Nadia’s lips thinned in concern at Lynet’s flat voice, at her glassy eyes staring ahead at nothing. “Two weeks before,” she said.
Lynet took a long breath. That still didn’t have to mean anything. It was a coincidence.
But other hints came rushing to her now—her uncanny resemblance to her mother along with her father’s complete confidence that she would grow up to be exactly like the late queen; a burn scar on her hand even though she never remembered burning herself; the fact that she could lie in the snow for hours and never feel cold. Mina’s pitying look whenever Lynet said she wished she looked more like her—
Did Mina know?
Lynet had never spoken to Gregory alone, and she wondered now if that was no accident, if her father had kept him away from her, for fear that he would tell her the truth. But there had been one time, just a year or two ago, when she had been running to Mina’s room and collided with the magician. Lynet had been mortified, but Gregory had only smiled down at her and insisted that there was no harm done. He had put his hands on her shoulders and told her that if she ever needed help, she could always come to him, that he was always her friend.…
And then Mina had hurried toward them both. She asked Lynet to go wait in her room for her, because she needed to speak to her father alone. Lynet hadn’t thought anything of it at the time, but now she remembered the slight note of panic in her stepmother’s voice, the way her face was stretched into an unnatural smile, the bloodless grip she had on her father’s arm.
Mina knew. Mina knew and she had kept it from her all these years.
The full weight of this revelation finally fell on her, the truth becoming increasingly undeniable, and Lynet closed her eyes, trying to shut it out. But she couldn’t keep Nadia’s words from reaching her: You were made to resemble her exactly. Made, created, shaped—all those words meant the same thing: she was something artificial. She was a duplicate, created to live out all the days that had been stolen from her mother. Unless she was meant to die her mother’s death, as well. Had Lynet ever had anything of her own? Was she even a person?
“What do I do now?” Lynet whispered. “Am I supposed to just go on like before and pretend I don’t know?” She opened her eyes and looked to Nadia.
Nadia shook her head and leaned over the table, her shoulders hunched with remorse. Her fingers were drumming against the wood, and finally she nodded to herself and looked up at Lynet with a mixture of guilt and resolve.
“If I were you,” she said in the same firm tone as when she gave advice to one of her patients, “I would want to know more, even just for your own safety. That’s why I’m allowed to know, as the court surgeon—I need to know that the cold won’t numb you, because you’re immune to it.”
Lynet didn’t hear a word Nadia said. The room seemed to be getting smaller, and she was having trouble breathing. “I have to go now,” she said.
“Lynet, don’t go—I’m so sorry I told you, please—” But Lynet was already rushing out the door, up the stairs, out into the open air. She kept moving until she had crossed through the courtyard and into the garden, and then she collapsed in the snow, hoping that for the first time, she’d feel something like cold.
6
MINA
The first time she saw Whitespring, Mina’s skin prickled, and not just from the cold. As she took in the sharp spires and steeply curved archways, the high stone walls as blank as snow, Mina thought she was looking at the skeleton of a castle, its meat picked off over the years until only the bones were left. Whitespring was as gray as the sky, and already she missed the bright colors of her home.
And she was so cold. She kept adding layers of clothing, furs and thick wools, but she felt trapped underneath all that fabric, too constrained to move comfortably. She longed to feel fresh air on her skin again. Instead, she had to settle for blowing on her hands to keep them warm.
Gregory hadn’t been thrilled with their small set of rooms in a forgotten corner of the castle, but he said that would all change once he’d made a good marriage for Mina. She was glad the rooms were small; they gave her the illusion of coziness.
“You haven’t gone outside since we came here,” her father told her three days after they’d arrived. “Go get some air. We’re cramped in here as it is.”
It was true. She’d holed herself up in her room, thinking that if she curled up tightly enough, she’d be warm again. Mina weakly protested out of habit, but she was growing restless, so she threw on another layer of fur and obeyed.
“Take the left corridor and keep walking straight, and you’ll end up at a courtyard,” Gregory told her. “Don’t get lost. I don’t want to find you freezing somewhere.”
