The Ruin of Snow

by Lacy Sheridan

  Part of me wanted to comment on how they’d lose more fingers spending all night here in the dead of winter, but I didn’t. “You know, anybody passing by could see you,” I sat on the sturdiest branch near them I could spot.

  The light made shadows slide over their face, but I was sure they smiled. “And who might be passing by that has you so worried? Do your sisters climb trees as well as you?”

  Either a joke or a dare. I ignored it and gestured to the notebook. “What are you always writing in that?”

  “Whatever I like.”

  “What do you like?” I craned my neck to read the open page, but they tilted it from me, never faltering in their writing. I watched their hand, the smooth, rhythmic sweep of it on the paper.

  They looked up. “Why are you so interested in what I write?” they asked.

  I didn’t meet their eyes. I stared into the dark—shadows of leaves and pinpricks of stars. “A child-warrior of the North somehow cursed and bound to a Selliiran wood, loyal to a band of thieves, runaways, and rogues who claim to live a moral life. You are a contradiction, Kye Emris, and I don’t like contradictions.”

  I felt their gaze, heavy and waiting, and fixed mine with it. Their voice was low, a whisper, and full of the most irritating kind of amusement. “Do I fascinate or frustrate you, Neyva?”

  “Plenty of both, I assure you.”

  “I’ve never fascinated a noblewoman before, though I’m sure I would frustrate plenty.”

  “I can imagine. An inked barbarian like you. And the feathers.” I shook my head. “Scandalous.”

  Kye grinned. “And what about you? A witch of fire and steel and bone. What kind of scandal must you have caused?”

  I tore my gaze to the night. “We’re not doing that.”

  “I’ve told you my second name. It’s fair for me to know your family name.”

  It was fair—but what we did wasn’t fair. Our game wasn’t fair. Our game was whispered half-truths and un-swallowed poison. The second I revealed my family name, I lost.

  Kye leaned closer, and the smell of wind and ink washed over me. Intoxicating. “What are you so afraid of, Neyva?”

  I forced myself not to break. To not look at them. Because I was certain their eyes, their lips, could pull every truth from me. There were plenty of truths I wanted to tell them right then. Instead I whispered, “Witches have no hearts. We can’t be afraid.”

  Kye and I were dangerous together, Aurynn had been right about that. Fatally dangerous.

  Nineteen

  It was an unnatural night. No moon or stars lit the sky, and yet I could see as well as if lanterns hung in the trees. Sometimes I blinked and was sure they were there, just in my periphery, but when I moved to look they were gone.

  Kye’s lanterns, floating around me? Mocking me?

  But those weren’t Kye’s whispers on the faint, gentle wind.

  Neyva…

  Was that in my mind, or out loud? I whirled to where the voice was coming from, but the forest was quiet and empty.

  “Neyva.”

  My heart jumped and I whipped around. “Mother.”

  She smiled as she stepped toward me, one hand raised. Reaching. Not the cool, practiced smile of Devaria Morningspell—the smile of a mother. Warm and welcoming. “Where have you been, Neyva, darling? I’ve been so worried.”

  I wanted to walk away. I wanted to tell her she’d never worried about me a day in my life. But tears sprang to my eyes. “Mother, I—”

  “Where have you been, Neyva?” A second voice to my right, and Tulia strode from the shadows. Icicles dripped from her like jewels. Her lips were blue, the inner edges rimmed in blood so red it glowed.

  “We’ve missed you.” Sarafine, on my other side, looking like a perverse version of the icy queen she always was. Her eyes were hollow and sunken and her joints wrong, like some misshapen doll. Like they’d been broken and shoved back together.

  “Aren’t you going to come home?” Tulia’s skin cracked as she spoke, shards falling to reveal bone. My stomach rolled.

  I closed my eyes. I knew what was coming.

  “This isn’t where you belong, Neyva,” Katherine said. I tried to move away, but I wasn’t in control. I looked. Blood was frozen across her chest. Entire mouthfuls had been torn from her blue-white skin. Bile rose in my throat. “No one belongs here. I can’t leave, but you can.” Guilt choked me.

