Snow Like Ashes (32 page)

I’m so lost in the euphoria around me that I don’t notice the guards dragging me back into Abril until the gate closes behind me. But even as the heavy iron bars drop into place, the cold in my body doesn’t dissipate. The Winterians’ cheers don’t fade.

Angra can hear them, I’m sure. He can feel the shift in the air, the joy spreading like wafting flurries of snow through the Abril work camp. My grin returns, bursting across my face.

Soon he’ll know the blizzard started with me.

CHAPTER 25

THE CLOSER WE
get to Angra’s palace, the more my relief and amazement fade.

This is the moment I’ve feared since I arrived, when Angra will torture me into submission. He’ll make me beg for death until I tell him how I brought down the ramps, how I healed that boy, and when I don’t explain it—
can’t
explain it, at least not the boy—he’ll make Herod break me.

A shiver eats up my insides. No, I’m not afraid of Herod. I’m not afraid of Angra.
I’m not afraid.

But Angra will kill me before I talk to Nessa again. Before I can do anything else to help them, maybe even save them. And after seeing what happened to the boy . . .

I want to dissolve in a fit of incredulous laughter as the soldiers pull me through Abril. The boy is all right. Even as I think it, shock chases away my need to laugh, snuffing it out like a candle getting sucked up into wind.

How
did
I do that?

Nessa, Conall, and Garrigan look up from their work in Angra’s garden as we pass. Nessa’s expression flashes from numb to panicked in two blinks, her body coiling with helpless realization. She surges toward me but Garrigan stops her, wraps his arms around her as he whispers something quick and low in her ear.

Conall sees me too, his glare dangerously dark. I tear my eyes away from him before I can see his disappointment, before his eyes tell me,
I knew you would die too.

I won’t die. Not today. Not after what happened, what I did, what I can do for them. But what
can
I do for them? I don’t even know how I did it, where it came from—I healed the boy.

I healed him.

“Leave us.”

Angra’s voice ricochets around the throne room. A group of high-ranking advisers stands huddled around his dais, the black suns and gold trim on their uniforms gleaming in the filtered light from the holes above. They turn away at his command, all eyes falling on the battered Winterian girl two of his soldiers drag down the long walk to the throne.

One of the advisers is Herod. He smirks and eyes his king like he’s asking for permission, but Angra’s voice booms out again.

“I said
leave us
.”

The advisers gather the papers they had scattered on tables around Angra’s dais and file out through various doors. I’m left draped between the two soldiers at the base of the dais. Angra leans back in his throne, one hand as usual clutching his staff. His green eyes are sharp and deadly, and he stares at me as if I’m a prized dog he’s considering buying.

“Report,” he growls.

The soldier on my right snaps to attention. “She brought down the work ramp at the wall and killed and injured many of our men. She also—” He stops, his eyes darting to my face and pulling away like I might strike him dead with just a stare. “She healed a slave.”

My lungs refuse to let in more air, tightening like they know how hopeless it is to continue breathing. I don’t know what I am, what I can do, but Angra will torture me until he either finds out or I die.

Angra stands. “Dismissed,” he says. Both soldiers spin away, the sound of their boots on the obsidian floor fading into silence. The doors shut behind them.

It’s just Angra and me now. Angra and me and the dull, empty thudding of my pulse echoing off the heavy black rock of the throne room. I tighten every muscle against the fear in the back of my mind.

No matter what happens, no matter what he does, I am part of the bigger current of Winter, and that is something he can never take from me.

Angra’s fingers play idly on his staff. “Brought down a ramp, did you?
And
healed a slave?” His face is impassive, and that lack of emotion is somehow more terrifying than anything else. I surprised him. And he doesn’t like being surprised.

Angra steps forward. He smiles, composed, in control, analyzing me with taunting words until he can figure out what I did, how to stop me from surprising him again. “Clearly you have not learned a Winterian’s place if you think you can do such things without repercussions. But fear not—Herod will be more than happy to show you how a slave should act. Maybe I should have had him tutor you in etiquette from the start.”

The mention of Herod is like a bolt of lightning on a clear day, sharp and jolting. I stumble backward, eyes popping open, and draw in a quick inhale of breath. Angra’s smile widens. He can tell he found a weakness.

“Killed my men,” he muses, half to himself. “And healed a slave. It won’t take long to figure out how you did one, but the other? You came here with nothing but that stone, so what, exactly, gave you the power to heal someone?” Angra takes one step down the dais. “Has a little dead queen been helping you? Is she feeding you information in the hope that you will succeed where even her son has failed?”

I gape at him. Hannah. How did he know—

But Angra steps the rest of the way down, stopping close enough that I can see the anger lingering behind his expression, the threat of explosion should I press the wrong button or refuse to play along. “I see everything,” he hisses. “I control everything. I know she’s still connected to Winter’s magic, but I didn’t think she’d be stupid enough to use her power in my kingdom, especially through a worthless girl. You’re going to tell me what Hannah has said to you, how she is feeding you magic, then I’m going to squeeze every bit of that magic out of your body.”

