by Bree Barton
For a moment his eyes shone brighter. Then his face went dark.
“But we’ll never get to see her reign. Today, watching the things Angelyne does to innocent people . . . let’s just say I’ve come to understand how much we’ve lost.”
All the regret Pilar had fought against so hard was creeping back. Not only had she robbed Quin of his sister—she’d robbed an entire kingdom of their rightful queen. Karri would have protected the people of Glas Ddir. Angelyne wanted them to suffer.
Pilar swiped at the heat behind her eyes. “You didn’t answer my question. What does any of this have to do with Dom du Zol?”
He snapped the twig in two. “Dom doesn’t deserve what they’re doing to him. I want to break him out, take him somewhere they can’t reach him.”
The blood was rushing to Quin’s face. He exhaled.
“But I can’t do it alone. They say a just ruler will never stand by while innocent people suffer. I think, if I can make my case to the Snow Queen, she might help me.”
“You’re joking.” Pilar blinked. “That’s your grand plan?”
“See? This is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you. I knew you’d—”
“You’re going to Luumia so you can pop in to the palace for a cup of tea?” She let out a low whistle. “That’s all you royals know how to do, isn’t it? Throw yourselves at the feet of other royals. What makes you think the Snow Queen will be able to help you save Dom?”
“Forgive me,” Quin spat, “for trying to save the one person I still care about. The only person I have left.”
The words stung.
“Look,” she said, hardening her voice. “It’s fine you like Dom. You can dream about saving him all you want. But until you come up with a better plan, that’s all it is. A dream.”
From the look on Quin’s face, she knew she should say something else. Something nicer. But suddenly he was rising to his feet.
“Do you hear that?”
He tipped his head to one side. Listened.
Pilar stood. She heard it, too.
Music.
She shut her eyes, drinking in the sound. Each note bent the air around it. Only one instrument could do that.
“Do you think it’s a trap?” Quin whispered.
Her eyes flew open. Anything was possible, but it seemed unlikely the guards would follow them all this way to serenade them at the Luumi border.
“Shh,” she said. “Don’t ruin it.”
She’d never heard a song so beautiful, or so sad.
“I have to see who’s playing,” she said.
Pilar didn’t wait for him to answer. She turned and followed the violin.
Chapter 6
Bruised Ass
THE VIOLINIST WAS A boy.
He was young, no more than twelve or thirteen, with tawny amber skin, dark freckles, and rounded eyes. He wore a fur cloak over a rough white tunic with purple diamonds in the wool. Pilar wasn’t sure, but she thought this was a costume for Jyöltide, the annual solstice festival.
The boy hunched on a wooden stool, violin tucked under his chin. His slick black hair poked out in every direction like a happy, sloppy crown.
Excitement whirred in Pilar’s chest. The boy was Addi, the indigenous people of the snow kingdom. That meant they were closer to the border than she’d thought.
She noticed something else about the boy’s face: it was wet and puffy. He’d been crying.
“He’s incredible,” Quin whispered as they peeked through the twisted trees. The boy’s fingers glided over the catgut strings as he stopped them against an ivory fingerboard. If Pilar had learned on a violin like that, instead of the old, banged-up corpse Morígna dragged from the river kingdom, she might have been incredible, too.
“You play, don’t you?” Quin said, his voice low in her ear.
What had given her away? The smile that always crept into her eyes when she heard music? The way her fingers twitched, aching to hold the violin?
Her longing burned down to a deep and coiling shame.
“No,” she said. “Not anymore.”
A loud crack and whistle made them both look up. The boy looked up, too.
The southern sky was breaking.
The stars were falling. Pilar didn’t know how else to describe it. They hurtled down as arrows of light, so bright she shielded her eyes. But they were falling up, too, each star curving in on itself. Spinning, whirling. Unzipping the seams of the sky.
The shimmers formed shapes in white silvery purple, flowers and beasts. Some stars drew letters, spelling words in a language Pilar didn’t know.
