Winter Spell

by Claire M Banschbach

  August leaned over, tapping her hands. “Loosen up.”

  She nearly dropped the leather. August bit the inside of his lip.

  “Shut up,” she muttered fiercely.

  “Keep about this much slack.” August demonstrated with his reins. Tonya managed to mimic the swoop of his leathers.

  “Now let’s start walking.”

  Tonya’s muscles froze up as soon as Ransu stepped out.

  “Let yourself move with him.” August smiled again, his words encouraging. “Don’t you ride whales or something in the ocean?”

  Tonya snorted a laugh. “No, and I’m sure they’d be significantly safer than this.”

  Ransu shook his antlers again.

  “He’s offended you think a giant water worm is safer than him.”

  “Water worm?” Tonya arched an eyebrow.

  August lifted a shoulder. “His words. But I could be translating it wrong.”

  Tonya tentatively unlatched a hand from the reins and patted Ransu’s neck. “Sorry.”

  He snorted back. August grinned.

  “Am I forgiven?”

  “I think so,” August replied. “And don’t look now, but you just relaxed.”

  A laugh burst from Tonya as she realized that she was finally moving along with the gentle sway of Ransu’s clicking walk, her knuckles not so white around the reins.

  “Let me know when you feel comfortable enough to go faster.” August reached forward to scratch around Niko’s antlers.

  “We can’t walk all the way there?” Tonya pursed her lips in a mock pout.

  “Fortunately, no.” August grinned.

  Tonya rolled her eyes. “Should you be the one helping me? We’re going to be jumping castle walls next, aren’t we?”

  August tossed his head back with a laugh. “If they were shorter, you can bet we’d try it.”

  Tonya laughed, gathering her courage. She reached to pat Ransu’s neck again.

  “Don’t let me fall,” she admonished, and nudged her heels against his sides as Ingvar had instructed. He gradually quickened his pace to a slow trot. She gripped with her knees and tightened up on the reins before remembering to try to relax.

  Ransu snorted gently as she began to move more in time with his stride.

  “Good!” August kept pace easily. “He promises to take care of you. Let him.”

  Tonya swallowed, bouncing hard in the saddle as she lost the rhythm in another burst of nervousness. August nudged Niko on faster, leaving her on her own. She set her jaw, keeping her focus between Ransu’s antlers, and gave him another little nudge. He obligingly quickened his pace. She survived two laps around the arena before pulling him back down to a walk.

  “You’re a natural.” Steinn leaned on the rail. She steered Ransu over to him.

  “I don’t know about that,” she said. “I’m sure he has a few pointed things to say about my riding.” She scratched under the harness that looped from the saddle around Ransu’s chest. He stretched his head forward, wiggling his antlers slightly in response.

  Steinn chuckled, rubbing the caribou’s chin. “He likes you. They’re good creatures, but can be a bit picky about riders.”

  “Is that supposed to make me more relaxed?”

  Steinn laughed, his eyes crinkling up at the corners. It drew a smile from Tonya. What did my father look like when he laughed?

  “Keep practicing. We’ll have to ride faster than this if we want to make it to the tundra in two days.”

  Tonya sighed, shifting her feet in the stirrups. Her legs already felt sore. But she obediently turned Ransu and kept riding.

  They broke for a quick meal at noon, sitting on the rails of the arena to eat. Arvo lurked a pace away, his gaze trained on Dorian.

  “Did I get the brain-addled one?” Dorian muttered under his breath. August nearly snorted tea through his nose. August broke off some bread and handed it to the caribou, who chomped it with a blissful blink of his eyes.

  Tonya sipped at her tea, rolling her head back and forth to relieve some of the stiffness. I’ll be lucky to be able to walk tomorrow.

  “I haven’t ridden this much in a long time.” Diane kicked her boots against the railing. “This might be a long few days.”

  Her companions had taken off their jackets, staying warm enough with the riding. Tonya had jumped at the opportunity to shuck her coat without looking strange. She stretched her arms out, her fingers itching to call the ice and snow on the stable roofs. But the warding clamped down on her magic before she could try.