I swallow, my throat tight. The little boy’s eyes appear in my mind, so wide and awed and relieved, his small back healed.

“I don’t know,” I whisper. My own words shock me. I didn’t mean to speak. I just—I did something. I’m powerful.

“I think you do,” Angra disagrees. He lifts an eyebrow and looks at the orb on his staff. Darkness leaches out of it, one long string of shadow that swerves through the air, wrapping around his hand like a vine hugging a tree branch. The line of shadow uncurls from his hand and makes one great swoop arcing in a wide circle around my head. Toying with me, taunting me with how close the magic lingers to my face. Its darkness plays off the beams of sun that fall down through the holes in the ceiling.

I gape at it. I’ve never
seen
magic before. This—this isn’t magic.

This is the Decay.

“And I’m sure Hannah’s put some rather interesting bits of information in your head,” he continues. “I’d like to see what she’s been doing to you.”

I’m panting now, the shadow hovering in front of my nose. “All your power, and you don’t already know?”

Angra’s face twitches, revealing his true boiling anger beneath his smug facade. “You were put in a cage with—who was it? 1-3219, 1-3218, and 1-2072. What I do know, R-19, is that my need to know what is in your head is greater than my need to keep them alive. Should I bring them here? Because I’m guessing you care whether or not they live.”

I bite my tongue to keep from reacting. Angra’s forehead relaxes in a pleased realization. The shadow line pulses before my face, the manifestation of his threat.

“Ah, you do care. I thought so.” He steps closer, too close, less than an arm’s length away with only the shadow line hovering between us. “You probably would also care,” he continues, voice a low purr, “if I ordered my soldiers not to bother bringing them here. If I had them killed where they stand. Or even better, if I let Herod torture them. Maybe I should—”

“I’ll kill you,” I spit, and lunge forward a beat before flailing back from the swirling line of dark magic, my hands clenching into fists. I can’t stop my frantic desire to tear Angra’s heart out, but I know it’s useless; I can’t stop him from making Nessa or Conall or Garrigan Herod’s next toy, can’t evade that pulsing rope of darkness that creeps closer and closer to me, until I’m afraid to breathe too deeply lest I suck it inside me.

“Will you? Because I think you don’t have a choice. No one does.”

Blood pools in my mouth. I’ve bitten clean through my tongue now, the sharp lucidity that comes from that pain the only thing keeping me from leaping at Angra through the aura of dark magic. I focus on the pain, not on the cloudy line of darkness, not on Angra’s lulling words. His gentle, pulsing voice that sounds so calm, so sweet, until the meaning of his words shines through. Beyond us, the black obsidian of the empty throne room reflects the sunlight, watching us like a bodiless audience.

“It is freeing, not having a choice. And after a while, people no longer need to be forced to do certain things. Like Herod, for instance—he has taken quite fervently to the choices I make for him. He’ll enjoy destroying you.”

Cold. Everything is cold. The world is ice, coated in thick, solid wonder, nothing but gleaming surfaces and clouds of frozen breath. I’m locked in it, a part of it, my limbs hardening into the jagged branches of an ice-covered tree, stuck in a suspended state of hibernation while the world freezes around me. My bones shift with a grinding sensation, moving against the ice, shattering it as my body heaves forward, fingers curled in claws, mouth opening in a bloody screech as I dive through the shadow at Angra’s face.

The moment the black cloud touches my skin, I realize my great mistake. Desperation opened my mind to him, and my defenses crumble as the shadow dissipates into my head, diving back into my skull and filling every crevice with a dusty and ancient evil. I pull to a stop, sucked out of the cold, cold, cold of the world and into my own heat-drenched torture. The shadow wiggles through my thoughts, dives into my memories, kicking around in my brain as I’m flung backward and forward uncontrollably.

A flicker of Angra’s smugness returns. His power is in me now, pushing around my mind, nestling inside me like ink in books.

You will tell me everything,
I feel him say. The words are my own thoughts, greedy and deep, and I grab my ears as if I could pull him out of my head.
Or I will let Herod have you first, then those slaves you were with, then every Winterian I own. I will make him kill them all.

No, he won’t. I’ll stop Herod; I’ll kill Angra before he ever does that to anyone else.

Faces and images from my past swirl as Angra sorts through my head—Mather and Sir, the Rania Plains, Theron holding me as we danced in Cordell. Snow falling, gentle white flakes dusting Jannuari’s cobblestone streets . . .

Cold sweeps over me, wondrous cold. I’m standing in Jannuari, bare toes digging into the mortar between the cobblestones as flakes stick to my eyelashes, making the world glitter. Why am I here? It’s so cold, every nerve in my body tingling with the wondrous iciness.

I know how to break you,
comes Angra’s voice.
I know how to break all of you who long so badly for what you cannot have. You show your weakness in your desperation.

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.

CHAPTER 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 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 hammering 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.