my father. Of course he is—I’ve always wanted him to be my father.

  A swell of pain breaks through my joy and I fall forward, knees cracking onto the wooden floor.

  I called him Father once and yes, Sir, no, Sir. You are not my father and I am not your daughter and all I ever wanted was for you to look at me….

  This isn’t right. He exists, I know he exists, but not like this.

  “Meira.” Sir drops to his knees too, his hands cupping my head and pulling me to look at him. His face is gentle and worried, his forehead wrinkling. “Are you all right?”

  He’s wrong. He’s not supposed to be here … something happened to him, something horrible. “I dreamed you died,” I whisper.

  Sir’s worry melts into a smile and he pulls me into him, wrapping his thick arms around my shoulders and letting me rest against his chest. “There’s my sweet girl. It was just a dream.”

  He’s cold from the outside air and smells like snow, clean and crisp. The buttons on his shirt pinch my cheek when I press my face into his chest, absorbing the feel of him all around me. This is what love is like. He loves me. He’s my father and I’m his daughter and he’s all I have, all I’ll ever need.

  “He’s coming!” Alysson cries. “Take your seats. The prince is here!”

  Sir eases me into a chair facing the front door. The darkness of the snowstorm beyond the open door looks like a dream from which anything could materialize, and Nessa takes my hand from her chair beside me as a man appears. A sharp blue military uniform covers him, his polished black boots gleaming in the firelight. The snowstorm pushes him to us like it created him, morphed him from the deepest recesses of my mind.

  “Thank you for having me,” he says, and bows his head, every part of him the proper prince he’s always been. Strong, confident face, eyes vibrant and alert and memorizing each person in the room like he wants to know us by heart.

  He stops in front of me. Nessa’s hand tightens around mine, cutting off the blood to my fingers.

  “Meira,” Mather says. My name, just once, just those two syllables echoing to me like no other words exist. Just us. Like it should have been.

  Explosions. Mather, terrified, screaming my name. Screaming and screaming …

  I don’t love him. I can’t love him, so I don’t, not anymore. It’s too hard to love him.

  Mather sits across from me, his eyes never leaving mine. Alysson moves to the fire, shooing away Garrigan and his wife and sons. They join the table, Conall and Garrigan and their wives, and Nessa with her happy family, and me with my happy family.

  The front door is still open. Beyond the snowflakes, a flash of white hair makes me spring from the chair and rip my hand from Nessa’s.

  Alysson ladles stew into bowls. “Meira, sit, please. Dinner has started.”

  But I can’t sit. I can’t tear my eyes away from the door, from the snow, from the white hair that’s caught in the wind and tangling up around a face—who is that?

  Sir touches my arm. “What do you see, my sweet girl?”

  He yelled at me when I was small and Mather and I were found giggling in the meeting tent, covered in ink….

  No—why would I have been with the prince as a child? I step around the table, the white hair beyond the door drawing me like I’m tethered to it and she’s winding me in.

  “Meira.” Mather leans back in the chair, his fingers trailing down my arm. “What happened?”

  It’s so safe here. Everything I could possibly want. How could anything bad ever happen? This is perfect, this is right, and I have to tell Mather everything because he is perfect.

  “I healed a boy,” I hear myself say. I think the white hair outside belongs to Mather’s mother, the queen. I hear she’s beautiful. “I matter.”

  “You do, Meira.” Mather stands, his chair sliding across the wood. “Of course you matter. Why?”

  He takes m
y hand but the feel of it, of him, is a sharp, sudden break in the perfect picture around me. “No, I’m wrong for you,” I hear myself tell him. “I’m not good enough.”

  Sir folds his hands on the table and looks up at us. “I only told you that so you wouldn’t jeopardize our future. Lies are stronger than truth sometimes.”

  “Truth?” The familiar pain pulses against my temple, threatening to tear me to pieces if I don’t—what? I need to sit down and eat dinner and talk with Mather, tell him why I matter, because this is all I’ve ever wanted. To be here.

  “Meira,” a voice calls from outside. The queen is here. Why doesn’t anyone invite her in?