  Dorian nudged her arm and held out his hand. His eyes were soft with a smile. She rested her hand on his and closed her eyes as the knots loosened in her chest. She lifted her hand again and felt the tingling rush spreading from her fingers. Arvo half-reared and plunged through the miniature snowstorm as she called snow down from the roof.

  “So you can do some ice magic!” Steinn’s voice sent the snow collapsing to the ground in harmless piles. A gleam shone in his eyes before it was shuttered away in a smile. Tonya tucked her hands back into her lap.

  “A little. Usually if Dorian tries an anti-warding spell first,” she said.

  Steinn passed a quick glance between the two of them. The prickle stabbed her fingers at the look. She rubbed her fingers against her sharkskin trousers, the roughness chasing the feeling away.

  Ingvar pushed back into the arena. “Last lesson before we’re done for the day. Then you’ll help me pack up the feed for them.”

  Tonya huffed a sigh and slid down from the railing. One more lesson and then she could go down to the pier.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Waves lapped against the wood, sending shivers of magic through Tonya. A light breeze teased at her hair hanging loose around her shoulders. The ice floes tempted her, but she remained on the solid pier. She let her arms dangle by her sides, stretching her fingers wide as if to catch strands of magic that floated in the space where the saltwater and the ice met in the mouth of the bay.

  It teased at the fringes of her mind. Beckoning to her, as if saying that it was the one place she could exist as a whole. Where she could belong. Except she didn’t know how to get there.

  Dorian’s shadow fell across the gentle waves. The sight anchored her back to the land. He had yet to say anything since they’d come to stand on the pier, content to let her be as she pushed the boundaries of her limited power, ready to help if she needed.

  Endless waves swelled outside the bay, stretching across the far horizon, their darkness interspersed with the white of ice floes. The land spread away in a sea of white-tipped green, and the whispers of the open tundras beckoned beyond.

  Both calling to her magics. Both trying to claim her. She reached for Dorian’s hand, wanting something to help fasten her back to herself. He squeezed her fingers in his gloved hand.

  “Would you ever leave Durne?”

  “I did a few days ago.” His voice carried the barest hint of amusement as he kept staring out at the bay.

  She brushed at the strands of hair that fell into her eyes. “Permanently?”

  A short intake of breath came from him. “Sometimes I think about it when I have to walk across old battlefields, or through towns that still bear the marks of the war. But there’s nowhere else to go that doesn’t carry that same stain.”

  He paused for so long she thought that was all he had to say.

  “But,” he continued, “it’s my home, and it will always have a part of my heart. I think I’d always go back.”

  A distant whale breached in a gush of white foam. Tonya smiled, resisting the urge to dash across the ice floes to call to it.

  “I thought I didn’t want to go back to the ocean. But standing here, I’m not so sure. I’ve always felt caught between the waves, not quite in sync with the ocean.”

  His grip tightened a little. “And now?”

  She lifted a shoulder in a quick shrug. “I think maybe I can see the place I could be. Balancing between both where t
he waves brush the ice.” Quick heat tinged her cheeks. “That sounds stupid.”

  “No.” He shook his head, glancing down at her. “I like the way you describe things. Like you can say the things that people feel but never explain.” He shifted slightly. “Now I sound stupid.”

  Tonya leaned a little closer so that their arms touched. “Never.”

  A smile crept its way down to his lips. “It sounds like in two days, you’ll get to find that place you were talking about, to balance your magic.”

  “Is it stupid to say that scares me more than the remmiken?”

  She should be dancing with joy at the chance to free her magics, but the thought that everything might go wrong and she might trigger another disaster had latched into the forefront of her mind. She hadn’t been able to shake it.

  “No.” His quiet assertion warmed her.

  He kept staring across the waves and she tipped her face to study his profile. Strong, quiet, but the rage of a summer monsoon still glimmering beneath the surface. Even becoming friends with August hadn’t diminished it. But she knew if she studied August, she’d see the lonely fury of a blizzard whirling through him.

