Frost Like Night (3 page)

Hollis broke the Thaw's uncertainty with a grunt. “We will not be defeated,” he said, a quiet declaration—the same pledge from their training.

Mather smiled. “We will not be defeated.”

Hollis and Feige moved, with Eli closing in to coax his brother on. Kiefer jerked away and dove into the new passage, face dark, shoulders slumped.

Trace hesitated, sucking in a breath like he had questions prepared, but he just shrugged. “We'll race you to the camp,” he teased with a flash of a smile.

Only Phil remained, motionless.

“Go,” Mather told him. “The others need you.”

Phil cocked a brow. “Sorry, Once-King—you're stuck with me.”

“Phil, I'm serious.”

Any further protest shriveled in the way Phil looked at him. “We're in this together. All of us. And if any of us splits off from the rest, he won't go alone.”

Feige's head whipped up from where she followed Hollis into the passage. “Or
she
.”

Phil smiled. “Or she. Point is, I'm coming with you.”

His grin was infectious, his confidence resolute.

Mather found himself relenting.

In truth, he was glad not to be alone.

Moments later, the door to the new passage shut with a soft thud, leaving Mather alone with Jesse, Phil, and Brigitte.

Brigitte arranged herself on a chair, wrinkled mouth pursed. Jesse stepped up to her as Mather moved back to the first passage. He waved Phil through and hesitated.

“Thank you,” Jesse said to his mother.

Brigitte shrugged. “Go. Raelyn will soon notice I had you moved to my chambers.”

The king wrapped his fingers around his mother's shoulder with a delicate squeeze. Finally she looked up at him, the stoniness in her eyes dissipating in a tear-glazed rush.

“Go,” she whispered. “I'll be fine.”

Mather's throat swelled, and he looked away, eyes stinging.

Jesse pushed himself past Mather, into the passage.

Brigitte adjusted her gown and leveled her eyes at the door Raelyn would no doubt barrel through at any moment with a retaliation just as harsh as the one she had dealt the Summerian king. Mather had seen only the end of that fight, the Summerian king's neck snapping, but that had been enough to confirm that Raelyn showed no mercy.

Mather ducked into the stairwell and shut the door behind him. The bolt clicked.

There was no going back now. For anyone.

THE INSIDE OF
Simon's brothel wagon was musky with sweat and plumeria incense, the air hazy with smoke that hadn't been ventilated properly, the floor covered by silk pillows and satin quilts. Ceridwen had never been inside one of her brother's wagons, despite his endless prodding for her to “be a true Summerian” and join his exploits. As she drew her knees to her chin now, all she could hear were the teasing reprimands she had hated for so long.

And the grating pop of his neck when Raelyn had snapped it.

The wagon jostled, oxen tugging it through Rintiero's streets, and Ceridwen let her body sway with it, too exhausted to fight its movements.

“Cerie.” Lekan crouched before her, wincing until he straightened his leg and dropped to the floor of the wagon. A gash cut across his knee, another stretched down his
cheek, and she knew the rest of his body was just as covered in wounds. “Cerie—”

But his voice broke. What could he say? What could
she
say?

Ceridwen closed her eyes. In her mind, Simon's face flared purple from Raelyn's choking magic.

“Stop . . . Raelyn . . . leave her alone!”

Simon had pleaded for her life. Even though, minutes before, Ceridwen had barged into the square intent on murdering him herself.

And before she had been able to utter more than a feeble croak of protest, his head had jolted to the side, cracking his life away with it.

Ceridwen opened her eyes.

Lekan tore a section of blanket and worked at wiping the blood off her arms.

“Leave it,” she bit through clenched teeth.

He didn't listen. “He was your brother. You loved him,” he whispered quietly.

Ceridwen's muscles turned to stone. “I hated him.”

Lekan's fingers tightened around the ragged strip of satin and he scrubbed harder at her shoulder. He stayed silent, eyes on his work, like he was just a normal slave and she a normal princess and the stains on her body weren't her brother's blood.