“The Illuminations,” Quin murmured, staring up at the sky in awe. “I didn’t think the Luumi had them anymore.”
“What are they?” she shouted. No need to be quiet now: the stars were shrieking so loudly they drowned out every other sound. “Are they magic?”
“I think they’re made of fyre ice.”
She shook her head. “I come from a land of volqanoes. I’ve seen fire, and that isn’t it.”
“Not fire. Fyre ice. It’s a gemstone—with trace amounts of magic, if I’m not mistaken. My . . .” He hesitated. “My old music teacher was Luumi. He’d never seen them himself, but he told me how, when his parents were young, the royal family put on a spectacular display at the end of Jyöl. The Illuminations lit the sky above the palace on the darkest night of the year, when the—”
“Weeping Moon rises,” Pilar finished. “But that won’t happen for weeks.”
“Not to mention they haven’t had the Illuminations in almost twenty years. If the lights have returned, this must be some kind of precursor to the real display.”
He frowned. “But my teacher told me they mined all the fyre ice decades ago. It was the primary source of heat and light in the snow kingdom, and without it, thousands of Luumi died.”
“I thought Luumia was a land of progress?”
“Socially, yes. The Luumi embrace their magicians. They embrace everyone—there’s none of my father’s hate. But after two decades of scarcity, life in the snow kingdom is a bit bleak.”
Just as quickly as the sky had lit up, it went dark. The only remnants of the Illuminations were curls of gray smoke.
“Look.” Pilar pointed to the clearing.
The boy was gone, the stool tipped onto its side. On the snow lay the violin.
She rushed forward. How could he be so careless? You didn’t let something that beautiful go crashing to the ground.
Pilar picked up the violin and dusted off the snow. The moment her hands touched the wood she felt a dizzy rush of feeling. The curves of the ribs were magnificent, the neck long and slender. She tapped her fingers lightly on the hollow belly. All she wanted was to play it.
“I’ll bet the boy ran home,” Quin said. “He probably lives nearby.”
His words cracked the fantasy. Pilar’s shoulders went slack. How quickly she forgot.
“We should return it,” she said.
“Wait,” Quin said. “Play me something first.”
Her fingers tightened around the neck. “It’s been too long.”
“Doesn’t matter. Play anything.” He righted the boy’s wooden stool and sat down. “I miss music terribly.”
She missed it, too. Pilar eyed the horsehair bow bedded on the snow. She had sworn to never touch a bow again.
And yet. Her left fingers twitched against her thigh. The ache was visceral.
Maybe a few notes. Only a bar or two. Just to see.
She nested the violin in the crook of her chin. Then un-nested it.
“Turn around,” she said to Quin. “I don’t want you watching.”
He sighed. “If you insist.”
He spun around on the stool. Pilar took a breath, stooped, and picked up the bow. It felt like lightning in her fingers. She brought it to the strings.
There was only one kind of magic Pilar still believed in. One kind of magic that a Dujia like her mother could never warp into something ev
il, no matter how hard she tried.
The magic of a violin when it sang.
Pilar hadn’t touched a bow since the night in the cottage. Her fingers remembered the notes, but the cold made them clumsy. Luckily she had a knack for bending a wrong note into a right one. She wished she could fix all her previous mistakes so easily.
In every song, if she were lucky, she’d find one divine moment where she didn’t play the notes: the notes played her.
Now was not one of those moments.
She got stuck on a section that had always been a pain in her ass. Her calluses were no longer up, thanks to months of Angelyne’s enkindlement and Zaga’s watchful eye. One more reason to kill them both. Not that she needed another reason.
After three tries, she lowered her bow.
“I know that lullaby.” Quin was still facing the opposite direction. “It’s Glasddiran. My mother used to sing it to me.”
He hadn’t commented on her playing. The only thing worse than failing was when someone saw you fail.