  I step toward the door, my toes barely cresting the threshold when Mather grabs my arm. “Where does your magic come from?” he gasps. He looks scared, desperate, his eyes reflecting my own trepidation back at me. He looks so much like Sir. The same strong jaw, the same sapphire eyes, the same emotionless veil. I never noticed it before.

  “Magic comes from—” Why am I answering him? He shouldn’t ask me about this. I take a step backward, toward the door and the snowstorm. “Magic comes from the Royal Conduits.”

  Mather’s eyebrows tighten. “Conduits? No, Meira.” He licks his lips, trying again. “How do you have magic? How is Hannah feeding you magic? You have to tell me.”

  “I told you,” I say. “Only conduits have magic. Hannah isn’t giving me anything.”

  “Meira,” Hannah calls to me. I turn my back on the room, on the warm firelight, on Nessa’s giggles and Sir calling me his sweet girl and Mather shouting for me, reaching for me. On everything I’ve ever wanted, because Hannah needs me, and I have to go to her.

  The moment I leave the cottage, heat pulses behind me, a burst of warmth much too strong to have come from the fire pit. I turn as the cottage disintegrates, folding in on itself like it cannot sustain the weight of the night around it. But no, it isn’t disintegrating—it’s burning, piece by piece, into a small pile of smoldering ash. My mouth hangs slack as shadows of the night rise over the ash, swallowing it into a startlingly pure black void. The city around me follows it, everything folding into itself and vanishing until Jannuari is gone and I’m left standing in a beam of light.

  “I am in control now. Not Angra,” Hannah says, her voice urgent like she’s fighting to keep us safe.

  I shake my head. Angra was in control? Of what? No, I’m safe now. Safe because of Hannah, not in Angra’s black magic anymore. She’s protecting me because he pulled things out of my head. He tried to make me fall apart, but I’m safe now, safe, safe….

  Hannah waits behind me, the space around us still filled with dancing snowflakes. Like we’re shielded, cupped in invisible arms that will keep the darkness from touching us. Angra can’t touch us here. He didn’t mean for me to leave the cottage. He wanted me to stay inside, where it was comfortable and I would tell him all my secrets. But I left, and Hannah is using her connection to Winter’s conduit to talk to me, like she’s been doing all along.

  Her connection to Winter’s conduit, not the blue stone. There was never any magic in the blue stone. Only the Royal Conduits have magic.

  I turn, snow crunching under my feet. Hannah stands with her back to me, her hair flailing in the storm. Explanations whirl around me, but not from her—from me. My mind eases here, in this space between asleep and awake, and as it does information pours into the light, sudden twists of clarity I never would have seen on my own.

  “Angra broke your conduit, but magic is more powerful than even he knows.” The words tumble out of me from some delicate area of surrender, a mysterious space in my heart that connects Hannah and me. The magic. It’s known the truth all along. “You were desperate when Winter was falling, so you surrendered to your conduit. You let it tell you everything. The truth behind magic, and that if a Royal Conduit is broken in defense of the kingdom, the king or queen of that kingdom becomes the conduit.”

  This knowledge springs into my head, the magic giving me this last piece that lets me put the rest of the puzzle together. The Royal Conduits are connected to the kingdoms’ bloodlines, so if the rulers had let their conduits be broken after they chased away the Decay, they would have become their kingdom’s conduits. Magic always needs a host, and with a human host, magic doesn’t have the limitations that come with object hosts. Life and pure magic would have been a beautiful combination, like a fire nursed by endless fuel. The Decay could have been destroyed with all that power, and the world would have glowed with how prosperous we could have been.

  But conduit magic only works if the bearer acknowledges the magic and chooses to use it, and conduits only give answers when people put aside their selfish will and dare to surrender themselves for the good of their kingdom. It’s a passive magic all about choice.

  Hannah shifts in the snow, tipping her head back. “Where is Winter’s magic now?”

  “You didn’t know you were pregnant. And then Angra killed you,” I whisper. It’s so cold. Cold seeping through me until I’m sure I’m nothing but ice through and through, just a hollow, glassy sculpture. “Angra broke the conduit and killed you so the magic went to the heir. To—”

  My mouth freezes and the cold controls me, pushes me into the scene that Hannah tried to show. The night before Jannuari’s fall, the study in the palace, the heavy aroma of burning coal hanging all around. Those who would escape Angra’s wrath are gathered, Hannah kneeling in front of Alysson who cradles baby Mather—

  In the background. There’s something in the corner, something I didn’t see before.