Ceridwen stared at the splatters. Raelyn's joy had been demented as she had ordered Simon's head to be severed.
And as a soldier had begun sawing at her brother's neck, Ceridwen hadn't been able to back away from the blood that had spurted under the pressure of the knife.

Simon was dead. His body, decapitated before her.

Ceridwen shoved Lekan away and tried to scramble to her feet. The shortness of the wagon's roof made it impossible and her back cut along the stained ceiling. She toppled forward, wrists popping as they caught her weight, the wagon rocking with her frenzy.

“Quiet in there!” a Ventrallan soldier shouted from outside.

Ceridwen leaped up again and slammed her whole body into the side of the wagon until it teetered even more, but it didn't break stride as it continued to haul them through the city. She screamed, reared back, slammed again, because if she didn't let it out in some form, her body wouldn't be able to sustain the misery within her.

She shouldn't feel miserable for Simon's death. She had
wanted
him to die—she had wanted him to feel just a piece of the terror he inflicted on his slaves. She had wanted that damned eternal smile of his to burn out so that he'd weep for forgiveness instead of brightening at the sight of her.

Ceridwen choked, sobs twisting in her throat.

He always brightened when he saw her. He'd smile like she was his favorite person in all of Summer, and that made her whole body feel like it was incinerating. She remembered when he'd first met Meira in his brothel in what
should have been some show of politics, but his primary concern had been where Ceridwen was, whether he could see her.

Flame and heat, he had always
loved her
, even as he destroyed their kingdom and drove their people to destitution. She had wanted, more than anything, for him to hate her, because—

Then, maybe, she could hate
him
.

Lekan clamped his arms around Ceridwen and jerked her down as a blade shot through the narrow window, the one that had been boarded up shortly after they were tossed inside. A flash of silver licked the air above Ceridwen's head.

The remnants of her screams made her throat raw, pain shooting through her mouth. It was fitting for sorrow to hurt, especially this sorrow, this . . . betrayal.

That was what it was. She had turned her back on Simon. And he had still loved her.

Ceridwen desperately clutched Lekan, unable to relax for fear of what she might do again. There was nothing left in her, very little that Raelyn could take from her. Ceridwen had given up Jesse hours before, and now Raelyn had taken Simon and Summer, too.

But no, it hadn't been Raelyn. It had been Angra, if Raelyn's mad ramblings were to be believed. Ceridwen found herself wishing it
was
all Raelyn. She hadn't the slightest idea how to go about undoing what Angra had done. She didn't even entirely know the extent of all that had
happened—he had given Raelyn
magic
. He had given Simon the power to control non-Summerians.

This war was so much bigger than her. Corrupt kings, she could handle; but
this
? Dark magic and webs of evil that stretched through all of Primoria?

Terror threatened to cripple her, but she inhaled the smoky, nauseatingly sweet air, using Lekan to orient herself.

“Meira got away,” she told him, because she needed to believe it. “She'll stop . . . this.”

One of Lekan's arms unhooked from her and dropped with a thud against the wagon floor. He flexed his fingers, rubbed his injured leg, and hissed in pain at one of the movements.

Ceridwen ripped sections from another quilt and made a pathetic compress before Lekan could protest. She tightened it over his knee and rubbed her hands on her thighs, working rational thoughts back into her mind.

“They locked the doors?” she asked, more of herself than him.

Lekan adjusted the compress. “Raelyn left five guards for us, took the rest with her.” He paused, and Ceridwen knew what other piece of information flitted through his mind that he didn't voice aloud.

She also took Simon's head with her.

Ceridwen crawled to the doors at the back of the wagon and pressed on them. Sure enough, they held, so she fumbled around the edges for a weak point in the frame, or a
splinter of wood she could pry free to replace the weapons they had been stripped of. She found nothing.

