Frozen Reign

by Kathryn Purdie

  “What? No, I—”

  “The people don’t need to know that you’re powerless.”

  “How can I keep a secret like that?” I asked, exasperated. “They’ll find me out, and I won’t be able to help anyone. Valko will come for me. He’ll kill me, and your fabricated symbol will be destroyed, along with the people’s hope.”

  “We will protect you from Valko.”

  “How?” I threw up my hands. “He has Dasha.”

  That silenced him.

  The poor sestra was still coughing with great agitation. I rushed over and brought her forward to sit on the vacant armchair. While she held her handkerchief at her mouth, her other hand squeezed mine in a bone-crushing grip. We both knew I’d spoken the truth to Feliks—he had no use for me. Now I was only a liability. He would execute me like the ruthless leader I knew he was.

  I wanted to say something comforting to Sestra Mirna. If Feya has appointed my death, we must accept it. But my mouth ran dry. My heart squeezed in a vise of fear. Had I really survived Valko’s attempt to kill me just to die at the hands of another tyrant?

  “Someone in Estengarde can restore Sonya’s power,” Genevie said from behind me.

  I spun around to find her standing in the doorway. One of the soldiers flanking her saluted Feliks. “Please excuse the intrusion, General. She promised you’d want to hear her.”

  Feliks’s cunning eyes hooded. “Who can restore Sonya’s power? How is that possible?”

  She took a tremulous step forward and balled her shaking hands. “The king’s prized Auraseer has a special talent,” she said, and quickly explained what she’d earlier told me: Madame Perle could sense beyond the block in my aura and find a way to release it. The claim was far-fetched—there was no real proof Madame Perle could cure me, but Genevie was trying to spare my life. If Feliks thought I had any hope to recover, he might allow me the chance.

  I regarded him, wondering what the slight curl of his mouth meant. Did he find Genevie ridiculous, or was he seriously considering her? Perhaps he needed a more reliable plan. “I can also strengthen Anton’s delegation,” I blurted.

  “Oh, yes?” Feliks cocked his head. “How so?”

  “I’ll travel to Estengarde and help him gain the alliance. Genevie says I’m respected there.” Feliks didn’t need to know that only the Auraseers in Alaise held me in esteem.

  He scoffed. “No Auraseers are respected in Estengarde.”

  “Just as none were respected in Riaznin—not until me.” How arrogant I sounded, but Feliks knew it was the truth. He’d published Tosya’s poem to make sure of it.

  Sestra Mirna’s grip softened in my hand. Her coughing had quieted some, but her shoulders continued to rack. Hopefully any concerns she had over me were easing. Feliks would let me live. Genevie gave me a small nod to confirm his shifting emotions.

  “Very well, then. You may go to Estengarde,” Feliks said. “I’ll spread word to our people that their sovereign Auraseer is guaranteeing a strong alliance.”

  “Guaranteeing?”

  Feliks ambled over to me. “I’m giving you this one chance, Sonya. Regain your power and become the person I’ve promised to Riaznin. Prove yourself by securing this alliance. If you fail, I’ll have no choice but to sentence you for your crimes.” He leaned close to my ear. “And if saving your own life doesn’t persuade you, just remember Kira and everyone else in our nation. You’ve gone to great lengths to aid them before. Surely you’ll do your best not to let them down now.”

  The sestra went rigid and made a horrible wheezing sound. Confused, I dropped to my knees beside her. She squirmed, fighting to breathe. Alarmed, I pounded on her back.

  Her handkerchief fell away from her mouth.

  It was covered in blood.

  My heart shot up my throat. How long had she been ill? Why hadn’t she told me?

  “You have six weeks to travel to Estengarde and return to Torchev,” Feliks said, showing no concern for Sestra Mirna. “Those are my terms.”

  Tosya grabbed a flask off one of the soldiers and rushed over to the sestra’s other side. He tried to make her drink, but she only choked on the water.

  I clutched her arm. Squeezed her hand. I didn’t know what to do. She needed a physician. But she was the convent’s physician. Our nurse. Our everything.

  “Six weeks does not allow for slower travel through the mountains if the snow comes early,” Genevie said, wringing her hands by the doorway, unsure how to help.