“I appreciate your concern,” Mina snapped at him.
All the same, she took his advice. She didn’t want to wander the castle’s labyrinthine corridors for the rest of the morning. As he had said, she eventually came to a courtyard, smaller than Whitespring’s central courtyard. Winged statues stared down from the balconies, and Mina stared back to show them that she was unafraid. In the center of the courtyard was an empty fountain. But there were none of the usual sounds Mina expected to hear outdoors. No birds sang, no breeze whistled through the trees. Seeing a fountain without hearing the trickle of water was unsettling.
She sat on the edge of the fountain and pulled a peach from her pocket. Fruit was in short supply in the North, so she’d been sure to take some with her before leaving.
“Where did you get that?”
Mina tensed. A man walked toward her, his arms crossed. He was dressed finely, so he wasn’t a servant, but he didn’t match the image of older, pompous noblemen she had in her head. This man was likely not yet thirty, with a dark beard lining his square jaw and curling black hair. Despite his relative youth, he seemed to be dragging the full weight of his body as he walked.
“It’s mine,” Mina said, trying not to sound too defensive. “I brought it with me.”
“Don’t let me interrupt you, then.” He gestured to the fruit. “Eat.”
She took a bite of her peach. In the silence of the courtyard, the squelching sound of the fruit was embarrassingly loud. “Do you want a bite?” she said, holding the peach up to him. “I’m sorry I don’t have another to offer you.”
He shook his head. “I didn’t intend to disturb you. I only came here to…” He fell silent, and Mina thought maybe he was finished speaking to her, but then he said, “This was the queen’s favorite place to sit.”
Mina glanced up at the gloomy statues on the balconies. She didn’t understand how this courtyard could be anyone’s favorite anything, but she didn’t want to insult the late queen in front of a stranger. “Did you know her?” she asked.
“Yes,” he said, his expression softening as he looked down at Mina. “She was the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Her daughter will take after her.”
“But she’s a baby. She doesn’t look like anyone yet.”
“She looks like her mother,” the man insisted. “She is the late queen returned to us. She will grow up to be as beautiful and as gentle as her mother once was.”
Mina shrugged. “I haven’t seen her. I don’t even know her name.”
“Lynet,” the man said, smiling for the first time. “That was what the queen had always wanted to name a daughter. Princess Lynet. Like the bird.”
“That’s a pretty name,” Mina said—or tried to say. She’d taken another bite of the peach before speaking, and she coughed as a piece of fruit caught in her throat.
“Didn’t your mother teach you not to speak when you eat?” he said, with a hint of amusement in his voice.
She swallowed and said, “No, she didn’t. My mother is dead.” He inhaled sharply at her words and seemed so mortified by his error that she took pity on him. “It was a long time ago. I only remember her a little.”
“Is it terrible as a girl to grow up without a mother?”
Mina wasn’t sure how to reply. She had ne
ver known any alternative. “Sometimes.”
He nodded and sat on the ledge of the fountain beside her. Mina’s first instinct was to move away from him, but she stopped herself—he didn’t know anything about her, after all; he had no reason to be afraid of her, nor she of him. Without even Hana for company, Mina had spent most of her time alone since leaving home, and so she had forgotten that there could be comfort in another person’s presence. Perhaps she had never known it at all. She studied his profile, wondering how she could make him smile again.
Abruptly, he shook his head and turned to her. “Will you be attending the banquet in the princess’s honor tonight?”
She nodded. Her father had given her no other option than to attend. She had to be beautiful tonight, in order to be memorable.
“I’m glad,” he said.
“Then why do you seem sad?” Mina said before she could stop herself.
He answered at once, unperturbed by her question. “Grief,” he said. “Grief at the passing of our queen. You would be sad too, if you had known her.…”
He turned his face away from her, and Mina regretted her thoughtless question. She inched a little closer to him, until her skirt was brushing his leg. If she put her hand on his, would he smile for her? Would it be a comfort or a violation?