“You can turn around,” she said. “I’m done embarrassing myself.”
He swiveled on the stool. There was something in his eyes she didn’t recognize. A spark.
“Would you like to know what I think?” he asked.
“Are you going to be an ass about it?”
“You’re playing a fourth octave. I hope this doesn’t offend you, but you shouldn’t be able to do that with your level of training.”
He’d managed to be an ass while paying her a compliment. Typical.
“You’re good,” Quin said. “But with practice and rigor, you could be great.” He folded his arms over his chest. “I could help you. If you want.”
“I thought piano was your instrument.”
“I flirted with violin before I settled down.” He stood and stepped toward her. “You have good calluses. I felt them while you were kneading my back.”
So that was how he knew she played.
“Not as good as they used to be. And I’m cursed with short fingers.”
“If you love your instrument, it doesn’t matter. And you clearly do.” He scratched his cheek. “It’s kind of amazing, really. After seeing you fight, seeing you play is like watching an entirely different person.”
Pilar frowned. Why couldn’t she be both?
“You peeked,” she said.
“What if I did? You might as well know you’re beautiful when you play.”
Pilar didn’t know what to say. No one had ever called her beautiful.
“You need to stop clenching your bow so tightly in your right hand,” Quin said. “You’re not trying to kill it. You want to make love to it.” He gestured toward the violin. “May I?”
Reluctantly she handed it over. He tucked it under his chin, mirroring her posture.
“Your shoulders are bunched up in your ears like this, see? You want to make a square with your right arm and bow. And bring your left elbow to where you can see it. You’ll reach the lower strings more easily that way.”
Quin demonstrated with the bow. With his long, regal fingers, he made it look easy.
“You said fighting is one part choreography and two parts improvisation,” he said. “With the violin it’s the opposite: two parts choreography, one part improvisation. For you right now, it’s three parts not murdering your bow.”
Quin clearly enjoyed slinging her own words back at her.
“I think that will help your intonation,” he said.
“My intonation is fine,” she shot back.
“Look, I play wrong notes, too. It’s inevitable. But the violin is different from piano. With violin, you can fix the bad notes before most people can hear them.”
She thought that was exactly what she’d done. “You seem to have heard them.”
“Yes. I can hear them.” Quin’s smile was sad. “My teacher used to say I was cursed with that particular gift.”
When he looked at her, the firelight turned his green eyes gold.
“To be honest,” he said, “I’m a bit envious of you. The violin creates a special kind of magic. Every minuscule shift of the fingertips produces a slightly different sound. There are infinite possibilities. Each note can be anything it wants to be.”
“I know that already,” she said. That was exactly why she loved it. Morígna was fond of saying the violoncello most mimicked the sound of the human voice. Pilar disagreed. Both instruments had their unique voices, but the violoncello picked a fight. The violin asked a question.
Quin lowered the bow. “Do you smell smoke?”
She inhaled. “Yes.”
Pilar swung herself up into the limbs of a swyn. Beyond the smooth stretch of white she saw black smoke rising, and in the distance: an ice kabma.
Pilar’s heart beat faster. She’d only ever seen sketches of kabmas, the dwellings the Addi carved out of ice, then packed with peat moss and reinsdyr pelts to trap in the heat.
“I think I just found where our violinist friend lives,” she called down to Quin.
“But we’re not in Luumia yet. We haven’t crossed Dead Man’s Strait.”
“It must be a northernmost settlement—one of the Addi villages flanking the border.”
“Maybe they can help us get to the snow kingdom,” Quin said.
Pilar dropped from the tree, landing square on her feet. “Then you can have the royals draw you a nice hot bath.”
The muscles tensed in his jaw. “Right after I go back to the Kaer to save people, you mean. While you go back to kill them.”
“Two sides of the same coin, Killian.” She shrugged. “Maybe you and I should be working together. Makes it a lot easier to save Dom if Zaga and Angelyne are already dead.”