  “Come home, Neyva,” Mother said, that impossible smile still on her face. It wasn’t a smile she was capable of, I knew that, but it weakened my knees. “Come home to us.”

  “No,” I managed, but my hand lifted on its own to reach for hers.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t move. All I felt was the cold flowing through me, like it would turn me to ice where I stood. When I blinked, I wasn’t reaching for my mother’s hand, but holding mine to her. A human heart was cradled in my palm, warm, beating with a pulse it shouldn’t have. Blood dripped down my wrist.

  I raised my free hand to my chest, but my eyes snapped open before it made contact.

  The dream faded, and I kicked my furs off and bolted upright. Cold sweat slid down the back of my neck and I shivered. My breath clouded in front of me; the candles I burned overnight for warmth had gone out.

  Shaking my head against the lingering dream, I rubbed my arms and lit the candles with a wave of my fingers. The barrier I’d made during the storm was intact: nobody had crossed bearing ill will. No taste of magic lingered in the air.

  I was safe.

  Safe.

  My heart was whole inside my chest. It was a ridiculous dream. I shook my head, tied my hair back, and left the cave.

  Four days of practice hadn’t made my body any more used to fighting. Two hours a night, after sunset so Kye could retain their human form, and I could see the progress. I was not born to handle any weapon Kye could train me in, but I was a quick learner. By the end of night two, I could hold my own against them for a good thirty seconds, though I had a feeling they were going easy on me. Despite sleeping like the dead after each session, my muscles felt like stone, and the bruises dotting my shoulder blades and knees didn’t help.

  I inspected one scraped palm, red but no longer stinging, as I wound my way to the main entrance. Daylight trickled through, cold and pale, but about the warmest it was going to get. I’d slept through breakfast, and it appeared that everybody else had vanished to whatever work or pursuits had their attentions, so the afternoon was mine for preparations. And practice. Lots of magic practice; I wanted my mind as exhausted as my body. No more nightmares.

  “Neyva.” Rayick’s easy, booming voice stopped me and I looked over my shoulder. “You’re up.”

  “Kye and I were training late last night. I slept in.”

  “Are you sure? You look like you could do with a few more hours.” The angle of his mouth brought half a smile of my own. It was difficult not to smile around Rayick, however intimidating he looked, he was like speaking to pure sunshine.

  “I’ll catch up on my sleep when nobody’s after my head,” I said.

  “Fair enough. Here, I was going to give you this at breakfast.” He held out a hand, uncurling his fingers to reveal a shining silver hair stick, as pristine as if it had been in Mother’s jewelry box. The candles reflected off the bone and embedded sapphires, off the wicked blade. My breath caught.

  “You found it.”

  His lips twitched. “It is yours. I thought so. It smelled like you.”

  I reached for it, half expecting him to pull it away and request a payment, or to use it on me with those skilled fighter’s hands. But he didn’t. The handle was warm, and I inspected it closer. It had lost a single jewel in its adventure, but otherwise was perfect.

  “Where was it?” I asked.

  “Buried in the snow, a way’s back from where we found you.”

  I tilted it back and forth. “Why?”

  A shrug in my periphery. “It seemed worth the trip. Maybe just to get on the almighty wit
ch’s good side.”

  He was smiling, and I found myself smiling back. “Thank you, Rayick.”

  “Anytime, kid.”

  I arched an eyebrow as I secured the hair stick in the pocket of my cloak. “I’m a witch, and a noble, not a kid.” It wasn’t the first time I’d heard the word, but I wrinkled my nose at it. Before now I’d only heard it used in reference to the dirty children slinking around the slums of Acalta—the ones nobody in the noble squares spoke of except in whispers.

  Rayick laughed. “I thought you were getting past the noble thing.”

  “Should I ‘get past’ it?”

  “You should decide whether you’re one of us or one of them. This place doesn’t have nobles.” There was nothing but good humor in the comment, and his smiled was broad as he headed into the tunnels with a goodbye tossed over his shoulder, and I stared after him, thinking.

