Winter Glass

by Lexa Hillyer

  Malfleur pushes her way through underbrush and into a clearing. She doesn’t believe in luck, but perhaps she ought to.

  Because tangled in her trap, still half alive, its front nose and paws clamped down between iron teeth, lies a young fox, twitching, stunned.

  She eats it while the blood’s still warm.

  PART

  III

  SO CRY THE FUTURE SAYERS

  13

  Aurora

  The hood blocking her eyes is raised. Aurora squints into a vast room, its only light streaming from a hole in the ceiling high above. Her hands are bound by rope. She flexes them, tries to pull. Braces herself.

  A figure disappears into the shadows. A door slams. She is alone.

  No. Not alone. There’s a sound. A shuffling. A fluttering.

  Suddenly, heavy iron grates rise all around her. Cranking. Creaking as they’re lifted, to reveal bars. Terror races through her. She’s caged. Now there’s a rustling in the shadows, beyond the bars. Louder. A harsh cry.

  Her body clenches, jerks. And yet still she is shocked when a thousand shapes razor out of the black mass.

  Wings.

  Beaks.

  Crows. Hundreds of them.

  Panic—she can feel it in the way the bodies collide with one another, surging upward and out, pushing through the bars, which are wide enough to let them in but too narrow to let her out. She’s surrounded by complete anarchy. She screams but makes no sound.

  She struggles against the rope again, unable to free her hands.

  The birds swoop and dive. Claws rake across her cheek.

  Talons land on the back of her neck, clamping down. She screams again, falling to her knees. They are on her. They are everywhere. A chunk of hair is wrenched from the side of her head. She writhes against the madness. A crow flies at her face. Its eyes gleam like beads. She dodges, collapses forward. Beaks tear at her shoulders.

  You will become strong, Malfleur had said.

  Talons skewer the rope, ripping into the flesh of her arms. The rope loosens. She tears free. Anger surges through her. Power. She stands. She’s up. She swings out, clawing the air with her open hands, her now-ragged nails. The birds launch at her and she defends herself, flinging their bodies aside, her arms as fluid as their wings are frantic. She wrestles one down, but then another is at her throat, its whirl of dark feathers blinding her.

  You will become sharp.

  The blade. The blade. There is a bodkin against her hip—tucked into her suit, which is black and tight, made of leather and buckles, like a full-body muzzle. The hilt slides into her palm, and in a flash of clean movement she has jammed it into the attacker’s back. There’s a deafening screech as the crow falls from her, tearing flesh away from her clavicle with its beak in a rain of blood.

  For a moment, she is frozen in the red spray. She feels no pain, only awe.

  Now there are two daggers, fine and slim, one in each fist, and she is all weapon, all movement, a spinning blur of blade and skin. More blood—hers—slashes through the air. Another crow screams, flying straight at one of the moving knives. She becomes the bird now, could swear she is flying.

  You will become deadly.

  A darkness floods her vision, freezes her blood, blacker than the feathers of these creatures who want to kill her, want to devour her, want to force pain from her. No. She will force pain from them. Hunger spikes inside her. Hunger to feel their pain. One knife is in her teeth as she grabs the bars and climbs sideways, scissoring her legs. The crows are furious. She has become the attacker, they the prey, and it feels, almost, good. She swings back down, using her momentum to slice the air, slitting the throat of another crow.

  It crashes into the floor in a gush, and she slows, staring down. The ground is a smear of luminous red—her own blood mingled with that of the birds. A littered carpet of black feathers, some of them shredded. Corpses strewn about, claws clutching at air, gone still. It is a horrible, hideous work of art.

  She turns to defend herself, but the remaining crows are fleeing the cage, shrieking. Back into the darkness.

  Aurora drops her knives. They clang against the floor.

  She grabs two of the bars and leans in to them—there is just enough space to push her forehead through. She vomits, her empty stomach releasing bile and acid. Sweat slides down her back and neck, along her cheeks. Wetness streaks her face, but it is not tears. It is her blood, wet and shiny and glorious. She heaves in a shuddering breath, wondering what has just happened. The vile stench of the crows reaches her and makes her wretch again. She is full of disgust at what she has just done. And yet there is another sensation winding up through her as well: the sensation of victory.