He studied her. “Strange, isn’t it? The Snow Queen welcomes all Dujia—and yet you say she harbors the Snow Wolf, your trusty Dujia killer, within her borders.”
“I don’t make the rules. Maybe it’s how she protects her people. Keep your friends close . . .”
“Thanks, I know the rest.”
She sized him up. “All I know is that everyone is welcome in the snow kingdom. Even a warrior like the Snow Wolf—as long as he doesn’t hurt the Dujia of Luumia. All other Dujia are fair game.”
She yanked the violin out of Quin’s hands.
“You really are impossible,” he said.
Pilar turned away so he couldn’t see her face. When she thought of parting ways with Quin, fear seized her chest. She couldn’t explain it. They had nothing in common. Except maybe music. And evil parents. And a deep distrust of magic. And—
“Let’s find the boy,” he said, nodding toward the black smoke. “If we return the violin, maybe his family will give us a few coins to secure passage on a boat.”
“Good idea. That’ll at least get us to White Lagoon, the closest port town.”
Relieved to be out of her own thoughts, Pilar sprinted past Quin and down the hill, her boots spitting up chunks of snow. The ground leveled off, and suddenly she was slipping on different terrain. She looked down and saw tiny silver bubbles trapped under her feet.
“It’s frozen!” she shouted. Pilar had only ever seen the lake on Refúj, clear and blue and never frozen.
So this was what skating felt like. A bird gliding over water.
She stumbled and fell backward. So this was what skating badly felt like. A bruised ass.
Quin called after her. “It might not be frozen all the way through . . .”
“Could you try being brave?” she shouted back. “Just this once?”
Pilar felt drunk with hope. She was almost in Luumia. Only three more weeks till the Weeping Moon. With the Snow Wolf by her side, she’d return to Kaer Killian and kill two Dujia to save all the rest. She’d finally be free. Free of her mother. Free of her shame.
She was thinking about freedom when she tripped over the boy’s body in the snow.
Chapter 7
Frostflower
“PUT HIM HERE,” QUIN ordered Pilar. “
We’ll start a fire and get him warm.”
Together they had dragged the violinist’s body off the lake and into the ice kabma, where they expected to find his family. Instead they found a cold and empty hearth. The black smoke was rising from somewhere else.
“I don’t understand,” Quin crouched beside the boy. “He was fine just minutes ago!”
Pilar stared at the violinist’s face, his dark eyes open. Like he’d witnessed something unthinkable.
She didn’t have to check his wrist for a pulse. She knew.
“You have to use magic,” Quin said, frantic. “You’re the only one who can—”
“It’s too late, Killian. He’s gone.”
If Pilar closed her eyes, she could still see the boy, face bright as his fingers sailed over the strings. If they’d come a few minutes earlier . . . if she hadn’t stopped to play the violin . . .
She kicked a tin bucket by the fireplace. Ash spewed everywhere.
“Where’s his mother?” she growled. “Where’s his father? When I find them, I swear to the Duj, I will rip the tongues from their mouths.”
“Has it occurred to you more violence might not be the answer?”
“What kind of father abandons his own child? He wasn’t there when I needed him the most.”
“When you needed him?”
She tried to swallow her fury, but it came up like bile.
“I’m talking about the boy,” she said.
She felt him studying her. “But you’re not, are you?”
Pilar ripped the coin from her pocket and hurled it across the kabma.
“The Snow Wolf.” Quin stood, his eyes bright with understanding. “You think he had something to do with—”
“He’s my father.”
The word felt like ice in her mouth. Father.
Zaga had no interest in men, but she had coupled with a man, obviously: that was how babies were made.
As a child, Pilar badgered her with questions. “Tell me something about him. Anything.”
“When I told him I was pregnant,” her mother said, “he took the first ship back to Luumia. He said every warrior must lead a solitary life.”
“So my father was a warrior!”