Stitching Snow (30 page)

“Your accent, Ess—”

“Oh, shut it, Dane, I know!”

I tried to move past him to the door, but he blocked me. “I know you’re anxious about today. I heard Theo tell you about how your mother—”

“If I want your advice, I’ll ask for it.” He froze. I’d done it again, treated him like he was something less, like his words weren’t worthy of me . . . like he wasn’t the only person on the planet I knew I could count on.

I didn’t mean it. He had to know I didn’t, that everything inside me was coming unraveled and it just came out around him because it couldn’t anywhere else.

When I tried again, I kept my voice softer, imploring. “Dane, please. Just don’t. I can’t think about it.” His posture eased, just a little. “All right. Let’s get going.” The school visit redefi ned agony. Dane had known exactly what he was talking about. The visit reminded me too much of 286

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Theo’s story of meeting my mother. I couldn’t inspire anyone like she had.

The children, however, didn’t know that. I’d insisted the visit be less formal, no rehearsed speeches from me—like I’d know what kind of speech to give. Instead, I visited individual classrooms. The older children were polite, clearly doing exactly what their teacher had told them to. The last classroom was a very young group, though. The children crowded around, so excited, asking more questions than I’d ever heard in my life, never waiting for a response before moving to the next.

“What’s it like living in the palace?”

“Do you really have a swimming pool made of merinium?”

“What’s the queen like? What’s the king like?”

“Did you really live on Thanda? Is it awful there?”

“Geoffrey,” the teacher cut in at the last. “Remember what we said about manners.”

“It’s all right,” I insisted. “Yes, I lived on Thanda since I was a little older than you. It’s very different from Windsong. Much colder and darker. But not everything was awful.”

“What was your favorite thing there?” a girl asked.

I’d never thought about it before, so I considered the question. “Walking at night, when it was quiet and felt like there was no one around for ten links.”

“Ugh, I hate the dark.”

Her reaction made me laugh. So simple and honest, not car-ing that she was disagreeing with royalty. Why should she?

The teacher asked the children to show me some art projects they’d recently fi nished. Paintings of everything from the palace to family pets to an imagined creature that lurked in shadows under desks and sucked out children’s brains when they were 287

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supposed to be doing their assignments. The teacher’s smile became much more forced as the little girl responsible for that painting told me about the brain-suckers in vivid detail, but I liked the story.

As the others told me about their paintings, I didn’t have to do much other than smile and nod. My mind began to wander, thinking what it would have been like to attend school with other children, to make creative excuses for not doing my work, to play in a park like the children on Candara.

It had never been an option, and it was too late now.

A boy who’d already shyly shown me a picture of his family approached Dane. His little voice just carried over the latest painting narration. “You’re the princess’s guard, right? Part of the Silver Dagger?”

“Yes, that’s right,” Dane said.

“How do you get that job?”

He cleared his throat slightly. “Well, my situation was a little different. But to be a guard you have to work hard and be willing to always protect the princess, no matter what.” I stared harder at a painting of the whistling canyons in front of me. I refused to turn away from it, sensing that if I did I would fi nd Dane’s eyes on me.

“Do you have to do
everything
she says?” the little boy asked.

“Pretty much.”

I will not look.

“I guess that’s not so bad. Not as bad as when my sister gets all bossy at least. Yeah, I think that’s what I’ll do.”

“What is?”

“Join the Silver Dagger when I’m old enough. I want to protect the princess, too.”

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My insides froze and exploded simultaneously. I couldn’t breathe and breathed too much.

Just like Theo. I hadn’t said anything inspiring, anything to make that boy think I was worth protecting, but he wanted to anyway. Wanted to serve. Wanted to get himself killed.

My eyes fi nally darted to Dane’s. He saw my reaction and smiled kindly at the boy before approaching the teacher.

“We should be going,” he said. “The princess has another appointment to prepare for this evening.” It was the truth—I had to have dinner with the “young ladies of the court” when I’d rather have my eyeballs soaked in acid—

but it was more than that. It was Dane saving me in another way, by getting me out before I came apart. The children said their goodbyes and I tried to smile, but I didn’t feel it. Finally, we escaped the classroom.

