Tears of Frost

by Bree Barton

  Orry stood on the far bank.

  You’re not trying, he said. Come at me again. Come at me like your life depended on it.

  Pilar crouched, wrapping her hands around her naked ankles. She was ashamed of her bare skin.

  You’re better than this.

  Orry’s voice was distant, but when she looked up, he was standing above her, his breath sticky warm.

  The second he’s on top of you, he’s already won.

  She reached for the third dagger—the one hidden in her boot. But when she pulled it out, she found herself clutching the horsehair bow of her violin.

  When she slashed at Orry’s throat, the bow snapped in two. Like a twig. Like nothing at all.

  The broken pieces sank into the stream.

  She sank with them.

  Pilar was falling. She pitched through space, icy air slicing open the cut on her cheek.

  Her body struck hard ground. She rolled onto one side, eyes adjusting to the candlelight.

  She was in the library on Refúj.

  A pregnant girl walked between the shelves, trailing her hand along the books. Long black hair twisted up at the nape of her neck, olive skin, thin brown eyes.

  Her mother.

  Zaga stared straight at her, eyes piercing.

  He did not want you. When I told him you were his, he left.

  Her mother’s hair fell out in chunks. Her skin shriveled and fell off the bone, stomach deflating. One by one, the fingers of her left hand curled into her palm. Pilar saw the moonstone pendant noosed around her throat, glowing more brightly as the rest of her grew dark. Mold spilled out of Zaga’s mouth and down her neck.

  Something soft spread across Pilar’s collarbone.

  She tried to speak, but her mouth was full of petals. She stumbled toward her mother, arms outstretched. Her fingers grazed shiny glass.

  Pilar wasn’t looking at her mother. She was looking into a mirror. The moonstone seared a circle in the space between her breasts.

  She screamed, and black moths flew from her mouth.

  Pilar peered into the mouth of a dark cave. She’d been here before.

  But this time there was no Princess Karri bleeding out onto the snow. Instead she saw six small figures in a perfect circle, each staring into a black sheet of ice.

  Children.

  When her eyes settled on the sixth child—a boy with amber skin and dark freckles—she felt a jolt of hope. The violinist was alive.

  Or was he? The boy stood stock-still, eyes vacant as he watched dark images flicker over the shimmering ice.

  Then Pilar saw a seventh girl.

  She was older than the others. Short in stature. Sharp eyes, strong jaw, dark hair chopped at the chin. And on the ice in front of her: a series of images Pilar knew well.

  Thick wood beams. Rough dirt floor. Broken horsehair bow.

  The girl lifted her fist and drove it into the ice. Over and over. The scene fractured beneath her knuckles, splintered and broke. But instead of falling, the black shards floated. A hundred bladed icicles suspended in the air.

  It’s over, said a voice.

  Pilar looked up.

  Orry was crouched above her. Feet planted on the cave ceiling. Dark red cloak hanging down like a curtain, blocking his face.

  She found a jagged blade of ice in each hand.

  Pilar let out an inhuman howl. She ran up the wall effortlessly, her body lifting off the ground until she too was upside down. She plunged both blades into the back of Orry’s neck. Skin tore. Tendons stuck. His neck a kind of instrument, her blades a kind of bow.

  Her intonation was perfect. Not a single wrong note.

  As he crashed to the ground, face slamming into the rough cave floor, his cloak crumpled and fell away. She saw the back of his head, gray hair thinning at the crown. He was too old to be Orry. Too frail.

  Pilar, the stranger burbled, strangling on blood.

  The daggers fell from her hands.

  My little girl. My angry little girl.

  Her father struggled to his knees, blood pouring from the wounds in his neck. He reached toward her, tilted his head back.

  He had no face.

  Pilar awoke facedown, her nose smashed against cold white marble. Breath jammed in her throat. Her head hurt worse than if she’d polished off a bottle of rai rouj. If only.

  She felt something move in her mouth. Black moths.

  It moved again.

  Not moths. Just her tongue.

  Pilar lifted herself onto her elbows, woozy. Had she been dreaming? She’d visited multiple places—multiple lives, it felt like. All the pieces jumbled together, some strange, some familiar.

