Stealing Snow (32 page)

“No offense, but you don’t seem the type,” I proffered.

“What type?”

“The waiting-for-the-Duchess-to-pick-you type.”

“It seems that the Duchess is running out of eligible men. I was invited like everyone else, and an invitation in this Kingdom cannot be ignored.”

He was lying. I was doubtful that the King would send an invitation to the River Witch’s caretaker.

Some part of me felt insulted. I hadn’t thought of Kai with anyone but me. And he was treating my alias, the Countess, just like he treated me. Or maybe, just maybe, he could sense me under the pretty perfect shell.

“And where did the King’s men find you?” I asked.

“You found me. You have forgotten me so soon?”

I nearly stopped in my tracks, but I kept dancing. Was he talking about the Countess or me?

Kai continued, “You asked the very same question the last time I saw you. At last week’s ball, remember?”

“How could I forget?” I asked as demurely as I could manage.

“And yet you don’t remember our last dance. We did it here in this very spot. You promised to tell me more when we met again—and yet it seems I have one of those faces that doesn’t stick.”

I was the one with the less-than-sticky face.

“I could never forget you … I just have traveled very far. And I am dizzy from all the dancing. You try wearing a corset.”

“Of course. I do not envy the price you pay for your beauty. But I do enjoy the results.”

Was Kai flirting?

I suddenly wanted to tell Kai everything. But what would I say?

I was now a holder of a whole new set of people’s secrets. The Robber girls’ story belonged to them, just as Gerde’s belonged to her and Kai.

“I don’t mean to be presumptuous, but you have that look. Like you want to say something,” Kai said.

“And why would I share it with you?”

“Because sometimes it’s easier to talk to a stranger.”

“But then we wouldn’t be strangers anymore.”

“Precisely. Or maybe you’re not a stranger, after all. Maybe I already know who you are and what you can do. What you must do.”

“Excuse me, I think I need some air,” I said and made myself break away from Kai.

“We will meet again. I am sure of it,” Kai said mysteriously.

Ticktock, Princess
, Jagger’s voice sounded again.

But something drowned out Jagger’s monologue. The crowd collectively gasped. For the briefest of seconds I believed that we had somehow been caught.

Steady
, Jagger’s voice said.

I followed the craning of necks and the tiptoeing of high heels of the crowd as the music and dancing came to a halt. The reaction of the crowd had nothing to do with the Robbers among them.

Six soldiers in the King’s royal red were shouldering something golden down the staircase.

It took my brain a second to catch up with what it was seeing—who I was seeing. The soldiers were not carrying a box. It was a cage with ornate brass bars that curlicued around its captive.

“
Shhhhh …
” Jagger again hushed me.

Kai froze beside me.

And I could see why. What they were carrying was the real reason he was here.

It was Gerde. Gerde was in the golden cage. She was naked and trying to cover herself with her hands. There was a wild look of panic in her big gray eyes.

My heart broke. I wanted to ask Kai how it had happened. How had she been taken? But I remembered that I wasn’t wearing my own face.

I wanted to freeze the whole room to get her out.

I know she’s your friend, but you can’t help her now. We’re here for the mirror. We’re here for your Bale
, Jagger’s voice again interrupted.

If he had been standing beside me, I think I could have frozen him, too. He was demanding that I choose between my friend and my Bale.

Kai could save Gerde. Wouldn’t he? But how? He didn’t have magic, and Gerde’s cage was surrounded by soldiers.

If you make our presence known, we are all dead, Snow.

I couldn’t find Margot’s face in the crowd, but I knew it was her.

You said yourself that distraction is the better part of a heist
, I countered.

Controlled distraction. Not chaos
, Margot defended.

I looked at Gerde in the cage. My friend was trapped in a room filled with the most refined people of Algid. Margot had instructed me to take an etiquette vial just to fit in with them. But they were more barbaric than the River Witch or the Snow Beasts out in the woods. Gerde was the entertainment for the evening.

“The King is delayed, but he sends you this gift,” a soldier announced.