But the blankets and pillows—they could be tied together into something like rope, which could be used to choke unsuspecting soldiers when they opened the wagon doors. That would no doubt happen in the palace complex, where Raelyn would have many more than just five soldiers waiting to subdue her prisoners. Ceridwen could use one soldier as a hostage, keeping the satin rope tight around his windpipe until she and Lekan scrambled free.

But Raelyn still had control of the city. She was filled with Angra's dark magic.

And she intended to murder Jesse and his children.

Ceridwen grabbed the nearest blanket and started tearing. Lekan shifted to lean more completely against the wall, his gaze hard on the ceiling in an effort to ignore his pain. He was too injured to be of any use in a fight. Ceridwen needed to get him to safety, then come back, and—what? Take down the entire Ventrallan army on her own? Surely someone in Rintiero was still loyal to Jesse and would help her save him and his children. She would have to find them—or Meira. Meira would help her.

Unless Raelyn had already killed her. The entire city could have bowed to Raelyn's coup, and Jesse and his children could be dead, and every last trace of hope could have been snuffed out while Ceridwen sat helpless in a wagon.

Her hands stilled. The emptiness inside her whispered
that she shouldn't care so much what Raelyn did to Jesse. She had been pretending for four years that she didn't care what Raelyn did to him—why should she start now?

But every other part of her screamed in protest. This wasn't at all like it had been for those four years. This wasn't just ignoring the fact that Raelyn would sleep with Jesse in the same bed in which Ceridwen herself had slept with him—this was ignoring the fact that Raelyn would
kill him
. And not just him, but his children, and Ceridwen didn't care what had recently happened between herself and Jesse—she would not let his children die. Part of what had always made it so difficult to leave him was how much he loved his children. A man, a
king
, who crawled on the floor of his daughter's bedroom just to make her squeal with laughter . . .

Ceridwen would free Jesse and his children. That would be the first step in this war—free the Ventrallan king. Find the Winterian queen. Regroup against Angra, and make him pay for daring to claim Summer—and for letting Raelyn kill Simon.

She could do that.

“Halt!”

Ceridwen stiffened, her eyes flicking to the wagon door as the entire structure rolled to a stop. She flung herself at the one narrow crack in the patched-up window, soaking up what information she could before she jerked back in case another stray blade poked through. They weren't at
the palace yet, but rather still in the city, surrounded by Rintiero's multicolored buildings, the magentas and olives mostly coated in shadow now.

Lekan frowned at Ceridwen. Why had they stopped?

They both stayed silent. Ceridwen shifted into a crouch, the quilt-braid taut between both of her wrists.

A horse whinnied. “We wish to purchase the contents of this wagon,” a voice said, and Ceridwen strained to place it. Not someone she knew, and not one of the soldiers guarding them.

A man laughed. “Forget it—we have our orders.”

“Orders, yes. But do you have gold?”

Coins jingled.
Lots
of coins, from what Ceridwen could tell. Someone was buying them?

Her nostrils flared. Probably a perverted Ventrallan lord who had seen the Summerian wagon and thought what all people thought when they saw Summer's flame—slaves for sale.

One of the soldiers whistled. Silence held for a beat.

“You can even keep the wagon,” the purchaser prodded. “Don't want your queen finding out anything too soon.”

Your queen.
This person wasn't Ventrallan.

Finally the lead soldier snorted. The coins jingled again. “They're all yours.”

Keys rattled. Footsteps moved toward the door. Ceridwen lifted higher, her body pivoted between Lekan and whoever might come at them. She slowed her breath, but
her heart didn't listen, thumping against her ribs as a key slid into the lock.

The door creaked open.

She slid forward, ready to lunge—

The buyer, a soldier, blinked at her in the hazy light from lampposts along the road. His skin shone black against the encroaching shadows, and behind him, a woman stood among a cluster of horses and more soldiers. Her dark hair was knotted into a bun just above the stiff collar of her gray wool gown. On her back, glinting in the twilight, sat an ax.

The fight drained out of Ceridwen on a rush of breath.

“Giselle?”

The queen of Yakim had bought them.