  When the queen had come to Aurora’s cell in the dead of night one week before, it was as if she’d offered a dish of cream to a cat. Aurora nodded, doing everything in her power not to sob outright in her weakness. She feared if she did, the cry would split her apart.

  The queen’s promises—that Aurora would never again have to be seen as a pathetic princess or a damsel in distress—weren’t even necessary. Aurora didn’t trust her, and never had, but she would have agreed to anything. Malfleur handed her a scroll and a feather pen saturated in ink.

  Aurora saw then, in a flash, that she’d been right to play into Malfleur’s pride: the queen craved a new experiment. Aurora would be that experiment.

  The document promised Aurora thirty days of training. She’d be pushed to the limit, but given the magical strength to endure it. She’d become a warrior—fearless and merciless. The queen didn’t know exactly how the dark magic would affect her—that was the point.

  Aurora could not speak, and she did not know what would become of her.

  But she thought distantly of the ax she’d dragged through the quiet dawn of Sommeil.

  She did not hesitate.

  She took the pen, and signed.

  Aurora’s trainer today wears a floor-length cloak and a black mask that covers his head like the other soldiers. She’s pretty sure she has a different trainer each day, but they may as well all be one person, since all Vultures look nearly identical.

  He drags her from the cage, brings her to a cell where her wounds can be dressed.

  She has now been training for eighteen days. Her body has once again morphed into something she doesn’t recognize, this time not from hunger but from strength. Her shoulders are rounded with muscle, her back rippled, her calves taut. She moves now like a predator—able to carry stillness in her bones and then spring suddenly. She is alert too; not a fleck of dust can dance in the sunlight without passing detected through the corners of her vision.

  And as Aurora gets stronger, her goal gets clearer and clearer, surges within her, waking her earlier and earlier every morning until she soon finds she does not sleep at all. Urgency pumps through her at all hours of the day and night. She feels wild, and hungry—the need to run and to hunt and to kill pulsing in her veins.

  And yet a tiny flame deep inside her still sometimes flares bright, making her yearn to speak to Wren, to touch her, to confess everything . . . but then the feeling gutters out, and she is left only with coldness.

  She is lucky, one of her trainers told her. The others—all of the soldiers in Malfleur’s army—went through a similar initiation, but not all of them were forced to fight off crows. Some had to defend themselves against ravens, some against vultures. Each type has its own lethal fury.

  But there are things Aurora can do that the vultures cannot. Malfleur did not just give her a terrifying strength, a sliver of cruelness, but a piece of her own magic. The magic didn’t hurt—not that Aurora had expected it to. But when the magical strength and power flooded through her veins, she could swear she felt something—a pulse of heat, an electrical jolt, a hardening, as though her blood had become a kind of weapon.

  Aurora doesn’t know what it all means. She still can’t speak, and can’t feel. She’s human, and not fae, but she senses the way her humanity
is shrinking down, day by day, to a tiny burning ember behind her ribs. It’s growing fainter, and she has begun to fear that a slight breeze might blow it out. She might not notice at first, and then she’ll look for it, and it’ll be gone, and then she’ll forget what it was she was looking for. And that’s when she’ll no longer be human at all anymore.

  Does it mean she’s becoming like the evil queen herself?

  She doesn’t know. She knows only that she has to live, has to hang on to that last shred of herself, because if she can do that, then she can take this curse, or this gift—this power—and use it against Malfleur.

  Her trainers tell her that the queen is planning an extravagant event. A grand ball, even in the midst of war. Dignitaries and nobles from across the known world have been invited. Malfleur has a prize to reveal, and Aurora knows that she is the prize. The beautiful experiment.

  The experiment that will soon turn on its creator.

  She longs for the day when the queen’s neck will be in her hands, her eyes will blink their last, that sneer will turn to a desperate cry, and Aurora will have her heroism—and her revenge.

