Winter roses burst from the underside of the ice. Blooms erupted, sprouting vines and thorns and new buds that became flowers. They covered the hole, wilting and disappearing seamlessly into a smooth sheet.
I kicked frantically. My legs were on fire. Black spots exploded around the edge of my vision as my lungs convulsed, remembering they needed air. Warmth leeched out of the water around me. I swam for my life, cutting with my pale, small, human hands toward the white sheet above, toward the hole that withered as the darkness in my eyes grew. My fingers reached, splayed, for the last open water.
Frost grew over it like leaves. Icy thorns pricked my fingers, drawing blood. I gasped, and the water rushed in.
This was my end. Drifting to eternal sleep in a place I’d loved without respect. Free of all my problems at last. A drop of blood uncurled in the water. I stared at it, red against blue against white.
Against steel.
A sharp edge sliced into my vision. Far away I heard a dim cracking sound, but I couldn’t understand it. I was lost to the vastness of Below.
Gold and silver slashed down. The blade wiggled into the crack of the ice, broke free, then chopped again. And again. Ice grew back, fast, stitching the pieces together—but not fast enough. The blades were a whirl, one after the other, relentless. And at last, they revealed what I’d been seeking.
A leather-clad arm plunged into the water, and a hand tanned by days in the sun wrapped around my wrist and pulled. My brain had enough self-preservation instinct to tell my feet to kick. I fluttered my blue toes.
My head broke the surface, and I coughed and choked, spitting lake water all over Inkar. She braced one knee against the ice and pulled me up.
I gulped air. My body shivered uncontrollably. I fell to my hands and knees, and my skin instantly fused to the ice.
“It will be all right,” Inkar whispered as she worked me free, peeling me off the ice minus one layer of skin. I was too cold to feel the pain. She draped one of my arms over her shoulder, then the other. “I have you now.”
Black boots creaked against white snow as Inkar staggered to her feet. Even my eyes seemed to glaze over with frost. It didn’t matter, I realized, my thoughts as slow as milk in the morning. I would die of hypothermia anyway.
“You can’t do this,” warned a voice I ought to recognize. “You cannot interfere in the coronation trials.”
“Try to stop me, old man,” Inkar growled back.
The trip up to the palace was a haze. My mind was mercifully blank for the first time in a long time. When the fog finally lifted, I was in a bathtub in my antechamber, stripped naked, staring at a blazing fire. My fingers and toes burned. I brought up a shaking arm to inspect my fingertips. They were blue, but light blue. Frostnip, but not frostbite. I would recover. The skin of my palms had been tightly wrapped, and the linen was soaked. My knees and the tops of my feet were the same.
Inkar sat in a chair next to the fire. She turned at the sound of splashing water and her body sagged in relief. “Are you with me?”
“Yes. I mean, I think so.” My voice sounded like the rasping of ice. I drew my knees up, conscious of my nakedness.
Inkar stared intently at the floor. “I am sorry,” she said. “I thought it would be best. I will fetch your robe.”
I smiled. It is not odd in my country to be naked in front of other women, I almost said. But that would imply things—not bad things, but things I wasn’t ready for. Not to mention that I could barely move my arms. I tried to hoist myself out of the tub and hardly rose an inch. “Where’s Aino?”
“I do not know,” Inkar called back. I heard the creak of my wardrobe door. “She told me what to do and disappeared.” Inkar came back in with my robe over one shoulder and a towel over the other, and a small wound kit in her hands. She draped my robe over the chair, near enough to the fire that it might get some warmth. Then she pulled the bearskin rug over to the edge of the tub and gripped my arm, steadying me as I struggled to my feet.
Her hand was so warm. I wanted to wrap myself in that warmth until the trembling stopped.
“Can you stand alone?” she asked.
I nodded. I didn’t trust myself to open my mouth.
Inkar draped the towel around me and began to dry. She worked precisely, saying, “arm,” or “leg,” when I needed to lift, careful never to touch her skin to mine. All the same, her touch left a warm trail wherever it had been, and my tired heart pattered furiously as she moved from limb to limb. Soon she set the towel aside and pulled my robe around me.