THE FIRST THOUGHT
that hits me when I wake up is:
I'm
really
tired of passing out because of magic.

A small fire clicks and pops to my left, its smoke permeating the air. I force my eyes open, thankful I'm met with the manageable darkness of night instead of an explosion of sunlight, my head thumping in time with the passing seconds.

“You can heal yourself, you know,” comes Rares's voice.

I roll onto my side, my fingers digging into my forehead in an attempt to push away the last remnants of agony. A ring of trees surrounds our clearing, thick foliage hanging from drooping branches. Rares doesn't look up from where he's running a sharpening stone against one of the kitchen knives I stole.

“If I knew how to control my magic that well, I wouldn't have followed you,” I snap. “What did you even
do to me?
How
did you do it?”

Rares tests the blade with his thumb and sighs. “I'd expect ill-cared-for knives in a pauper's kitchen, but the Ventrallan king's? This is a disgrace.”

My glare deadens. He mutters that not even chickens deserve to be butchered by such blades.

Just as I draw in a breath to shout my questions at him, Rares looks up.

“Maybe I should teach you patience first.”

I pull onto my knees, fighting a wave of dizziness. I'm so close to the fire that sparks shoot off the crackling branches and prickle against my skin.

“How do you have magic?” I demand, my voice flat. “And how can you use it on me?”

Rares rests his elbows on his knees, fiddling with the knife as he considers me. “You're worried I won't explain myself, and that even if I do, I won't tell you everything, and you'll be left with incomplete information. You're worried that you made a mistake in trusting me, but even more that you didn't find me soon enough. Did I cover everything, dear heart?”

“I—”

“And while I could assure you that I'm nothing like your previous mentors, I'll do you one better—now that we're safe, or as safe as we can be, I'll tell you everything, as I promised I would. Every detail, every reason, every flutter of a curtain that brought us to this moment. Well, not
every
curtain—some of them have been right gaudy.”

“But . . . why?”

“Tassels, mostly.”

“No,” I groan. “Why would you tell me everything?”

He blinks. “Why not?”

I sink to the ground. Just this easily? I'm used to arguments—me begging Sir to explain things or me begging Hannah to tell more.

Rares goes back to sharpening the knife, and after a breath, he starts, his voice detached, as if he doesn't hear himself. “I know your mother told you how the Decay first ravaged the world. It was a byproduct of people using magic for evil acts, and Primoria's monarchs countered it by collecting their citizens' conduits through a violent purge.”

I have to bite my tongue to keep from asking how he knows what Hannah told me, afraid that if I speak, he'll realize how freely he's giving me this information.

“Thousands died,” he continues. “Even more were possessed by the Decay, lost to evil desires. It was a time of desperation—and that led the world's monarchs to create the Royal Conduits in the hope that such large amounts of magic would cleanse the world of the Decay—and they did, for a time. One for each kingdom, four linked to female heirs, four to male heirs. Paisly was no different, except in our refusal to bow to our monarch's power as easily as the rest of the world.

“We saw a violent cycle beginning. We saw magic still
in use, great stores of it connected to eight people who could become power-hungry. How could they be trusted not to turn corrupt and reintroduce the Decay to our world? Magic had no place here—its price was too high. We formed a rebel group, the Order of the Lustrate, that stood against our queen.” Rares pauses, his gaze lifting from the knife to me. “And our rebellion was successful.”

“Paisly has no queen?” I barely hear the question fill the space between us.

“We have a regent who plays the part of queen whenever such a figure is needed, but Paisly has no queen—or Royal Conduit.

“The night of the rebellion, the Paislian queen refused to negotiate,” he continues. “She saw a threat against her kingdom, not the salvation we claimed. And in the battle, she sacrificed herself for her kingdom—moments after the Order broke her Royal Conduit, a shield.”

“What?” I pant, folding my arms around my torso as if holding on to myself is the only way to make sure his words are real, not some bedtime story told around campfires.