  Then Aurora can return to Isbe and tell her the truth, tell her all of it.

  Wren will be free. Heath too, if they ever find him. And all the refugees of Sommeil. All the oppressed citizens of LaMorte. All the captured prisoners of war from Deluce. All the unwilling recruits.

  Everything rests on the murder of Malfleur.

  14

  Isabelle

  Everything rests on the strength of Deluce’s army.

  Hooves pound the mud-slick royal road, and a heavy rain rattles the roof of the carriage that carries Isabelle and Byrne out to Verrière and the estate of Viscount Olivier. Isbe worries a worn letter in her hands, every jolt in the road setting her nerves on edge.

  So far, the list of names Binks gave her, detailing the fae who have a great deal of land and servants, has proven surprisingly useful. She has managed to grow the army’s numbers at an aggressive pace—but has she been aggressive enough?

  Deluce’s best spies have continuously reported Queen Malfleur’s lead, not just in men but in arms, just as the Delucian army rides into battle in La Faim, an area just south of here. This, Isbe knows, is where William hopes to strike back and make a serious dent in Malfleur’s forces. The terrain in La Faim is particularly tricky—but Deluce’s army has trained on it and will have a strong advantage. It’s a last-ditch attempt to drive back the worst of the damage, and Isabelle can’t stand how desperate they’ve become.

  She feels so foolish for having thought that with the alliance in place, the war would be a sure thing. Deluce and Aubin combined have more than three times the land mass of LaMorte, after all. But LaMorte has very little industry other than its military. Malfleur has been building up to this moment her whole reign, Isbe thinks with a chill. Her evil is moving ever closer, like a dark tide, and the resistance only weakens and weakens.

  Still, reinforcements are expected any day. William has been perplexed by the delay—the king of Aubin, his father, is perhaps skeptical of William’s hasty union with Isabelle. But he wouldn’t betray his own son. The Aubinian fleet will come, and when they do, everything will change.

  Or so they hope.

  Still, Isbe is restless. Her whole body twitches with the need to move. If only this were the type of restlessness that could have been eased by a brisk ride on her favorite mare, seeking out military drills to eavesdrop on, then practicing her stances on Gilbert with sticks instead of swords. It shames her now, the way she used to glamorize war. She spent so much of her youth memorizing the names of every weapon, dreaming up scenarios in which she gallantly saved the day by riding into battle in full armor.

  She has survived enough challenges by now to realize the foolhardiness of such a wish. Like so many wishes, nothing good could ever come of it.

  “Is something troubling you, Miss Isabelle?” Byrne asks from across the coach.

  She startles and then collects herself. “No, Byrne, nothing.”

  “I see,” he says. He’s quiet for a moment, but she has begun to learn how to read his silences.

  “Well then, what is it you are going to ask?” she pushes.

  “Oh, ’tis certain it’s none a’ my business.” He pauses. “I do wonder, though, if there be any other reason you’re keen to meet this viscount. You must be—”

  “Must be what?”

  “Curious, miss. ’Bout the heirloom.”

  Isbe stiffens. “Byrne, there is a war on, in case you haven’t noticed, and men’s lives are at stake. This is no fool’s errand.”

  The words, and their falseness, settle in the air between them. Because in her heart of hearts, Isbe knows he’s not wrong. She is curious. The faerie viscount Olivier is a well-known maker of the kingdom’s finest glass. If anyone might have information about her glass slipper, and how Isabelle’s real mother came to possess such a thing, it may be him. But she’s not going to admit that—not to Byrne or to anyone.

  That the slipper seems to sear its way through the velvet pouch at her hip and into her very bones, that she thinks about it night and day, puzzles over its meaning, longs for answers . . . these things are not important. They are a private matter that she will reconcile one day, perhaps, when peace has returned to the land.

  She sighs and, to keep from retorting anything further, toys again with the letter in her hand—it’s the latest missive from Aurora. She recalls flushing with something like embarrassment as a servant read it aloud to her this morning. In it, Aurora claims that Heath is everything she dreamed of and more. That they’ve located a safe house along the southern border of Deluce. Isbe is happy for her sister, but . . . Aurora’s happiness feels foreign to her, far off and fictional somehow.