  “I’m so sorry,” Hannah tells Alysson. “You don’t have to obey me. You can still choose not to do this.”

  I step around Hannah and Alysson. I walk past Dendera, Finn, Greer, and Henn. Crystalla and Gregg huddle by the fire pit, alive and holding each other. I walk past Sir, his looming body curving protectively around his wife and the baby.

  In the corner of the room, forgotten, sits a bassinet. Mather’s bassinet?

  No. It’s not empty.

  A tiny hand shoots up, grasping at the air. Small, fat fingers curl against a plump little palm, two gleaming blue eyes stare with wide curiosity at the stillness around her. Her. A pale pink blanket is wrapped around her small body, the hem folded down and stitched with pink silk thread. The stitching forms snowflakes all around the hem until those snowflakes release to form a name, the pink silk bending and twisting into five small letters.

  “No, my queen,” Alysson says. “We will do it; of course we will do it. Winter needs us. We will raise our son as yours.”

  The name. Those five letters stitched so perfectly.

  MEIRA.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

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

  27

  THE FLOOR OF Angra’s throne room gleams in the light from above, showing my reflection as I cower on my hands and knees at his feet.

  I’m Hannah’s daughter.

  My eyes flit back and forth, my lungs inhaling and exhaling panic. I can’t be Hannah’s child, because Mather … but Hannah asked Alysson and Sir to say it was Mather. Angra knew Hannah’s heir escaped that night, so they couldn’t just say the child had died—he would never have believed that. They said it was Mather so Angra wouldn’t care that Winter’s heir was just a boy, not a girl, not a threat even if we got the conduit put back together and the magic returned to it.

  But the locket is powerless now, has been powerless since Angra broke it sixteen years ago, because all that power sought a new host. It went into me.

  I’m Winter’s conduit.

  No one knew it was even possible, except Hannah, because she let her conduit tell her what needed to be done to save Winter. Her locket needed to be broken in defense of Winter, a sacrifice so this power can’t be taken away, can’t be broken or cast off, isn’t limited by an object. This power is me, is Winter, is endless because it’s co
nnected to my life now…

  I’m Winter’s queen.

  I suck in a tight breath, forcing the air into my body to keep me alive under all of this, a weight heavier than anything I’ve ever felt.

  All this time. Sixteen years of everyone keeping this secret. Of Sir training me, treating me like I was some nameless orphan who should be grateful to be free. And Mather … no. All this time, his true parents have been right there, until Sir—

  There’s my sweet girl.

  The cottage. Sir hugging me. That wasn’t real. It was a cruel trick of Angra’s, a horrible toying with my dreams. Everything I want out of life, everything I will never, ever get—a simple, happy family in some cramped little cottage. But Hannah—that was real. That was her attempt to save me from Angra, a desperate ripple of protection urged by her connection to the conduit magic, to her bloodline. My bloodline.

  I fall forward, forehead touching the cool obsidian, mouth opening in the beginnings of a sob. Tears stream down my face as I remember Sir’s arms around me, the way he held me in Angra’s evil dream, completely unafraid of loving me.

  But he isn’t my father. He’s Mather’s father. My own father was Winter’s dead king, and my mother is Winter’s dead queen. She’s been using her connection to Winter’s conduit to talk to me. Because I—

  I’m Winter’s conduit. No matter how many times I push those words through my head, they don’t make sense.

  “Herod!”

  Angra’s shout, dripping with menace beyond control, shakes the palace apart. He’ll kill me, destroy me here and now, rend every piece of me into inconsequential bits and scatter them over Winter’s desolate land. He’ll win.

  I fly up, stumble back, not sure where I can go or where I can hide. I can’t just die—not this easily. It can’t end now, just like that—

  Angra throws open a door. “Herod! Bring him, NOW!”

  I pause, hands out, chest heaving up and down. Him. Has Mather been captured?