Rares's dark eyes stay on mine. “No one realized what we had done until it was far too late. Everyone in Paisly, from the queen's supporters to the Order's members, became infused with magic. We all became conduits—just as your mother wanted for Winter.”

Shock makes me rock forward. “How do you know that?”

But Rares presses on. “The queen's supporters were
badly outnumbered after the rebellion. The Order came into power and has ruled Paisly ever since. And it is still our belief that magic has no place in this world—which is why we have kept our kingdom as secret as possible. Of course, occasional interactions with other kingdoms are unavoidable, but it is amazing what you can hide when no one knows what to look for. Especially when your kingdom is in a mountain range.” He winks. “Mighty easy to hide things in mountains.”

My mouth bobs open. What Hannah wanted to happen in Winter
already
happened in another kingdom—magic spread to every citizen when their conduit broke and their queen sacrificed herself. An entire land of people like me, who are themselves conduits for a magic they never wanted. No wonder Rares said Paisly is safe from Angra.

I lean forward excitedly. “Then you can stop Angra. Paisly can rally an army and have him defeated in a matter of—”

Rares's look silences me. “Though every Paislian is a conduit, there weren't many of us left after the war. Which is why we took the approach we did—our members have been waiting all over Primoria for a conduit-wielder whose goals aligned with our own. The Order has been building a defense—but Angra's forces include the armies of at least three kingdoms now, and every soldier is infused with his magic. We could hold him off well enough in Paisly's mountains, but we do not have the manpower to defeat his threat on our own. But we will help you—the Order may believe
that magic has no place in Primoria, but our circumstances have forced us to become experts in it. We'll help you learn how to control it so you can use it the way you plan to—to get the other keys to the chasm from Angra and destroy all magic.”

My heart nearly ricochets out of my chest. “You know about that, too?”

Rares smiles sadly, the fire reflecting yellow in his dark eyes. “Being part of the same magic allows for a mental connection. Touching another conduit intensifies the reaction—you've experienced that through skin-to-skin contact with other conduit-wielders. But truly strong conduits can access thoughts and memories without physical touch—until you trust your magic enough to use it all the time, to block such intrusions. You're welcome, by the way, for getting Angra out of your mind. Someday you'll have to hold him off on your own, but for now, he can't access your thoughts.”

I touch my temple. “Wait—could Angra hear my thoughts before I knew he was alive?”

Rares nods once. “Yes.”

Nausea grips me and I reel forward, head in my hands. He could have heard anything—all my plans, all my feeble attempts to stop him. It had nothing to do with him touching me. He could have talked to me
whenever he wanted
. Who else could he do this to?

But I know. He did it to Theron—he could do this to
anyone who isn't actively protected from his Decay by pure conduit magic.

I glare at the flames before me. “So you fought him off for me. But
how
? I'm not Paislian, and Paisly's magic should only affect your people.”

“Magic rules are different for human conduits,” Rares says. “I couldn't affect a normal Winterian, but you are filled with the same magic that runs through my body. We're linked, just as I'm sure you've discovered you're connected to other conduit-bearers. Though the Royal Conduits were created to obey only certain bloodlines, the magic in them is, at its core, the same—and therefore, all conduit-wielders are connected. I'm sorry for the unconsciousness, but your endurance will increase. You were only out for about three hours, not even long enough for me to carry you out of Ventralli.”

I gawk at him. I wasted three hours
sleeping
.

Anything could have happened in that time. Mather and the Winterians could be safely out of Rintiero—or everything I fear could have come to pass. And not only that, but if we're going to Paisly, the journey will take weeks—every moment we waste is another moment that Angra's grip on the world tightens.

And I don't even know his plan. I don't know what he intends to do next, who he will kill, which kingdom he wants to destroy first. . . .

Metallic anxiety fills my throat, making it impossible to swallow, to breathe, to do anything but stare at Rares as the
thudding ache across my skull resumes.

No time to waste.

“You said you'll help me get the keys from him,” I force out. “With all the Order's knowledge, you must have asked your magic how to destroy it too. And it told you the same thing it told me—by sacrificing a conduit and returning it to the chasm?”