Just as she’d started to inch her hand toward his, he turned back to her and said, “I never asked your name.”
“It’s Mina.”
His mouth turned downward. “I know a man with a daughter of that name.”
If he’d met Gregory already, there was a good chance this man would want nothing more to do with her. Even if he didn’t know about her father’s peculiar talents, Gregory made people ill at ease. She might have lied and given a false name, but if she wanted this acquaintance to continue, he’d learn the truth soon enough.
“My father’s name is Gregory,” she said, resigned.
He nodded. “That’s what I thought.” He rose from the fountain, and though his face had shown no disgust or fear, she knew instinctively that she had lost him.
“I’m not my father,” she blurted out.
“I’ve stayed too long.” He spoke quickly, and before Mina could respond, he was walking away, leaving her with her half-eaten peach, which now tasted bitter in her mouth.
He hadn’t even told her his name.
* * *
That night Mina readied herself for the banquet, but in her mind, she was still in the courtyard, not quite daring to touch the hand of a man she barely knew.
But why bother thinking of him? a voice in her mind asked. You can’t love him, and he could never love you.
That was true, but she kept thinking about the softness of his voice, the kindness of his eyes when she was just a stranger to him. No one had ever spoken to her with such gentleness before. If she’d had less faith in her beauty, she might have decided to forget him, but perhaps if he saw her tonight, not bundled in furs, but gowned and bejeweled …
The only piece of fur Mina wore over her dress as she walked into the Hall was a shawl that served to warm the crooks of her elbows and little else. If Mina wanted to be accepted at court—and catch the eye of her kind stranger again—she would have to look like she belonged. In her brief time at Whitespring, she’d already learned that the people here were more accustomed to the cold, and so they didn’t dress as heavily as Mina would have. If she had dressed for warmth tonight, she would have been the only one.
The Hall wasn’t as cold as it could have been, packed with people as it was, but Mina’s teeth still chattered. “Clever girl,” her father said softly. He had sensibly dressed for the cold, and though he had mocked her at first for her thin dress, his eyes now shone with understanding. His clothing marked him as an outsider.
Gregory led her by the elbow to one of the long tables at the back of the Hall. “Most of these people are only visiting the castle for the banquet tonight,” he whispered, “so this may be your one chance to make an impression. Try to be charming.”
Mina put on her most dazzling smile as she took her seat, but it was difficult to be charming when she was a stranger among friends. Even here at the back of the Hall, among the lesser nobility and friends of the castle, Mina wasn’t important enough to warrant any attention. People talked over both her and Gregory, craning their necks to continue conversations from the last time they’d seen one another. Gregory ignored them in turn—it was Mina who needed to please them, not him. But Mina’s smile was beginning to falter.
At home, when she walked through the marketplace, she knew that the villagers were observing her every movement, watching her out of the corners of their eyes like she was a coiled snake about to strike, and so she had become used to scrutiny, to being jeered at and mocked for the slightest misstep. But now that no one was watching, she finally stopped trying to smile at everyone, and the muscles in her cheeks were grateful to her for that. She stopped trying to make eye contact in a hopeless bid for attention, stopped sitting quite so straight, stopped taking tiny bites of her bread and meat so she wouldn’t be caught with her mouth full. She simply observed the people around her and enjoyed being invisible.
And as the night wore on and Mina became more relaxed, something changed. The guests started to grow bored with one another, and their curious eyes began following her movements. The lady beside her struck up a conversation with her, and the old man opposite called her a “real beauty.” She laughed with them, holding her head at angles she knew would flatter her, because she’d studied them so long in the mirror. It was a fair trade: she gave them something pleasing to stare at, and they gave her approval, acceptance, even affection.
If they love you for anything, it will be for your beauty.
Beside her, Gregory was observing Mina’s victory with what looked like something between relief and resentment. This was what he’d wanted for her, after all, this was why he needed her, but Mina knew that he must hate having to need her in the first place. Still, he knew better than to interfere and possibly ruin whatever strange magic Mina’s beauty was working, so he kept silent, and Mina ignored him as best she could. Tonight, she was not the magician’s daughter, but an anonymous beauty.