  This place doesn’t have nobles.

  I’d done a lot of things no Morningspell did, and a lot of things no noble did. I didn’t have the tie to my house name that I once had. That had been blown away with the storm Sarafine had conjured to kill me.

  But I was noble. It was my blood, my past, and I couldn’t change that any more than I could change that I was a Morningspell. I hadn’t decided to turn my back on it. Not yet.

  Maybe that was a mistake.

  I ran my thumb along the cool metal of the hair stick as I walked, and it reminded me of everything I was and everything I wasn’t. Everything I wanted, and everything I couldn’t have.

  The snow looked fresh but for the footprints leading to and from the tunnels; the entire forest was frozen silver and white, the snow thick and the ice jagged. The air was as calm as it had been since the morning after the storm—so perfectly still, a stillness that pressed on the world. Not unlike my dream.

  Some days I hated this Ladyforsaken forest with a passion.

  The sound of my boots breaking the frozen top layer echoed through the forest as I went to the clearing Kye and I used for training. It was the one place that looked used: the snow was disturbed from our sparring, pushed into drifts nearer the trees. It was a nice spot to work, with less chilly shadows and more room for the watery sun to stretch onto the earth. I stopped in the center, listening to the quiet forest.

  The magic came quicker with every passing day—barely, but it did. Like taming a wild beast, my patience was rewarded bit by bit. The magic rose and uncoiled from wherever it hid inside me. I’d yet to figure out how to make it listen. A few simple tasks, building those invisible walls that stopped Wesley or following the movement of something in the distance, were easy, but anything more felt impossible. I’d never had to learn on my own, through trial and error; it was slower and more frustrating than I’d expected.

  I remained motionless and let the magic wake, stretch, but didn’t push it. I didn’t ask it for anything or try to coax it into obeying. I knew better than to demand. I stood and thought. Magic came from the earth—the plants, the wind, water, fire, animals. The natural power witches could touch. I supposed it wasn’t impossible to believe that humans, too, possessed something beyond what I’d always thought of as magic. Was that what this was, and the power I held as a witch let me access it? It made a strange kind of sense.

  It came when I was still and calm, but it acted when I was anything but. When I was desperate, angry, frustrated. When I was terrified.

  Sarafine had used power beyond what she should have been able to. Power like this, but obeying her every command. Sarafine who had sacrificed her heart for her magic.

  I yanked my eyes open.

  Something deep in my mind breathed a laugh, as if it understood and was confirming it. Reminding me that if I was right, I was damned through and through.

  Because if this was the same kind of magic that lurked in the earth, closer and more potent to me than any other—if it was what my sisters had been granted when they’d given their hearts, I was backed into a corner.

  Give my heart for control of it—revert to that cold, unfeeling world—or let it run wild and rampant until it broke and did something I couldn’t reverse.

  I thought again of that tree cracking and falling. The storm surging toward Katherine to kill her. Pure destruction.

  A whisper of paws padded above me and I saw the raccoon settling onto a branch. I smoothed my expression into something resembling calm, something that wouldn’t betray the little thread of panic taking root. No, I stuffed that down, locked it away. I could deal with it later.

  “Are you my escort for today, then, Wesley?” I asked. He made an annoyed little chittering noise in answer, and I raised one hand. “Care to help me practice?”

  I laughed at the look that crossed his face. “Don’t steal anything, please. I’m working on your cure.” I could deal with what my suspicions may mean later, without watching eyes. I’d promised them a cure, and I didn’t feel like giving up now.

  Maybe I was going soft. Maybe I wasn’t a proper witch. I wasn’t sure anymore.

  I dug through my bag, organizing the supplies I’d brought and gathered. A handful of jars. A candle. A few little hare’s bones. A silver-spotted hand mirror Enaelle had brought from her old life and no longer used. My hair stick was last. I lined them up on a flat rock and knelt in the snow, studying each. I hardly knew what I was working with, but I had to start somewhere.

  Ginger. Caraway. Bloodroot. Willow. Comfrey. Pine needles. Defense and protection. Not much good for breaking curses; they were useful but generic. Curses required carefully selected, powerful tools, and an intimate knowledge of what you were fighting.

