Snow Like Ashes

by Sara Raasch

  The setting sun pulsates directly in front of me, a hint of relaxation creeping into my muscles. One of the only good things about this place is the sunset and how the fiery, vibrant hues bleed into the landscape until the world around me is nothing but colors. The encroaching black night, the flickering yellow sun, the reaching beams of scarlet, the waving brown prairie grass.

  I slide to the ground, elbows resting on my knees as the campfire crackles somewhere behind me, and the wind hisses somewhere ahead. In the face of all that has happened, it feels good, really good, to just breathe for a moment. So in my mind, I sketch out the map I saw hanging over the desk in Lynia, my nerves calming as I focus on the withered yellow edges, the faded brown lines, something simple when everything around me is so … not.

  The Rania Plains—a great swath of empty prairie lands between all the kingdoms. The Seasons—Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring to the south, wrapped together in the arms of the jagged Klaryn Mountains. The Rhythms—Yakim, Ventralli, Cordell, and Paisly, spread across the rest of Primoria. Four Season Kingdoms, four Rhythm Kingdoms, eight conduits.

  The locket half flies through my mind. I bite my lip, the thin sheen of calm I constructed by building the map in my mind shattered by a victory that feels more like failure due to Sir’s scolding. Will we always fail, even when we succeed? Getting this half of the locket, getting the next half, forming a whole conduit, gaining allies to free Winter—when will it feel like enough?

  “Meira?”

  I whip around, heart caught in my throat until I realize it isn’t Sir—it’s Mather.

  He watches me in silence, his eyes flitting across my face. My heart thwump-thwumps against my ribs and I don’t look away from him, hating how with one look he can crack me open. Anyone else I’d be able to ignore, to hide my fear behind a cocky smile, but Mather sees everything. I know he sees it, because for the briefest moment he drops his expressionless mask and the look in his eyes shows me he feels the same way. A mirror of every part of myself I can’t bear to face.

  He drops down beside me and asks, his voice quiet, “Was it that bad?”

  I frown. “Getting the locket half? What makes you think it was bad?”

  “You barely yelled at William earlier. Either you’re sick or Lynia was … I went on and on about my own problems when you …” His eyes linger on the bruise on my cheek as if seeing it for the first time. “You wouldn’t have gone if it weren’t for me, and I didn’t even realize you’d been hurt. I’m an idiot.”

  “No,” I snap. “No. I mean, yes, you are an idiot sometimes, but don’t you dare apologize. You don’t need to feel guilty for letting me go to Lynia—I’d do it again, no matter how close I came to being captured.”

  Mather’s face falls and I flinch at what I said. Captured. He turns to the sun, unreadable thoughts whirring across his face. I never could tell if his ability to push away his emotions was something Sir drilled into him or whether it was Mather’s natural gift. Either way, when we were younger and I’d talk him into stealing weapons or painting the meeting tent with ink, Mather was able to keep a straight face when Sir asked if we were the culprits. I mean, of course we were—we were the only seven-year-olds in camp and were covered in thick black ink. But Mather always held strong in his unwavering lie, repeating with a freakishly believable certainty that he and I were innocent.

  Until I burst into tears and admitted the whole thing to Sir. But Mather never got mad at me for pulling him into mischief or for breaking during Sir’s interrogations. He’d just smile, throw his arm around me, and say something encouraging.

  Mather has always been a king, every moment of his life.

  I shake my head. “I wasn’t that close to being captured,” I amend. “Herod just—I’m fine. Really.”

  But Mather’s eyes dart over every part of my face, and when he finally meets my gaze, he lifts one of his hands, his callused fingers coming to rest on my cheek. A spurt of pain lances across my face when he touches the bruise there, but I don’t move, needing to feel his fingers on my skin more than I care about the pain.

  “No one who faces Herod is fine,” he whispers.

  A cooling breeze blows at me as night replaces the roaring heat of the plains. I inhale the mustiness and try not to move as Mather pulls his fingers off my cheek, his eyes shooting once again over my face, as if he’s hunting for more injuries. His gaze stops on my lips, hovers there, and I all but choke on the space between needing to know why and forcing the wedge to pull us apart.