  “These wars won’t wait any longer,” Feliks replied. “We need Sonya back before the Shenglin conquer any more cities and Valko gains more supporters. Six weeks, Sovereign Auraseer,” he told me, “or I’ll send an army to track you.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him what I thought of him—how could he be so insensitive while Sestra Mirna suffered?—but I never uttered a word. The sestra went quiet. Her head dropped forward. Her eyes closed. Her body slumped in the chair.

  My stomach went rock hard, then I started to shake.

  Please, Feya, tell me she’s only fainted.

  I leaned over her. Tears slipped down the bridge of my nose. I needed to feel her aura now more than ever. Why couldn’t the goddess grant me that? “Genevie?” My voice cracked as I turned to her in pleading. She could feel what I couldn’t.

  She stood with her hand clamped over her mouth. Her eyes were red with emotion.

  What emotion?

  She finally pulled her fingers away. “Oh, Sonya,” she said, gasping with a little sob.

  My chest burned with a crushing exhale. Why was Genevie crying when she couldn’t feel my heart breaking?

  “I am so sorry,” she whispered. “Your sestra is gone.”

  I shook my head twice, refusing to believe her. My vision blurred with building tears. Sestra Mirna wasn’t dead. She was a survivor. She’d outlasted the ague last winter, as well as the convent fire and Valko’s attack. Consumption couldn’t take her. She was too strong. She was the one holding us together here.

  Tosya’s arms came around me. A ragged cry tore from my lungs. His sympathy cemented the agonizing truth.

  Sestra Mirna—the protectress of so many, the long devotee of the convent, the woman who ruled her own domain with relentless strictness and surprising flickers of deep affection—was truly gone.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I TOUCHED TWO FINGERS TO MY FOREHEAD THEN MY HEART, making the sign of Feya. The sun drooped low, gilding the convent grounds with copper light. I sat kneeling in the graveyard beside a mound of freshly overturned earth. Feliks and his soldiers had departed right after he’d given me my ultimatum of six weeks, but I’d put off traveling to Estengarde to wait the customary three days to bury Sestra Mirna. She deserved her full burial rites.

  Scanning the crowded graveyard, I wrapped my arms around my waist. So many people had died here. Auraseers from the convent fire, as well as those who had passed away from last winter’s ague. Other Auraseers I’d never known from long ago, moss and lichen growing over their stone markers. Yuliya—the yellow flowers I’d planted for her peeked up at her carved name. Loyalist and revolutionary soldiers from the convent battle. And now those who’d died from the consumption. I wondered how full other graveyards in Riaznin were growing. How many more people would lose their lives while my power remained stagnant?

  Hot tears rolled down my cheeks. If I’d had my abilities, I could have sensed Sestra Mirna was ill. I would have tended to her. Insisted she rest more often. Refused to let her nurse the soldiers. She’d caught her death while giving Nadia and me other chores, ensuring we weren’t in the hospital tent too long. Was I so blind without my power that I couldn’t realize what she’d been doing?

  I cupped a handful of dirt over her grave and closed my fingers tightly over it. “I promise to do what you’d do in my place. I’ll bring Dasha and Kira back here safely.”

  I wandered back to the convent and passed the wash line, where my laundered clothes hung to dry. All my preparations for Esteng
arde were in order, though I still felt so unready to leave. Sestra Mirna’s presence still dwelled within these whitewashed walls, just out of my palpable reach. I climbed the stairs in the west wing. Close to the infirmary, in a section of the house that had survived the fire, I found the sestra’s bedchamber.

  Her smell of calendula and beetroot wafted over me, making the space feel even more alive with her. I could almost feel her hand on my cheek, her voice whispering that I would be well again. She’d tended to me night and day while I recovered from the gunshot wound. She’d held me when I’d cried, fearing Anton would never come back.

  I wished I had expressed to her how much she’d meant to me while she was alive.

  I found a brush on top of her mirrorless dresser and, setting down my candle, ran my fingers over a few trapped strands of her gray hair. All I felt was its wiry texture past the stiff bristles. No lingering aura. Heartsore, I withdrew my hand and turned away.