“You’re very good at this,” I said as she tightened it.
“I have been out in the field, remember?” she replied. “I have dealt with hypothermia before.”
Her hands rested on my arms. It was hard to concentrate. “But you live somewhere warm,” I said.
Inkar laughed. “Only a Kylmian would say that.” She led me to the chair, and I sat. “May I change your bandages?”
“Okay.”
Inkar knelt, pulling a slim knife from her belt to cut off the wrapping. I hissed at the pressure, but her fingers were light as they ran the edge of my wound. The skin was raw and wept yellow pus. “It looks good, if you can believe it. It will be a little hard to hold a sword for a few days.” Inkar met my eyes and flashed a brief smile.
I wanted her to kiss me so badly. Energy fizzed through my body, starting in my stomach and spreading out until my fingers warmed with it. Every brush of her against my skin sent a tingling through me that made me throb.
“This may sting,” she murmured, picking up a jar of something thick and pale from the wound kit. She spread the poultice over my palm, and I drew in a breath as her other hand tightened around my wrist. “What is it?”
What did I tell her—that I could feel my heartbeat pulsing in my wounds? That her skin glowed in the firelight, or that her waterfall hair had come half undone from her braid? That the way she wrapped my hand again, so careful, so concentrated, was the most beautiful way I’d ever seen someone look at me?
My floundering mouth came up with, “Do you end up bandaging all your wives?”
Inkar didn’t lift her head, but I saw the curve of her jaw as she smiled. “Joking? I think you are feeling better.”
She released my right hand and took the left. My fingers caught in her braid, loosening the ribbon. Inkar froze, head tilted down, gazing at my hand. I teased her hair out. The strands separated as easily as water. As I found the base of her skull, she finally looked up at me, still kneeling like a supplicant before her queen. Her lips parted slightly, revealing ivory teeth.
I leaned forward as she leaned up. Our mouths met, awkward in a way that last night’s kiss hadn’t been, but I didn’t fear her now. Her lips burned against me, and I drank up her warmth, letting it spread in waves. I didn’t care if she was using me. Everyone would, one way or another. Why shouldn’t it be her?
A massive shiver overtook me. Inkar pulled back, and it was like losing the sun. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just—cold, still.” I leaned forward again to recapture some of that heat. Our foreheads met, our noses touched. She smelled like salt and sweat.
“I should—” Inkar’s breath tickled my neck. “Aino will be back soon.” She bent over my other hand, and I didn’t dissent. I didn’t need Aino walking in on us, or her disapproval.
For a few moments, the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire and the scrape of the putty knife in the jar of poultice. Then Inkar stood and went to my desk. “Aino suggested we bring you out for dinner, if you are not too ill.”
I laughed. “Since when were you and Aino coconspirators?”
“Since you went through the ice,” Inkar said. She frowned at the various jars on my desk. I liked the way she wrinkled her nose in puzzlement.
The servants’ door opened in the antechamber, and Aino appeared, obscured by a large stack of blankets and towels. She dropped them onto the bed, then spotted me through the door.
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m fine,” I said uncomfortably as she hurried over. She bent down to wrap me in a careful hug, an effect somewhat ruined when she started to sob on my shoulder. I patted her awkwardly, trying to hold her without using my hands.
“What happened? First the hole closed. Then Inkar—” She stopped, took a shuddering breath, and tried again, voice softening. “Then Her Grace broke through and pulled you out. Below was pushing Sigis out of the water as we left. He looked…”
“He must be alive. His army would be laying siege to us otherwise.” Though I hoped he’d bear some interesting scars.
Aino cleared her throat. “May I…?”
“Here.” Inkar handed her a roll of bandages.
Neither of them looked at each other. They seemed… embarrassed? As Inkar slipped into the bedroom to sort through the pile of linens, Aino bent over my raw knees. “Forget what happened with me,” I said in Kylmian. “What happened between the two of you?”
“What do you mean?” Aino asked, but she didn’t look up.