  “He stole my chakram, though,” I say, grabbing at anything to lighten the mood.

  Mather finally smiles. It takes up every part of his face, from his eyes down to his lips, and lights up the air around us like a candle in a cave.

  But almost immediately it falls, the light snuffing out. “William values you, you know.”

  I spin away, plucking blades of grass and tossing them into the air. Mather doesn’t pick up on my sudden distance—or maybe he does, but knows I need to hear what he’s saying.

  “William was one of Winter’s highest-ranking generals.” Mather waves his hand through the air, brushing at a few of the blades I freed. “And he feels like he failed. He sees you as someone who should be flitting carefree through Jannuari’s streets and dancing at balls, not scaling towers and killing soldiers. Just try to be considerate—”

  I turn to him, my face hot. “Considerate to the man who can’t even manage a pat on the back when I push us one massive step closer to freeing our kingdom?”

  Mather tips his head. “Try to understand that he feels guilty for needing you to help free our kingdom at all. It’s not that you didn’t do a fantastic job—you did, and everyone’s gathered around the fire right now swapping stories about you.”

  I grin, if only a little. “I am pretty amazing.”

  Mather smiles back. “I bet you would’ve survived even without the lapis lazuli.”

  I laugh and run my fingers over my pocket where the small stone pushes into my hip. I keep forgetting it’s there, like I’ve already accepted it as part of myself. “You’re giving credit for my success to a rock?”

  He shrugs. “No one has gotten the locket half before. It can’t be a coincidence, and I expect you to heap appropriate amounts of praise on me for giving it to you in the first place.”

  “You’ve had it with you on locket missions before. Why didn’t it ever help you?”

  Mather exhales and suddenly he’s just watching me and I’m watching him and all trace of humor is gone.

  “You’re right. I guess it wasn’t the stone; it was how amazing you are,” he says.

  Coolness balls in my stomach against the heat that rises to my face. Sitting there, the dying light playing on his strong features, his words lingering between us … Mather is the steadiest force I’ve ever known. Angra has every right to fear him.

  With half of the locket in our grasp, we’re so much closer to Mather being who he’s always been meant to be—and I need to see him as that man. I bite my lip. Sir has mentioned a few times that Mather will soon need to wed. And he’ll be expected to have a female heir, and I will cheer for him and his beautiful new family, and pretend it doesn’t kill me to not be enough for him.

  So I stand. I brush the stray pieces of grass off my pants and stare daggers into him on the ground, ignoring the frantic way my hand grips the stone in my pocket. “You are right, as always, Your Highness. I will try to be more understanding with Sir.”

  Mather looks up at me, his mouth falling open like he wants the right words to tumble out. I’ve heard Sir tell him, too. You’re royalty, she’s not, and there’s too much riding on your future to squander it on someone who isn’t beneficial to Winter.

  He stands, his eyes boring into my face. “Remember when I told you the world isn’t balanced?”

  I hesitate, all the air trapped in a knot in my throat. “What?”

  Mather’s fingers brush my hand, the one that isn’t desperately clutching the stone,
gentle pricks of contact that make the knot of air in my throat tighten. He hooks a finger into one of mine, his breathing ragged. “I’ll find a way to restore the balance,” he promises.

  I stare at him, unable to process his words. He doesn’t try to explain what he meant or do more than stand there next to me, watching me, waiting.

  I know you two grew up together, but he’s our future king. He’s too important to allow anything more than friendship.

  My pulse thunders as Mather’s words warp with Sir’s and all I can do is watch them, conflicting bits of knowledge that make me dizzy. Mather is too important to waste on me. But—

  I ease my hand into his, his callused fingers swallowing mine. Like he’d been waiting for me to reciprocate.

  No.

  My fingers uncurl, slowly, and I slide my hand out of his. It’ll hurt too much when it ends. Not if—when. When he marries some foreign dignitary’s daughter. When he moves on.