  Both were storms she didn’t know how to calm.

  He shifted, startling her as he suddenly stared into her eyes. Her breath caught. He’d always looked at her different, but now she felt seen. Like he saw the tangles inside her and didn’t care about it. Not like every other faery who looked at her and only saw that she was half and half.

  Stuck between the waves.

  “Tonya…” he started, his throat bobbing nervously.

  Her heart thudded hard.

  What could it hurt? Diane’s words echoed.

  Him.

  Her hand felt clumsy in his. I can’t do it to him. She pulled her hand away.

  “We should go back.” She tried to lighten her voice, like she hadn’t been straining to hear what he’d been about to say. Like her heart wasn’t cracking at pulling away.

  The smile around his eyes dimmed and faded away. He nodded once, flicking his hand back up the pier, indicating that she could go first.

  She ducked her head, fighting against the sting in her eyes from a sudden chill wind and hurried back to the castle, not turning to see if he even followed.

  This time as she walked through the halls, she saw the stares. The glances, the sneers, the disgust. She’d been so caught up in the moments of acceptance from Birgir and Lilja and Steinn that she’d forgotten.

  They were the rare few. The rest hated who she was. What she was. The product of a union between their noble son and an ocean faery.

  Unwanted.

  The faery who cursed the lands with unbreakable ice.

  She’d been a fool to think that she could stay. That anyone could want her. Birgir and Lilja and Steinn could be lying to her. Using her to undo the ice and then waiting to cast her out, laughing at her naivety.

  “Tonya!” Her name spoken in a deep voice startled her and she barely stopped herself from running into her uncle.

  “What’s wrong?” Steinn rested a hand on her shoulder.

  She rubbed her hand across the sleeve of her coat. “Nothing.”

  But her trembling voice betrayed her.

  “I saw you walking with that plains faery healer. Did something happen?” Her heart cracked a little more at the faint sneer in his voice over the word plains. Not Dorian. Just the plains faery. As if he wasn’t even worth the consideration of a name.

  And hearing it from her uncle who had greeted her with kindness, previously greeted her companions with friendliness, made it worse. Like maybe he’d been pretending all along.

  I’m right to keep away from Dorian.

  “No. Just tired from today.” She forced herself to look at him, blinking when his features melted back into kindness and compassion.

  “Of course. I forgot how exhausting learning to ride can be. There’s some time before dinner if you wanted to rest?”

  She jerked a nod, shifting awkwardly on her feet as she finally realized she didn’t recognize the hallway.

  “I got a bit turned around.” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “I think I was a little overconfident in getting back.”

  Steinn smiled, but it didn’t quite warm his face like before.

  “Just like your father. Always rushing into things.”

  He tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and turned her gently back around. He kept his hand over hers as they walked. Her fingers stung with repeated prickles. She shifted her fingers in discomfort and he let his hand fall away.

  They walked in silence. He turned down a wide corridor to the winding staircase that she’d walked past in her haste to get away.

  “I know the way from here.” She released her grip on Steinn’s arm. He looked down at her.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded, suddenly needing to be alone.

  “All right.” He stepped away. “I’ll see you at dinner?”

  “Yes. Thank you.” She mustered a small smile and hurried up the staircase. She hesitated outside the doors to their chambers, but silence lingered on the other side. She slipped through into the empty common room. The door to the boys’ room was closed.

  Tonya tiptoed to her room. The faint splash of water from the adjoining chamber announced Diane was washing. Tonya slipped off her boots, threw her coat across a chair, and slipped under a heavy quilt. She pulled it up to her chin as she curled on her side.

  Not cold. Never cold, but needing the feeling of closeness and security.

  She closed her eyes. Plains faery. It was said the same way most of the faeries in the reef said ice faery. The way she imagined so many faeries here saying ocean faery.

  Their kind weren’t supposed to mix. Supposed to fall in love and have children. Children who weren’t even proper faeries, with strangled magic and mismatched wings that served no function.