The Duchess’s mask rode up slightly. “What kind of gift is this? She’s just a girl.”

One of the soldiers prodded Gerde with a spear. Its sharp tip glistened under the glow of the floating chandelier.

Don’t
, I said in my head, willing Gerde not to show them her beastly self.

The Duchess inspected Gerde through the bars.

“Not just any girl,” the soldier said with a flourish of pride and poked through the bars at Gerde again.

I could see Gerde’s tiny face set in a hard line. She was resisting—but she was also mad. She flinched as the prod pierced her flesh, drawing blood.

The guests didn’t react.

The King’s soldier prodded again. And again. And on the third time I could see the change begin. I almost looked away. I could see Gerde searching the crowd for Kai. She found him and held on to his gaze while the change occurred. Just like I’d watched her find him when they were together at the cube. Kai always calmed her down and brought her back from the brink, back to herself. This time there was nothing he could do.

When Gerde’s transformation was complete, she reached through the bars with her fur-and-feather-covered arms, trying to get at the soldier.

The Duchess smiled beneath her mask as if this were the very thing she had always wanted.

And the crowd remained mute and still. Was this
commonplace in Algid? Girls being given as presents and then tortured in front of them? Were these people hiding their feelings, or did they just not have any?

“What a marvelous find. Thank His Majesty for me,” the Duchess said finally, clapping her hands.

She looked to the crowd, and they began to clap, too. I could not bring my hands together. Snowy webs were forming between my fingers already. I could see that Kai wasn’t clapping, either. He gulped hard; his Adam’s apple moved. I assumed he was swallowing his objections, reminding himself of whatever plan he’d cooked up to free her.

“The King will be pleased that you are pleased,” the soldier said with a slow smile, prodding Gerde again to get her to move to the back of the cage. Apparently, seeing the beast was a treat, but seeing it maul the Duchess would be too much.

King Lazar had reached a new level of creepy. He gave people as presents. The ball, which moments ago had seemed so beautiful, had taken a grotesque turn.

I’m sorry, Margot
, I said in my head.

I focused on the lock. With a little luck maybe I could make a key of ice and slip it to Gerde.

But before I could do anything, Kai dropped into a low bow and ran down the stairs to his sister.

And then the lights went out.

First things first
, said Margot.

I had a mission to finish.

Ignore the chaos
, I told myself.

Use the chaos
, Margot’s voice said in my head.

I pushed myself away from the recent past and rocketed toward my future. I rushed up the next set of stairs as quickly as I could, trying to look like a flustered girl in search of a powder room after the big commotion, not a thief ready to rob the Duchess blind.

“It looks like we have somehow run out of magic,” the Duchess said as her servants brought in a sea of candles. She smiled wide, but I assumed she knew that magic didn’t just disappear. It was taken.

“Luckily we still have the liquid kind. Champagne for everyone …,” the Duchess continued, assuring the crowd that the party would go on.

I could hear Fathom’s voice in my head, confirming that our plan would do the same.

Our people are finally coming home
, Fathom said, sounding more sentimental than I’d ever heard her.

As servers brought in another round of bubbly on what looked like floating trays and the band started up again, I cast a look back down to where Kai had been and then to Jagger.
He is so good at playing his part
, I thought as he presented himself to the Duchess, dripping with charm. The connecting spell let us move concurrently and share a consciousness, but not everyone was as good at cloaking their thoughts as Jagger.

I hoped I was able to conceal my feelings for him. And from him. And from everyone else in my life.

The third floor of the Duchess’s palace was even more glamorous than the lower levels. I stopped myself from touching the gilded petals that stemmed all over the walls. They reminded me of the flowers on the Duchess’s exquisite dress. I looked around before releasing the locator moth that Fathom had given me. The magical insect took off on its silvery wings and flitted around. I followed it to the door of my cousin’s room.

I quickly closed the door behind me and surveyed the scene. A plush canopy bed sat in the center of the room. A portrait of the Duchess hung on one wall, her face hidden behind her mask, as usual. An overflowing jewelry box sat on her dressing table. The contents of which were probably worth millions. I scanned the room for the Duchess’s safe.