  I peel my eyes from him, unable to see whatever emotion flares across his face, if anything, when I pull away. Night throws a number of shadows onto the reaching, clawing fingers of scraggy trees and bushes by the stream, and a gust of wind makes a few of the shadows waver, bulks of darkness that swagger like shuffling boars—

  I freeze.

  Those aren’t shadows.

  Everything in my body screams with warning and I curse Herod a million times over for stealing my chakram.

  “Mather.” The strain in my voice pulls him out of the tension between us. I can feel when he sees them, his posture sharpening. The bodies in the trees move again, five of them—Spring scouts.

  One of the men eases out from behind the tree, standing in full view. He knows we see him. He tips his head, body masked in the darkness of early evening, and I can imagine the smile tugging at his mouth. My master will be thrilled I found you.

  The other scouts follow his lead, materializing from the grass and bushes until they stand before us, shoulder to shoulder, hands twitching at their waists. Waiting for us to move. One snaps his head toward the horse pen and back again so quickly I wouldn’t have caught it if I’d blinked. They’re going to steal our horses to get back to Spring; they probably abandoned their own a few hours back to avoid being spotted. They’ll try to kill some of us before they leave, to whittle our numbers even lower before they tell Angra where we are so he can stage the final strike. So he can be the one to kill Mather himself.

  We can’t let them return to Spring.

  We need weapons. We need to alert the others. We need to—

  Mather makes a decision before I do, grabbing my hand and dragging me into camp. I flip one last look behind me. The five soldiers move, tearing over the grass toward the horse pen.

  This is my fault. They tracked me. I led them here from Lynia, straight here, because Sir is right—I am just a child who shouldn’t be fighting in a war.

  Mather pulls me faster and something bounces out of the collar of his leather breastplate. The locket half. It gleams in the setting sun’s light, faint and flickering in the shadows, yet embedded with powerful and fiery potential. It’s Winter’s essence in the form of a trinket.

  I rip my hand out of his. “Warn Sir!”

  Mather skids to a stop but I’m already gone, surging into my tent. His voice fades behind me as he starts running again, drawing closer to the others and farther from me.

  “Scouts!” he shouts. “Scouts, five of them—”

  Finn has a chakram too. I find it along with a holster as Sir bellows from the other end of camp.

  “All right, new chakram,” I mutter. “It’s time to let Herod know we don’t appreciate being followed.”

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  7

  MY WHOLE BODY coils like a tightly wound spring as I rush back toward the horse pen. In the dark I can barely make out the five shapes moving around our horses, throwing saddles and bridles and cursing at each other to hurry.

  “Meira!”

  Sir’s voice slams into me, warped with panic, and a small part of me leaps with desperation, wanting to hide until whatever is scaring the adults goes away. He tears past me, and to keep up I have to pump every bit of energy into my legs as I sprint over the grass. Everyone else is close behind—Dendera, Finn, Greer, and Henn. Alysson is the only one not among us, the only non-fighter in our group.

  The scouts don’t pause as we draw near, don’t whip out weapons or try to slow us down; they just hurl themselves with renewed vigor into freeing the horses. The Spring soldier nearest to me uses a knife to saw at the rope tying a mount to the fence. My body reacts as I lurch to a stop and my new chakram flies from my palm, glancing off the soldier’s neck in a quick, smooth hiss of motion before rebounding into my hand. The soldier jerks back like he smacked into a wall, the knife slipping from his fingers as he falls, knees clunking into the grass, mouth agape at the starry sky above him.

  I leap over the fence and into the horse pen alongside everyone else, a wave of Winterian death. The soldier I killed lies in a heap next to where I land, and I can’t stop myself from looking at his face. He’s young. Of course he’d be young. Not all soldiers are withered in years, covered in the blood of all the people they’ve killed, ready to die themselves.

  I swallow. There’s no room for emotions in war—another Sir-original phrase.