  “It’s time,” said a woman’s gravelly voice. “The Snow Queen will see you now.”

  Pilar peered up, eyes blurry. One of the blond guardswomen was holding out her hand. Frigg, she thought. Or maybe Fulla. Did it matter? She settled on Frigg.

  “Up you go.”

  She stared at Frigg’s hand, unmoving.

  “Quin,” she said. The only four letters she could mash together.

  “There.” Frigg jerked her head across the room, where Fulla was pulling Quin to his feet.

  Pilar felt a wallop of relief. He was in one piece. Unmauled. Alive.

  She tried to speak, but the words got stuck somewhere between her head and her mouth.

  “You’ll talk soon enough,” said Frigg, hoisting Pilar off the floor. “For now, you walk.”

  As the guards herded them out the door, Pilar snuck one final glance at the room. Her jaw dropped halfway to the floor. The beasts were back in place: three reinsdyr, two emerald eagles, one ice leopard. All silent. All stuffed.

  All but one.

  The red stone bird was gone.

  The guardswomen prodded them through the corridors. More gently than before, Pilar thought, though she wasn’t sure. It didn’t matter—she was too dizzy to fight them off. She kept staring at her hands, expecting to find them sticky with blood. Hadn’t she stabbed someone in the neck?

  “Here,” said Frigg.

  She’d brought them to a wide wooden door, one that didn’t appear magically out of the marble.

  “Throne room?” Quin croaked. He was doing a better job speaking than Pilar was. She kept gluing letters together in her mind, only to have them fall apart before they landed on her tongue.

  Fulla seized a metal loop in the wood and pushed the door open.

  It was a throne room. Of sorts. High vaulted ceilings, and, at the far end of the hall, something vaguely thronelike. Dozens of flowers were—floating? The same purple color as the room where the dead animals weren’t actually dead. The floor was a carpet with white and silver stars. It flattened under Pilar’s feet.

  “Go,” Frigg said, nudging them forward.

  As Pilar stumbled toward the throne, the Snow Queen came slowly into focus. She wore a snow-fox cloak that shone bright white against her tawny amber skin, a heavy strip of metal twisted around her neck with a purple stone at the center.

  Broad shoulders. Silver eyes. Head freshly shaved.

  Freyja sat tall on the throne.

  Chapter 19

  A Violation

  “You’re THE SNOW QUEEN?” Quin said.

  He looked about as shocked as Pilar felt. She could only spit out one word: “You?”

  Freyja’s silver eyes sparkled with amusement.

  “Me.”

  Pilar thought of several choice words to shout at Freyja, but her mouth wasn’t working right.

  “Your Grace,” Quin mumbled, attempting a half bow.

  Freyja waved a hand. “Don’t bother with all that. We’re not so fond of the Your Grace business here in Luumia. We try to keep things simple. Take this hall, for instance.”

  The chamber looked nothing like the ridiculous throne room Pilar had seen at Kaer Killian. There were no flags or drapes hanging from the ceiling, no gold. Other than the floating flowers, the room was simple. Same white walls with purple veins and a ca
rved wooden chair for a throne. It sat on the floor so the queen’s eyes were level with theirs.

  “My ass,” said Freyja, “needs no gilded chair.”

  No gilded crown, either. Other than the twisted-metal necklace with its glowing purple jewel, Queen Freyja looked no different from Head Guard Freyja. Confident, easygoing, maddeningly good-natured. She looked like she belonged.

  “Another game you play.” Pilar was crawling back into the land of complete sentences. “Costumed as a guard?”

  “I prefer to get to know my guests without the throne obstructing my view.”

  “Trick. All a trick.”

  “More of a test.” Freyja tilted her head, thoughtful. “What would you have me do? Two strangers arrive at my borders. Both children of powerful people, born in kingdoms that have not historically been our allies. You, Quin of Clan Killian, had a murderous father, and you are now bound to a murderous wife. You, Pilar Zorastín d’Aqila, have a murderous mother who sits at the new queen’s side, moving people like chess pieces from one bloody square to the next.”