  The room looked painfully bare for someone who had lived here over half of a century. The only shelf held a prayer book and a small idol of the goddess Feya, even simpler than my old wooden one. No pictures hung on the stone walls. No mementos rested on her bedside table. A simple carved chest sat at the foot of her bed. It reminded me of the one in the library where the sestra had stored the Auraseers’ birth certificates and correspondence with the empire.

  Kneeling with my candle, I lifted the chest lid and found a stack of wool blankets. I removed them, one by one, searching for a deeper imprint of Sestra Mirna’s time in this world. At the bottom of the chest rested a ribbon-tied bundle of letters, as well as a journal. Opening the cover, I found inside a genealogy of the convent’s Auraseers. On the last written page, my name, along with my dead parents and brother, was scrawled, along with our shared birthplace of Bovallen. Why had she kept such detailed records of all of us? Some Auraseers had more than three generations back listed in this journal.

  I traced my mother’s name, Alena, trying to remember anything more from my childhood. My family’s faces. Our home. Even something else from our garden besides flagstones. But, as always, I came up blank.

  I set down the journal and looked at the bundle of letters. Would it be disrespectful to open them? I debated for a minute, then decided that learning more of Sestra Mirna’s history would help me honor her.

  My half-burned candle melted to a nub by the time I’d finished reading. I couldn’t stop, not even to stuff the letters back inside their envelopes. Onionskin paper littered the floorboards. I sat with my knees tucked to my chest, and my head leaned back against the bed’s mattress. My mind spun, vividly awake, though the hour was late. The sestra’s life fascinated me.

  “What is that you’re reading?”

  I jumped to see Nadia in the doorway. Unlike me, still in my dress from the day, she was wearing her nightgown. The candle in her hand underlit her face, catching on the uneven, ropy texture of her burn scars.

  Once my heart started beating again, I processed the tone of her voice. Not scornful, not accusatory, just curious. She hadn’t spoken to me since the sestra had passed away. Maybe she felt as guilty as I did for not knowing the sestra was sick.

  “Love letters,” I replied.

  Her jade eyes lowered to the maelstrom of paper on the floor. “Truly?”

  I held out a page. “Did you know Sestra Mirna once planned to marry a farm boy named Feodor?”

  Nadia came over and sat beside me, skimming the paper for herself. “What happened to him?”

  I released a pensive sigh, as weighty as the story I’d just gleaned through all my reading. “Feodor’s mother was an Auraseer. She and his father kept that a secret from the empire and instructed Feodor to do the same. But they were found out, the entire family was executed, and Mirna Sorokina became Sestra Mirna of the convent of Auraseers.”

  I studied Feodor’s name in Sestra Mirna’s beautiful handwriting, feeling a new kinship with her. My parents had also been executed, like the sestra’s lover and his parents, for the same reason—hiding an Auraseer from the empire. It was a tribute to her love for Feodor that Sestra Mirna dedicated her life to protecting Auraseers.

  Nadia picked up another page and shook her head in wonder. “I never heard her speak of any of that, not even to the other sestras, and, believe me, I eavesdropped plenty.”

  “I never imagined such tragedy had brought Sestra Mirna to live her life here.”

  “Tragedy brings us all here, Sonya,” Nadia replied with no malice, only the bare truth. “This convent was built to hold the broken.”

  I tugged my knees tighter to my chest. “That farm boy’s mother was so much older than I was when the authorities found her.” As far as I knew, I was the only girl in all of Riaznin’s history to be brought to the convent at the late age of seventeen. Bounty hunters collected most Auraseers many years younger. “Do you think it’s possible many of us go undiscovered?”

  “I don’t know . . . I hope so. At least that would mean some Auraseers lived freely.”

  “But they wouldn’t have any training,” I said. Nadia didn’t understand, like I did, how difficult life could be when you had no rein over your abilities, how other people’s auras could drive you to the brink of insanity. She hadn’t writhed every time a woman bore a child or shrieked when a boy killed a rabbit for supper. The sestras had taught her, from a young age, to govern her emotions and separate herself from other auras.

  “So it’s better to be owned for the sake of an education?” Nadia asked, a sliver of her abrasiveness returning.