  Diane didn’t understand. Not really. August acted like he didn’t care. But what if he did? What if he and Diane were only pretending so that she would undo the ice and not cause any further damage?

  “Tonya?” Diane asked tentatively.

  Tonya dabbed at the tears leaking from her closed eyes. She pulled the quilt up higher to block her face. “I’m fine.”

  The bed shifted as Diane settled beside her. “I don’t think so. Dorian came up a few minutes ago. He and August growled at each other and then they left to go hit each other in the courtyard. Something happened, otherwise you wouldn’t be in here like this.”

  Tonya shifted a bit of blanket with a finger to peer at Diane. The princess leaned close, concern filling up every corner of her open face. But Steinn acted concerned about her, then derided Dorian in the same breath.

  “You wouldn’t understand,” she whispered.

  Diane got up and Tonya closed her eyes again, hating that she’d been right. She froze as Diane flopped down on the other side of the bed, comfortably close.

  “So tell me.”

  But Tonya stayed curled under the quilt, hoping her silence would drive Diane away. Even if she was sincere, being close to Tonya would only hurt her.

  “I hide too.”

  Tonya half-turned in surprise at Diane’s sudden pronouncement. An embarrassed laugh broke from Diane as she stared up at the ceiling.

  “I never feel like I have much to offer. Even if people say differently.” She briefly glanced at Tonya. “I feel like I can’t live up to what my parents were, because I remember them as larger than life. I dream of things and adventures, but never reach for them.”

  Tonya slowly rolled over, keeping the blanket tucked up to her chin. “Everyone’s always looked at me different. Never really giving me a chance. I think I’ve believed that I’m a mistake for so long that I really don’t know how to fix that.”

  A breath shuddered from her. “I thought it would be different here, but then today, I started seeing it again, hearing it all again. But this time Steinn said something, and it made me rea
lize that even liking Dorian is a mistake.”

  Diane laced her hands across her stomach. “Liking someone for who they are is never a mistake. Anyone who says otherwise can eat snow.”

  Tonya snorted a giggle. Diane’s chuckle faded and they lapsed into silence.

  “Tonya, you’re not a mistake. Everyone has said that your parents loved each other. They wanted to keep you. And I’m sorry that they’re not here anymore. I know what that feels like.”

  “Even if I’ve never met them?” Tonya whispered.

  “Yes.”

  Tonya sniffed and dabbed at her cheeks with the blanket. “Is it stupid to be afraid of finally having my magic freed? What if I drown the land next?”

  Diane flicked her fingers carelessly. “I can swim.”

  “But really?” Tonya pressed.

  “When my brother asked me to be on the council, I refused. I’m only eighteen, no real experience to contribute, and the only woman in the room. He didn’t make me. Ralf actually found me after that conversation.” A bit of red touched her cheeks. “He told me that experience didn’t matter at first. Soldiers learn by fighting and figuring out what skills are their strongest. How would I know what I had to offer, if I didn’t at least try?”

  She took a breath. “It all scared me, until I saw how unsure Edmund was about everything too, but he did it anyway. I had no excuse after that. It helped me become a better version of myself.”

  Tonya moved the blanket down a little further.

  Diane rolled, propping up on one elbow. “It’s all right to be scared. Anytime we have to change ourselves, it’s frightening. But usually we come out better and stronger for it.”

  “What if I don’t? What if ocean and ice magic aren’t meant to mix and once the warding is gone, they—?”

  “They didn’t put the warding on you at birth, right? So, if tiny baby you didn’t explode with magic, then I don’t think you will now.”

  A laugh nudged Tonya’s chest. The words helped, but the fears still swelled like storm-caught waves. “Thank you.”

  Diane flopped back down. “Tonya, I meant what I said before about being a friend. Am I here to make sure the ice is undone? Yes. But just know that after this, if the northern and the ocean faeries are still idiots, you can come to Chelm. I can’t promise it wouldn’t be some of the same there, but I’m learning to not be afraid of magic so much anymore. I think we all could do the same.”