Margot had said to use magic, so I called on my snow.

Frost left my fingertips and searched the room for the mirror. I watched as it wound its way under and over every surface of
the room. A misty fog poured under the bed, into the ornate armoire and out again, and behind the curtains.

It finally settled in the middle of the pale-gray rug that covered the center of the floor. I pulled back the rug and found nothing but wooden floorboards. The frost gathered on one section of the wood.

Magic likes poetry
, Margot had said.

“Open for me. I want to see.”

I touched the floor and several wooden planks fell silently into the dark below. I rolled backward, barely avoiding the drop.

I grabbed a candle from the Duchess’s nightstand and peered into the hole. There were no stairs. There was just blackness.

I waved a hand down into the dark, and a staircase of ice formed a spiral down to a bottom I could not see.

I descended carefully into the dark. When I finally reached the last step, I found a long hallway at the end of which was an arched doorway edged in icicles. Though the entryway appeared open, I knew safe passage would take more than merely walking through. Margot had said the architect of the safe had warned her of this very spot.

I placed my candle on the floor and reached out my hand. The icicles dropped down like a guillotine. They stopped in midair right before touching me. I was not harmed, but I could not pass through. Not yet.

Margot had said that the safe required blood. Royal blood.

I took out the dagger Fathom gave me. It burned in my hand, and I quickly cut my palm. The pain was doubled by the hot blade. I gritted my teeth to keep from screaming. I opened my
hand in the doorway again. This time when the icicles fell, one shard gently dipped into the blood on my palm. The icicles all retracted at once, and I stepped through the doorway.

I expected another magical booby trap, but instead I saw an enormous room filled with mirrors.

There were pieces of every size and shape. Some were mounted in frames. Some were leaning against the room’s walls. Still others were piled high to the ceiling.

It was genius, really. If anyone other than the King or the Duchess got this far, how on earth would they know which mirror was the right one? How was I to know?

I examined my reflection in mirror after mirror—to no avail. There was the woman’s face I’d stolen in every one.

I sank down to the floor of the room. I had not come this far to give up now. I called on my snow, but my frost encircled me and went nowhere.

“Mirror, mirror on the wall, watch the mighty Snow Queen fall …,” I quipped. “Sometimes you have to break things to find what’s unbreakable.”

The words weren’t mine. They belonged to Dr. Harris. He’d said that after Bale had broken my wrist. He had meant to illustrate how strong I could be. But I remember taking offense, thinking he was calling Bale weak. So I’d broken a glass paperweight on his desk.

I called on my snow again and held my breath and closed my eyes.

“Break,” I ordered and tucked into a fetal position.

There was a long pause. Spell work was still new to me.

Every mirror exploded at once. My ears filled with the cacophony of broken glass. The seconds ticked by, and I could feel the draft caused by the movement of the glass around me. But not one shard scratched me.

I opened my eyes. When I stood, all I saw was a blanket of broken mirror. I walked the wreckage looking for the one left unbroken.

In the corner of the room, I spied a tiny little compact. It was gold with a symbol on the outside that looked like one of the markings on the Tree. At first I thought it was a flower. But it was actually an odd-shaped snowflake. I held my breath before opening it and exhaled when I saw my reflection. The mirror was intact. But the face in the mirror wasn’t the Countess’s borrowed one. It was my own.

The King’s mirror piece could see through the face that Fathom gave me. It could see the real me.

I clamped the compact shut and carefully climbed up the ice stairs. I didn’t know how long I’d been down there, but I didn’t have a moment to lose.

Just as I rolled the rug back across the wooden floor, the bedroom door banged open. The Duchess strode angrily into her room, followed by a pack of dangerous-looking and heavily armed guards dressed in the same blue that decorated the palace. I hastily hid the mirror in the folds of my gown.

“What are you doing in my bedroom?” the Duchess questioned.

I hesitated, formulating a lie and tried not to stare at the glittery mask that now seemed to be embedded in her skin.