Rares nods slowly.

“And you're going to help me get the keys from Angra,” I repeat. “You're going to help
me
destroy all magic. So—”

Memories flutter across my mind. The chasm and its electric, destructive fingers of magic that could only inhabit objects—when people attempted to let the magic touch them, it incinerated them as thoroughly as a lightning strike.

My anxiety is replaced by dread when Rares's gaze doesn't break from mine.

“There's no other way to destroy magic,” I guess, the words coming from somewhere deep inside me, somewhere numb. “You're going to help me die.”

That makes Rares drop the knife and sharpening stone. He swings onto his hands and knees and closes the distance between him and me, moving close enough that I can feel the severity radiating off him as surely as I can feel the heat from the fire beside us.

“For nearly two thousand years, my people have lived in a state of regret for what the Order did to Paisly,” he tells
me. “By the time we could use our magic to figure out how to destroy it, we realized we would have had to get every Paislian to willingly throw themselves into the chasm. We are
all
Paisly's conduit now. So we have been observing the world's rulers in stealth through our link to their magic, hiding knowledge of the conduits' true limits from any who would seek to abuse them, hoping that a ruler would come to the same conclusion we had—that magic is too dangerous. We had hoped, of course, that this monarch would only need to throw their object conduit into the chasm. But you are the first conduit-wielder in centuries who has decided that the negatives of magic outweigh any benefits. Not even your mother sought such a thing.”

I flinch at the mention of Hannah, expecting her voice in my head again—but no. She's gone. And that feels far more liberating than it should.

Even when she tried to help me, she never actually helped
me
—she merely scrambled to fix her own mistakes, and as I look at Rares now, hoping to see some other emotion beyond his odd mix of remorse and eagerness, all I see is a door. The same door Hannah guided me toward, one leading away from a world of chaos and pain, control and destruction.

But unlike Hannah, Rares is willing to help me understand all this. He can help me control my magic so I have a better weapon when I face Angra to get the other two chasm keys. Rares and his people have had centuries to study their magic—maybe they can help me come to a place
where my fear evaporates into resolve.

“Are you sure telling me all this is a good idea?” I ask. “You don't want to hide it from me so I misinterpret something and make a mistake?”

Rares puts his hand on my shoulder, a steady pressure that makes me start. “You are not what you've done. Who you are right now, this moment, is who you choose to be.”

“Who I choose to be,” I echo. “I'm incapable of making the right choices lately.”

I left everyone I care about in Rintiero's dungeon. I let three wasted hours pass. I—

Rares lifts his hand, coils his finger, and flicks me in the forehead.

I slap my palm over the stinging spot. “What—”

But he shakes the offending finger at me. “Consider this the first lesson as I teach you how to fully harness your magic: I will not stand for such talk about the person who will save us, especially from said person.”

“How is that a lesson?” I squeak.

“You'll think twice before you try to be too hard on yourself next time. Now, since we've started our lessons, let's move on to lesson two, shall we?”

I let my hand drop. “What about everyone back in Rintiero? Can we find out what happened to them first? What if Angra—”

I can't finish the question.

Rares squints. “Angra hasn't found your friends in
Rintiero. At least, not all of them—if he had your allies, he wouldn't be bothering trying to track us. He'd just have them killed and let you seek him out in retaliation.”

So much about that makes me anxious. “What? How do you know? And—wait, he's still tracking us? I thought you blocked him?”

“Blocked him from entering your mind—but his magic is still probing the world, searching for us. Once we get to Paisly, we should be safe from his intrusions entirely—the Order keeps a barrier in place. Now.” Rares clucks his tongue as if chastising himself for letting me linger on my worries and picks a leaf from the ground beside him. “Lesson two.” He lays the leaf across his palm. “Lift this leaf into the air. Your magic allows you to affect anything or anyone in existence. As you did in Putnam, when you not so gracefully threw your guards.”