  Two of the men turn from their potential escape to form a makeshift barrier between one of their comrades, almost mounted on a horse, and us. Expressions murderous, they take in the soldier I killed and reach for the swords at their waists. But Sir is running, gaining on them, and they don’t know it, but they’re already dead.

  Sir kicks off of the fence and hurls himself into the air, curved knives in each hand. His blades flash in the night, graceful and deadly, and he arches like a snake preparing to strike. The armed soldiers haven’t even fully swung to face him when Sir lands on the first, sliding the knives through the soldier’s neck and into his torso in one long, deliberate move. The force of the landing throws that soldier into the next one, and when Sir rips the knives free from the body, he uses the motion to slice through the other soldier’s throat. The two men fall, gurgling as blood pulses through the wounds in their necks, while Sir pivots to the soldier they tried to protect, the one still fumbling to free the horse.

  The man scrambles to face Sir, his eyes dropping to the bodies at his feet. “Please,” he whimpers and grabs at the horse, misses, falls to the ground between the two men Sir killed. “Please—I beg you—”

  Sir towers over him. “Where is your weapon?” His voice sends tremors of warning across my skin, the first sensation I’ve felt since I killed the soldier.

  The soldier cowers. “I don’t—”

  Sir grabs a sword from the hand of a nearby dead man and thrusts it hilt first at the blubbering soldier, who hesitates. “Take it,” Sir growls.

  The soldier takes the sword. The moment the blade is fully in his grip, Sir lunges, slamming his knives into the soldier’s chest. Cloudy eyes stare at me as the man’s mouth bobs up and down, begging for one last breath, just one—

  One final dying moan, and he drops weightless alongside the other Spring soldiers.

  Night makes the dead men look like nothing more than glistening bodies curled in sleep. When the sun comes, it will reveal the blood, the gore, streaks of red covering the grass inside the horse pen. A tangy iron stench hovers over the area, making my lungs burn. It should rain, a thundering, screaming storm, to wash all this away. The remnants of five lives—

  I stop.

  One, two, three, four.

  Four. Not five. There were five soldiers, weren’t there?

  I scan the area. Dendera and Mather straighten the saddles and other supplies the Spring soldiers tore through. Greer, Henn, and Finn poke through the corpses, taking weapons. Sir crouches over his kills, wiping the blo
od off his knives with one of the men’s shirts.

  And just behind Sir, behind the horse that the last man had been trying to mount, a piece of rope dangles from the fence next to the open gate. Cut.

  My arms tremble with dread before I even get his name out of my mouth. “Sir.”

  He looks at me, sheathing his knives.

  I point to the dangling rope and open gate. “There were five scouts.”

  Sir turns and stares at the rope. His eyes flick beyond it and there, already a small speck on the horizon, is the last soldier barreling in a cloud of dust on one of our horses. The man is far enough out of range to be uncatchable. He’ll tell Angra where we are.

  Anxiety pours into my stomach, filling me with the knowledge of what’s going to happen next. Sir pivots to face me, his eyes leaping from me to Dendera to Finn to everyone. No, don’t say it, don’t—

  “We’re leaving. Now. Pack only what’s necessary,” Sir announces, already untying horses from the fence. “Convene north of the camp in five minutes.”

  His words push into me like walking through a market only to smack into a cloud of putrid sewer air. “We’re running?” I squeak, holstering my chakram. “Can’t we just—”

  Sir steps toward me, and even in the dark I can see his eyes are bloodshot. That’s all the emotion he ever shows, in his eyes. “I will not take chances, not when we’re finally so close. Start packing or mount a horse.”

  He spins away, taking a few steps through the grass until he reaches Mather, grabs his arm, and hisses something that makes the expression on Mather’s face mimic the shocked, angry one on my own. Sir hurries to the rest, spitting the same orders at them—pack what you can, no time to waste. They separate, scurrying into camp to obey him.

  Sir doesn’t see them as he talks. His eyes dart across the horizon, stoic, calm. A boulder in the ocean, standing strong against crashing waves. Herod may be big and dark, but Sir is big and light—just as towering, just as threatening, with strength built on the pure pull of revenge.