Every so often, she scanned the crowded room, hunting for one face in particular. As she searched, it occurred to her that her stranger might already be married, but that only made her more desperate to find him and know for certain.
“A toast!” called a voice from the high table.
Mina hadn’t paid much attention to the high table, all the way at the other end of the Hall, but she looked up now—and nearly jumped out of her seat when she saw the king.
No wonder she hadn’t found her sad stranger when she searched the room; she had never thought to look for him seated on a king’s throne.
When the crowd fell silent, King Nicholas stood. “A toast,” he said, “to my daughter and to your princess. May she grow to be as beautiful as her mother, and may you all love her as you loved her mother, the queen.”
The Hall drank to the princess, but the princess didn’t matter to Mina. It was kings and queens she was thinking of, especially the dead queen who inspired such devotion in the people around her. There was genuine feeling in their faces, love for a woman who was dead and unable to return their love ever again. Queen Emilia could not have plausibly loved every person in the room, and yet they all loved her, unconditionally, unrequitedly.
Her ear caught a single word from across the banquet table, and she listened closely to single out the thread of conversation. Yes, there it was again—remarry.
“But will he remarry, do you think? He was so devoted to her,” a sharp-jawed woman was saying to the man sitting opposite her.
“Oh, he must, he must. Not in the next year, maybe not the year after that, but soon enough. The people will want a queen, and the man will want a wife.”
“And the poor princess, without a mother…”
Mina stopped listening; she’d heard what she want
ed to hear. The people will want a queen, and the man will want a wife. Her sudden desire was a collision, and it left her shaking. With her beauty, she had made people pay attention to her, to notice her without mocking her. But a queen—
A queen had the power to make people love her.
7
LYNET
Lynet didn’t remain lying in the snow too long—she didn’t want anyone to come passing by and find her there, especially not Nadia. She knew Nadia had nothing to do with her birth—her creation—but Nadia was the one who had told her, and so Lynet blamed her for it anyway.
At that moment, rising from the snow that had made her, she hated everyone who had known what she was before she did—her father, Gregory, Nadia …
And Mina.
Part of her still wanted to believe that Mina hadn’t known, but the doubt would remain until she asked. Before she could back down, Lynet allowed her indignation to lead her up to the queen’s chambers. But when Lynet reached them, the queen wasn’t there. The fire was burning, though, and so Lynet knew that Mina would return soon. She walked around the room, thinking of all the times she had come here before, night after night—all those years, all those confidences she’d shared, all those opportunities for Mina to tell her the secret of her creation.
She’d always thought Mina’s room was one of the most beautiful places in Whitespring. Mina collected pieces of the South that she acquired each market day. Pale orange silk hung around her bed, the gauzy fabric shimmering like liquid. The reds and oranges and yellows of peaches and apples illuminated the room like they were made of light. On the table by her bed was a shining silver-backed hand mirror without any glass in its frame. Mina said she kept it even though it was broken because it had once belonged to her mother.
On the far wall, there was a large, wooden-framed mirror, reflecting all that color and light back at itself, magnifying the room into a world of its own. Lynet paused in front of the mirror, her own reflection startling her. She wondered what she would have looked like had she been born naturally, a child of flesh and blood. Would she still have her mother’s delicate features? Or would her outsides match her insides, her skin finally sitting comfortably over her bones so that she wouldn’t always feel like she wanted to leap out of her own body? She felt trapped by that reflection—and yet some stubborn part of her still wanted to fight for it and take it back from her mother. It was Lynet’s turn to live now, wasn’t it? She had every right to claim this reflection as her own. It would be my own, if I were anywhere but here, she thought. If she left Whitespring, left the promise of a crown and a life that wasn’t hers, then she could be whoever she wanted to be.…
Girls Made of Snow and Glass Page 6