“Essie, it’s all right,” he began.

“I told you, just don’t,” I snapped. Again. “Please . . . take me home and I’ll get ready for that blazing dinner.” He shook his head and sighed. “Whatever you say, Princess.” 289

27

MY DINNER WITH

the young ladies of the court was exactly what I’d expected: giggling girls trying to win my favor with compliments and agreeing with anything I said. The very opposite of the children I’d spent the afternoon with.

I considered saying something about the Exiles, or something distasteful, or just something unhinged and ridiculous to see how they’d respond. That at least would have been amusing.

If I thought any of them had a single interesting thing to say, I’d have made her the Royal Best Friend on the spot. No such luck, and my thoughts wandered again.

While we ate dainty hors d’oeuvres, the Candaran prisoners languished in the fi lth of their decrepit cells, unable to even cry out to each other in their misery. While we feasted on more food than three times our number could eat, citizens of Windsong bled and died in the outland fi elds, having no idea their enemy was the crown itself. And while the girls picked at rich cakes, R.C. ll E WI S

fretting about what they would do to their fi gures, Queen Olivia plotted new schemes to end my life.

I didn’t talk about any of that. Instead I smiled and nodded and laughed when I was supposed to. Every bit the princess my father wanted me to be. Strong but pleasant, agreeable yet authoritative. Still, each giggle and excited squeal I heard made me sick.

One thing helped me keep the mask on. We’d reached the Candaran fll eet. Dane and I would make our move within the next few days. We’d take down the defenses, broadcast the truth to the world, and one way or another, it’d all be over.

After hours of nonsense, I made my exit with Iris, an aide charged with accompanying me back to my suite. Walking through the palace without Dane felt strange, but the dinner had been very traditional—no men allowed. Iris led the way in complete silence, which suited me well enough after all the giggling. The quiet corridors felt refreshingly peaceful. At least, they did until the hairs on my arms started prickling. Olivia wouldn’t try anything in the palace with my father around. I knew she wouldn’t, but my nerves wouldn’t listen. I focused on the extra weight of the knife in my boot—helpful if I ever had the wits to use it—and the pressurized cylinder tucked safely in my pocket.

Nothing happened all the way to my suite in the residential wing, and I cursed myself for being a skittish sparrow before bidding Iris good night. With the door closed behind me, I relaxed, pulling my boots off and tossing them aside. Not very princesslike. I didn’t care.

“Dane?”

No response. It was late, so he must have already turned in.

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I had to stop lashing out at him. Appearances weren’t important anymore, and stress had taken the habit too far. I’d apologize in the morning, and we’d plot out the time line for the end of the world.

I went to my room and pulled the fastener from my hair, shaking it loose. A swish signaled the door in the front room opening. Apparently, Dane
hadn’t
already turned in.

“Dane? Where’d you go?” I called.

“I sent him and your pet on an errand.” Not Dane’s voice. I spun around. My father’s body fi lled the doorway, and lightning exploded in my heart.

You’re not to be alone with him under any circumstances.
There I was, alone. All these days and days with nothing, I’d thought maybe that one thing had stayed in the dark past where it belonged. That at least one part of him would be better.

The look in his eyes was familiar. Nothing good ever came from that look.

“What do you want, Father?”

He stepped toward me. I stepped back. “You were always such a comfort to me. I need it again.” Despite the panic, a hard strength pulsed through me. “That wasn’t comfort. And you need to leave.”

“It’s all right, Snowfl ake. No one will know.” He closed the distance—I had nowhere else to go—but I’d spent years lashing out at men in the cage . . . men who reminded me of him. With the real thing in front of me, I didn’t hesitate.

I pushed him away and hit him, bringing shock to his eyes—I’d never dared strike him before.

The shock quickly shifted to anger.