“You know what I mean. She’s not ordering you around. You’re not being sarcastic. You’re… agreeing on things.”
“We’ve always agreed on things,” Aino protested. I snorted. She closed the bandage around my left knee. “You did not see the way she looked when we all thought you were dead. She broke hundreds of years of tradition for you. And she threatened to kill Eirhan.”
“At least somebody did,” I joked.
Aino smiled, but it was quick, vanishing so completely I wasn’t sure it had been there at all. “When she broke through the ice… I thought she’d go in, too. Then I thought she’d give up. But she didn’t stop. She didn’t even falter. I don’t know why she was willing to die for you, but…” Aino slapped more of the poultice on my right knee, making me hiss in pain. “Sorry. I’m not saying that I’ll ever think of her as one of my own. But if you have to marry someone, marry her.”
If I had to marry someone. The thought opened a strange hollowness in my belly. I didn’t want to get married at sixteen. I hadn’t really considered getting married at all. Inkar had been a lucky choice, but I’d known her for only six days.
Inkar came back into the antechamber, and I watched as she examined a length of bandage. She was so serious when she thought I wasn’t looking. But when she caught my eye, her dark, flirtatious smile came up. My heart jumped. I looked down and fiddled with the corner of my robe.
Aino finished wrapping me up. “There. I think that will hold.” She shook her head again. “You should have run.”
“No, Aino,” I said. I’d wanted to—I still wanted to—but I couldn’t say I should have.
A knock came at the door. With a sigh, Aino got up to answer it. “Yes?”
“Compliments from my lord minister,” said a woman’s voice that I vaguely recognized. I twisted to look, wiping at my cheeks and wincing as I pressed on my wounds. Urso’s secretary stood in the hall. “But the final trial has started.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
What?” I jerked to my feet.
“No,” Aino whispered.
“Urso sent me. The prime minister has allowed King Sigis to begin his speech,” the secretary said.
No. No, no, no. He’d obviously decided I’d lost the trial Below—or perhaps I hadn’t won it to his liking. “When?”
“He began fifteen minutes ago.”
“Get my coat,” I told Aino.
“You need to get dressed,” she began.
“No time.” I limped toward my wardrobe and grabbed the first coat I saw, the dark velvet. Inkar helped me pull it and button it. I placed a hand to my temple as my head spun. Inkar steadied me.
Aino brushed at her tears. “It’s going to be fine,” I said. She didn’t answer.
“Only Her Grace will be allowed in the hall.” The secretary tugged at the ends of her gloves. Unease prodded me. Did I know her voice?
Aino frowned. “Kamen’s trial was public.”
“Minister Eirhan has ordered it,” the secretary said in a trembling voice.
Inkar’s eyes narrowed. “I am the grand consort. I shall go where I like.”
“Inkar,” I said. She looked at me reproachfully. “It’s okay.” I had to complete the coronation trials on my own, and she’d already interfered for me once. And in this last trial, I had an advantage that I didn’t think Sigis could match.
“We will escort you, at least,” Aino said.
As we left my rooms, Viljo shot me a worried glance, then turned to follow us. The secretary scowled and quickened her pace. “Through here,” she said, heading toward the family library. “We’ll take the servants’ corridor.”
She opened the door to the library, and I tottered inside.
One little fire had been stoked next to an armchair in the most open corner. A figure sat in the armchair, so bundled I couldn’t recognize them. “Hello, Ekata,” said a small voice. “I had a nightmare. And they say that Father died?”
Svaro. We will find another Avenko.
The relief dropped out of me like a stone. Aino gasped as the secretary parted our hands with force, her fingers tearing at my bandaged palms. The secretary gave Aino a hard shove, back through the open door, then slammed it and pulled a chair under the handle.
Something twanged. Viljo shouted. Then he crashed into me, and we fell to the ice floor with his shoulder in my clavicle. My spine sang with pain. I pushed on Viljo, gritting my teeth as I tried to ignore my back and my muscles and my palms, and sat up. Blood soaked the front of my robe.