  Pilar’s eyebrows shot up. “You knew who I was?”

  “What kind of queen would I be if I didn’t?”

  Until Pilar’s time as a spy in Kaer Killian, no one knew she existed, because no one knew Refúj existed. But somehow the Snow Queen had known.

  Pilar was pleased. Even if she’d never show it.

  “Is that why we’re your prisoners?” Quin said.

  “You’re not prisoners. You’re just not quite guests.” Freyja leaned back in the throne. “When I stumbled across you, you were concealing the corpse of a young boy.”

  “We weren’t concealing him!” Pilar said. “We were trying to revive him.”

  The queen drummed her fingers on her thigh. “The snow kingdom is not always kind to the people in it. Over the last twenty years our long winters have claimed many lives. Yet we are a peaceful people. When Luumi die, it is usually the fault of the elements, not other Luumi. Foreigners from other kingdoms, however—they play by different rules.”

  She nodded toward the corridors. “I know the Watching Chamber can be brutal. You did very well. Now let’s see what you brought me.”

  Freyja motioned to Fulla, who unballed her fist. At the center of her palm sat the red bird.

  The fojuen stone cracked. The bird lifted one wing, then let out a sad warble as it stepped onto the queen’s finger.

  Dead, not dead. Dead, not dead. Pilar wished the animals in Luumia would make up their minds.

  “You stole that.” Quin’s eyes bored into Freyja. His voice was hard. “The red wren belongs to Mia Rose.”

  “You’re wrong,” said the queen. “It belongs to her mother.”

  When she turned to Pilar, she was no longer smiling.

  “Ready to see who you are?”

  Before Pilar could respond, the Snow Queen pitched the wren violently against the wall. It sparked and crackled, erupting into flames. Purple fire shrieked through the wall’s veins.

  A gust of wind snuffed out all the floating candles.

  The world went dark.

  What happened next was hard to explain.

  Gray and black shapes moved across the wall like torch shadows. But there was no torch.

  As Pilar watched, the shadows stretched into scenes. Dread knotted in her stomach. These were her dreams. Her nightmares. She saw everything she’d seen in the Watching Chamber—and more. Only difference was, now she had an audience.

  Just as the shadows began to shape themselves into the inside of the cottage by the lake, Freyja raised a hand.

  “I’ve seen enough,” she said.

  Instantly the shadows evaporated. The candles sputtered back to life. The wall was white again, with quiet purple veins.

  It didn’t matter. Whether or not she saw it on the marble, Pilar saw it in her mind. The shame was so rich she could taste it.

  “What you’ve just seen,” said the queen, “is a peek into your truest mind. A blending of past and imagined future. Your darkest fears, darkest truths, and—perhaps most interesting—darkest desires. The Watching Chamber exhibits your Reflections. It holds up a mirror to who you truly are.”

  “We came here for your help,” Quin said, his decorum cracking. “And you locked us up in that miserable room and marched us through a parody of our own memories. Now you mount a public show of Pilar’s private thoughts for your own sordid amusement?”

  Pilar’s heart lifted. Quin had come to her aid. He was right: what the Snow Queen had done was unforgivable. Even if Freyja was merciful to not show the whole story, she had peeled back the skin of Pilar’s most painful secrets.

  How much had Quin seen? How much had he understood?

  Maybe it was better if he saw. At least then he’d know what Pilar had done.

  “No,” Freyja said, answering Quin’s question. “It doesn’t amuse me.”

  “And the characters in these delusions?” he spat. “Are they real or imagined?”

  “Nothing in the Reflections is pure invention. They are simply the mind bending its own truths, twisting them into something strange but familiar. Our brains have a way of stitching people together from composite parts.”

  “That doesn’t explain how you were able to see into Pil’s thoughts.”

  “That’s where the bird comes into play,” said Freyja. “Your mind holds the Reflections already. The Watching Chamber makes them visible. The ruby wren simply watches.”

  She gestured toward the red bird on the marble, which had hardened to stone once again.

  “The wren bears witness, then shows me what she’s seen. Her body is made of fojuen, but her eyes are made of fyre ice. Sometimes our objects know the truth, even when we don’t.”