  “Of course not.” I rested my chin on my knees. “But what if you could choose both—have liberty and learning?”

  The scarred side of Nadia’s mouth creased as she pursed her lips. “You think anyone would choose to live at this convent? You hated living here as much as I did.”

  I shrugged. “We were miserable because we had no freedom, not because of these walls.”

  Nadia scoffed, taking up her candle as she pushed to her feet. “These letters have filled your head with roses, Sonya. Beware the thorns. There is nothing in this place for anyone who hasn’t lost everything.”

  I couldn’t sleep in the hour or two remaining before the daybreak, so I packed away Sestra Mirna’s treasures and paced the floor. I needed to be thinking of Estengarde—I would leave tomorrow with a few soldiers who were well enough to accompany me—but my sleep-addled mind overflowed with images of a thriving convent, its rooms filled with smiling Auraseers who studied together and walked the halls in accord.

  When my candle burned out, I stooped to light a fire in Sestra Mirna’s fireplace, only to find it coated with a thick layer of ash. I couldn’t leave it be—the sestra deserved better—so I spread out a linen sheet before the hearth and swept the ashes onto it, then I polished the black off the hearthstone. Arms sullied to the elbows and nose itching and smudged, I folded up the sheet like a knapsack and carried it outside.

  The morning sun greeted me past milky dawn clouds. In the middle of the convent’s front courtyard, I shook out the ashes. As the linen sheet came billowing down, I spied a horse and rider advancing to the convent. I couldn’t make out the man’s face from the quarter mile away, but his horse was snow white. One of the three troika horses.

  Anton.

  My grip went slack. The sheet rippled to the ground. My heart pummeled a hailstorm of percussive beats against my rib cage. I raced three steps toward him, then halted, sidestepping, backtracking, fairly spinning in circles.

  He can’t . . . I can’t . . . I can’t let him see me like this.

  I whirled toward the convent, then skidded to a stop as Tosya and Genevie stepped outside. One look at Genevie’s all-seeing gaze sent me running for a tall maple bordering the outer walls of the grounds. Yuliya and I had sometimes hidden in its branches to skip our classes. Hitching up my skirt, I climbed halfway up, then remembered Genevie couldn’t even sense my aura to know what had come over me.

  “Sonya!” I glanced down
to find Tosya staring up at me like I’d gone mad. “What in the names of all the gods you worship are you doing?”

  I clung to the tree’s trunk, my feet planted on a shaky branch. “I’m so dirty, Tosya,” I whimpered lamely.

  “And you thought you’d bathe with sap?”

  My knees knocked together. My head prickled with light-headedness. “Tell him I went to the village, all right?”

  “Tell who?”

  “Anton!” I whisper-shouted.

  Tosya didn’t move for a moment, then he abruptly strode away, likely to view the road for himself. When he returned, his footsteps came slower and a boyish smirk crossed his face. “Am I to understand that you’re hiding in a tree from the boy you love—the boy you haven’t seen in four months—because you’re dirty?”

  “He’s supposed to be in Estengarde.” I climbed up another branch and straddled it, wiping my black hands on my skirt to no avail. “I thought . . . I thought I’d have more time.”

  Tosya shook his head at me. “Yes, imagine all the baths you could have had.”

  I moaned and rested my forehead against the tree trunk.

  “Or is this about your power?” He crossed his arms.

  The bark dug deeper into my skin. “He doesn’t know it’s gone, Tosya.” I sounded like a child. I felt like one.

  He gave a long, belabored exhale. “Sonya . . .”

  “You don’t understand. I won’t know what he’s feeling.” Anton had been hard enough to read, even when I’d had my abilities. Now it would be nearly impossible. I wouldn’t know if he’d forgiven me. Or if he still loved me.

  Anton’s horse, Oriel, galloped in past the convent’s gate. I cursed and scrambled higher up the maple. “Don’t tell him where I am!”

  Tosya mumbled something incomprehensible. I only made out the word ridiculous before he left me again.

  Past the spindly branches at the crown of the tree, I watched as Anton swept onto the convent grounds like a princely dragon slayer straight from Riaznian myth.