  Is it really so hard to imagine Aurora has found true love? Perhaps not. Perhaps what’s hard to imagine is that she has found happiness without Isabelle. And perhaps it’s not so much that it’s hard to imagine but that it’s impossible to accept.

  But then, hasn’t Isabelle gone and done the same, with William? Or has she? Isbe never put much stock in true love before, and something about the idea seems almost distasteful to her. Although her blood thrills every time he returns to the palace for even a brief stay—a night here or there—she’s not sure she likes what has become of her, now that she’s someone’s wife. She has gotten too soft, somehow, too blown off course by her emotions, and William is the chief reason for that: the heat of his body alongside hers, the weight of his trust, the enormity of his expectations, the way she still sometimes finds herself floating in his silences like a bird borne on a wind, waiting to see where his thoughts will carry her own.

  It’s a slow erosion of everything she used to believe was true about herself. She might need other people for things like reading messages and guiding her hand and describing the scenery, but she does not need anyone else in order to feel herself whole. Or at least, she didn’t need anyone like that, before William.

  She forces down the lump that has suddenly risen in her throat.

  She’s relieved to know, at least, that her sister is safe. Aurora—her Aurora, soft, kind, thoughtful, and always with the best intentions—has found a way to shelter herself from the worst of the war. Isbe can’t help but think her sister is kind of like the glass slipper: something to be protected at all costs.

  The viscount lives in a large manor adjoined to his famous glasshouse, which produces much of the window glass used throughout the kingdom. The estate is surrounded on three sides by a thick forest.

  By the time Isabelle arrives, the carriage wheels crunching along a pebbled path, the angry spring rain has let up.

  “The trees, Miss Isabelle,” Byrne comments, holding her by the elbow as they exit the carriage and pass through the grounds. “Look as though ’ey’ve got a thousan’ hands where ’ey should’ve a head!”

  “Pollarding, it’s called,” says a polite-sounding manservant who has emerged to meet
them on the gravel path. “Master has received your message. He’s awaiting your arrival in the glasshouse.”

  He leads them down a winding path. The scent of the glasshouse greets her before they enter it: charred wood and a lightly floral smoke. The servant leads them inside and gives them a seat in the foyer of the bustling open workroom while he locates his master. Tools and prongs clatter loudly all around them as fires are stoked and wood is axed and materials blown into molds and workers bustle about. The glasshouse hums with production and energy, with movement and heat and flame.

  “My new queen,” Olivier says, materializing before them, his voice not obsequious but genuine. Isbe is almost taken aback by it. His voice sounds young, especially for one of the fae, and a little feminine. “To what do I owe this visit? Your message was quite mysterious.”

  “We can’t afford the risk of interception. I’ve come on a matter of some importance,” she replies.

  After asking Byrne to wait for her, she follows the young viscount through the glasshouse, trying to imagine the high ceilings as he describes them proudly, like in a cathedral, with wooden beams arcing across the top. She tries to imagine too the many earthenware ovens, called beehives for their domed shapes. The tufts and blasts and hisses and clicks of the workroom form a collective buzzing.

  “I apologize for the din, but I tend to think it provides the perfect backdrop for a private conversation,” Olivier admits. “One can’t be too careful. That is the lesson of the glass, after all.”

  “The lesson of the glass?”

  “Precision. Caution. Care,” he answers with a hint of love in his voice.

  “We may as well come to the point of my visit,” she says, straightening her shoulders. “All of these workers.” She gestures at the noises and movement around her. “Surely we could put them to better use.”

  “Better use?” He balks. “You know, Highness, the recipe for our world-famous forest glass may seem quite simple to the likes of you: just two parts river sand, one part beech ash. However, what it becomes is anything but.” He pauses. “There is no art more blessed than to form what is both beautiful and fragile, Highness . . . what could be undone at a whim by the same hands that made it.”