He came back more forcefully, too quickly. He was so much 292

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larger than anyone I’d ever fought. I got a few more hits in, but a bruise over his eye and blood trickling from his lip did nothing to stop him. He caught my arms, resisting my efforts to twist away.

Then he squeezed.

Squeezing, pressing . . . bruises to hide in the morning . . .

Memories fll ooded my mind, pushing out what Dane taught me. It was all the opening Father needed, shoving me back onto the bed.

Too heavy, holding me down, can’t breathe.

I was stronger now. Strong enough to hold him off, but not for long. Knowing it was useless, knowing it had never worked before, I still tried. Maybe he had doubts, a voice in the corner I could use to Tip his will. I focused my awareness, shifting it to his.

I adjust my grip, hold her tighter—

I snapped back to my own mind, feeling like I’d bathed in mine-sludge. I couldn’t. I couldn’t bear to see through his eyes.

To feel what he felt. I couldn’t be him.

He smiled . . . the smile that haunted me every night as I went to sleep, every time I stepped into the cage. The smile that said he didn’t care about anything except what he wanted. His eyes mirrored me, a dark refl ection of my fear.

“So much of your mother in you.”

A surge of strength bought me a space, a breath, and the will to spit in his face. “That’s right, because I’m nothing like you.” Father’s face contorted as he lurched forward, his full weight smothering me. But his grip on my arms released. Then he rolled 293

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off, and I was pulled to my feet. Dane, his face as pale as mine, a knife in his free hand . . . a knife covered in blood.

I instinctively looked back at the bed.

Once I did, I couldn’t look away.

My father lay there, his eyes wide, his mouth moving sound-lessly, a pool of blood blooming beneath him.

“Are you okay?” Dane asked.

I said nothing, just kept watching. Father’s eyes locked with mine.
I won’t let you win,
they seemed to say.

“Too late,” I whispered.

“Essie?”

Father’s body shuddered, and then went still, his eyes frozen forever. The mirrors were empty.

“Essie, we have to go!”

“What?”

Dane forced me back around. His hand went to my cheek as his eyes sought mine. “I’m sorry, I came back as soon as I realized the message wasn’t from you. But we have to go, now.

Once they know the king’s dead, they’ll lock down the palace.

We have to signal the fll eet.”

The fll eet. The plan. And no time to do it delicately. We had to get to the command terminal and clear the planetary defenses.

“Right. Okay. Right.”

He pushed me out of the bedroom but didn’t follow right away. I tidied my clothes, fi nding no blood on them. Then I twisted my hair back up and pulled my boots on. If only I hadn’t taken them off so quickly, I’d have had my knife.

I could’ve done it myself.

When Dane came out, his knife was clean, and he slid it back 294

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into its sheath. He crossed the room and put his hands on my shoulders. I didn’t realize how shaky I was until he steadied me.

“I need you to tell me you’re all right.”

“Aye, I’m fi ne. I—I’m sorry, Dane.”

“For what?”

“For how I keep snapping at you when you’re all I’ve got.

And for making you do that.”

He said nothing, but the way he gently squeezed my shoulders told me the fi rst was forgiven, and he didn’t want an apology for the second.

I put the scene in the bedroom out of my mind, focusing on details, the plan. My gear kit was inside a cabinet built into a decorative end table. I broke away from Dane to retrieve it and strap it on.

“Ready?” I asked.

“Defi nitely. You have the data-chip?” I pulled the locket from beneath my shirt and checked. The chip containing the video message and the data from the war zone was nestled securely inside between the images of my maybe-grandparents. I nodded and led the way out into the corridor.

In my head, I clearly saw my mother’s notebook. I’d studied the pages for years on Thanda before destroying those holding secrets, before I was certain the details were committed to memory. Camoufl aged among the beautiful but innocent sketches, she’d drawn an intricate map of the palace’s underground laby-rinth. Labs where poisons and other weapons were developed, vaults holding artifacts and valuables, and most importantly the command terminal—a secure room serving as the nerve center of all the control my father held over the planet.

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It wouldn’t be easy to get to. The direct route was only acces-sible to the king or queen. That meant going the long way.