  “Wesley, come here,” I said. There was silence, and when I looked up, he was staring at me clearly asking why. “So I can sacrifice you to Nalcai,” I added, earning a huff from him. “Come here.”

  He hesitated another second but leapt down. I lit the candle with a gesture and let it burn, half of my attention on it. “I need to feel the magic binding you,” I said. “Or I’ll never get an idea of how to break it. Can I touch you?” He eyed me, and I held out both hands. “No weapons. I’m not going to skin you. Today.”

  I got the raccoon equivalent of an eye roll, but he took another step closer, bowing his head. I put one hand on his back, running my fingers through his thick coat. “Though you really would make a nice fur lining,” I dug my finger into the edge of the rock and drew a few drops of blood. I smeared them onto the mirror’s surface.

  Wesley snorted, unamused, and I smiled. “Hold still.”

  When the circle of blood was complete, thin and streaky, I closed my eyes. I focused on Wesley, on the warmth beside me, on the pulse of magic tingling my palm. Different from tasting another witch’s magic, this was like he’d been drenched in water.

  No, not water. Something thicker and darker. Tar. Or blood. Separate from him, but inescapable. If I found the right tools and the right way to use them, I could maybe clean it off.

  The taste was bitter and ashy, and I stared into the mirror, watching the edge of the candle’s flame dance in its surface. I breathed the spell..

  “Mirror, mirror, deep and dark,

  Show unclean hands’ truest heart.”

  The pattern in the blood shifted and spun like a wheel, the reflections blurred to silver and gold.

  Golden coins, tossed onto a dirty tabletop. The flash of Wesley’s silver-blond hair, a touch shorter and neater than it was now, as he leaned over them. He said something to the man across from him, arching one eyebrow in skepticism. The other man was older, burly, with thinning dark hair and a grim frown, and the hairs on my arms stood on end. Whoever he was, he was not somebody I wanted to meet in person. I understood the situation playing out on the mirror’s surface instantly.

  A job. Wesley had been a thief. And from the way he watched his would-be employer, he didn’t like whatever mark he was being given.

  No shiny trinkets out of that place. I stole something more valuable than that. Something I’ll never try to steal aga
in.

  I swallowed as the scene carried on. The older man asked something that had Wesley eyeing the gold. I wondered if he’d ever been offered gold before, or if he had only seen it stolen. He shook his head the slightest amount.

  From the edges of the conversation, out of the mirror’s range of sight, stepped Idris, arms folded. A few words exchanged, silent, but I could feel the tension radiating. Wesley faced the other man, jaw set, scooped up the coins in one hand, and stood. I caught the lightning-quick pass of a folded paper between them under the table and Wesley tucked it in a pocket. Idris clapped him on the shoulder as they walked away.

  The reflection changed, rippling like rainwater had struck it—and then it was rainwater, pouring in sheets from a dark sky. The figure moving was nearly invisible: dark clothing, hood raised. Nimble, gloved fingers opened a lock in seconds, but he wasn’t entering; he was leaving, but I couldn’t see what he carried, clutched to his chest. Something small, perhaps wrapped in cloth to conceal it. I squinted, but lightning split the sky and the image vanished. I stared at the reflection of the clear winter sky, a thin cloud floating above.

  My hand was still on Wesley, the weight of his curse pressing on my throat. I jerked away. “What did you steal?”

  He looked away.

  “Whatever it was, you didn’t want to do it, did you? Idris talked you into it.”

  He wouldn’t look at me.

  “What was more valuable than jewels?” He didn’t react. “I need to know, Wesley. And I will drag you inside so you can speak if I need to.”

  A soft crunch of snow from my other side, and I whipped my head to see the fox standing watch. “Both of you,” I said, standing and replacing my things. “Inside. Now.”

  Neither of them objected. I forced my spine to steel, my shoulders back, as I led them into the tunnels, away from where the others might be, and then faced them. Neither Wesley nor Idris met my eyes. “What was this job?”