  “Was the leopard made of fyre ice, too?” Quin scoffed. “He could have killed us!”

  Freyja shook her head. “Nothing can harm you during the Reflections. Even I can’t reach you. What happens there happens in a space between.”

  She walked to the wall and rapped it with her knuckles. “How much do you know about fyre ice?”

  “I know you Luumi used it for heat and light before you mined it all.”

  “Fyre ice has long been one of our great natural wonders. It is an embodiment of the physical world, the purest form of elemental magic: a perfect balance of fire and water. A single sliver can create a miniature paroxysm powerful enough to light a whole room.”

  The queen stooped to pick up the fallen wren. “But fyre ice gives us far more than heat and light. My uncle has discovered new mines that yield a much more powerful fyre ice than Luumia has ever seen. He has cured sickness and invented new ways of growing and preserving food. In so doing he has saved thousands of lives, and will save thousands more.”

  Freyja rubbed the stone wren between her fingers. “The Grand Fyremaster has been able to harness this new power in ways our ancestors never could have imagined.”

  “Fojuen is inanimate.” Quin jerked his head toward the bird. “So is fyre ice. Gemstones are just that: gemstones. They can store up a magician’s magic, not create it. You expect me to believe you brought a stone bird to life?”

  “Stones are rocks shaped by humans with an ax to grind. Rocks were forged at the mouths of volqanoes, carved by oceans over thousands of years. To say the physical world is not alive is to impose a very narrow view of life on the world you inhabit. But then, I doubt they teach the Elemental Hex in your Glasddiran schools.”

  The prince jutted his jaw, defiant. “I wouldn’t know. I had a tutor.”

  The queen tossed the bird from one hand to the other. “With a curriculum carefully selected by your father, I’m sure.”

  Quin was quiet.

  “Magic has always been about an imbalance of power,” Freyja said. “We humans are merely the newest landscape on which that imbalance is reflected. The six elements of the natural world—Fire, Water, Wind, Wood, Earth, and Stone—are reflected in the body: eyes, blood, breath, bone, flesh, and aeth
er. Of course humans are also made of fear and pride, jealousy and hate. We have honed a new set of tools to oppress and subjugate the bodies of other people. Violence. Pain. A lust for power. And so, our magic has grown.”

  Quin frowned. “What is aether?”

  “The most dangerous—and perhaps the hardest to describe. The place where mind meets spirit.” Freyja kissed the red bird, then tucked it into her snow-fox cloak. “Aether is the part of us that can be most easily manipulated by what our hearts long for, and what our eyes see.”

  “Magic was a gift from the Duj.” Pilar’s voice came out steely. “But it’s been twisted by people like my mother. People like you.”

  “Is this why you’ve chosen not to practice magic?”

  Pilar opened her mouth, then clamped it shut. She didn’t owe the queen an explanation.

  “You could have easily beaten the ice leopard,” Freyja said. “But you did not.”

  Guilt seeped through Pilar. The queen was right. When she’d attacked the leopard, why hadn’t she used her magic? She could have unblooded him. Shattered his bones. Instead she’d come at him with her puny fists.

  “Don’t change the subject,” she hissed at Freyja, shoving her guilt aside. “I didn’t give you permission to gut my memories and play them for everyone to see. How is what you did any better than my mother and Angelyne enkindling us in the Kaer?”

  The queen’s expression was grave. “I won’t argue. To use magic in such a way is a violation. I am never proud of using magic to subvert the power of another human being.”

  “And yet that’s exactly what you did.”

  Freyja shifted her weight.

  “As queen I am asked to make decisions every day. Some are difficult. Some cause pain. I try to choose the path that causes the least pain for the fewest of my people. I do not always succeed. But I always try.”

  Freyja straightened. “I have seen your Reflections, and I am satisfied. You came to Luumia of your own volition, not your mother’s. You do not use magic to hurt innocent people—and you didn’t kill the boy.”

  Pilar laughed, incredulous. “That’s your most reliable means of interrogating your prisoners? I didn’t kill the boy, and I’m here to find my father, the Snow Wolf. There! You could have just asked.”