Urso stood at the other end of the room, fumbling with the little crossbow. “I told you to keep everyone else out,” he said in a high voice. Eirhan stood next to him. His eyebrows were drawn into a thoughtful frown.
“I’m sorry,” Urso’s secretary said. “I didn’t know how—I couldn’t make—”
Her voice. I did recognize it—from the law library. I almost laughed. I’d been so intent on discovering whether it was Annika or Itilya with Sigis that night that I hadn’t considered that someone who wasn’t a minister could be conspiring against me. My family’s arrogance toward the common people would kill me after all.
“Hardly matters.” Urso’s hands shook as he put the crossbow down on a little table. “Bind her. We’ll do it another way.” A dark messenger bowl sat on the table; something fell from his hands into the water.
My mind landed on one fact after another. I pressed on Viljo’s wound. “Please, will you call for a doctor?”
“Are—are you serious?” Urso sputtered.
These would be my last moments on the earth, so I might as well do something good with them. I fumbled for the small knife at my belt and cut strips of cloth from the hem of my nightgown. “It’s not his fault he was assigned to guard me. Don’t kill him for it.”
“We can’t get out.” Even as he spoke, winter roses burst and grew around the room. They crushed over one another, flowing down the wall and blooming in delicate crystal petals before melting into the walls. “That’s our security, Your Grace. No one is coming in to save you.”
I busied myself tending to Viljo’s wound. My hands trembled. I didn’t trust myself to pull out the crossbow bolt lodged in his shoulder, so I wrapped cloth around it. Little good it did him. Viljo paled with every passing moment. My paltry bandages grew soaked almost as soon as they touched his body.
“You might have warned Viljo,” I told Eirhan. “You might have told him to stay away from me.”
“And what makes you think I knew about this?” Eirhan’s voice was calm.
“You know everything?” I guessed. “You planned it?”
“My dear, what a thing to say.” Eirhan shook out his arms as though the idea clung to him unpleasantly. “After all the time I spent cultivating Lyosha for rule, after the delicate balance I walked between father and son—you think I’d throw all that away to start over? With you?”
“Why did you kill Yannush, then?” My eyes prickl
ed. Focus. Keep applying pressure.
“The man wanted to be prime minister. It was simply untenable.” Eirhan spoke casually, but I was starting to understand him.
He was afraid. He’d spent his life trying to keep his job and his head. He’d never anticipated me, or the trouble I’d bring. He’d been struggling to maintain his place and his power, just as I had.
But just as my situation didn’t justify my actions, neither did his. Beneath my hand, Viljo gasped and wheezed. Something burbled in his lungs, and a fresh lance of pain went through my chest. I’d killed him the moment I’d made him my guard.
Urso glared at Eirhan, though the effect was ruined by the shaking in his hands. “Well? Does that mean you’ve chosen your side, at last?” Urso prompted.
Eirhan watched me silently.
Urso jerked his chin, and his secretary pulled my arms behind me. I struggled uselessly. “Maybe if you cooperate, we’ll have all this over with in time to save your guard,” she said in my ear, and bound my wrists with a thick cloth.
“I’m sorry.” Urso swallowed. His eyes flickered to Svaro. “It was His Grace Below’s idea. The Avenko line… it has to be contained. It’s nothing personal, you see. But we never had the means to do it until His Grace contacted us to offer more… magical assistance.”
So Below had acted first. Though the plan would have come to nothing if Yannush and Urso hadn’t been willing. “And where does Sigis fit?”
“We needed someone to help stabilize the country. Someone with experience and power. We didn’t think… It doesn’t matter.” Urso’s voice turned pitying. “We thought you would be the best alternative. I am sorry you turned out to be as troublesome as your father.”
The funny thing was, he did sound sorry. He was good at regret and sympathy. He was always trying to be liked, and even now he wanted me to understand him. All the same, I couldn’t conflate regret with having a moral compass. “Forgive me if I don’t see.”
“You should have married Sigis. You should have done as you were told.”
I should have been less like my father. That was the bad choice I’d made. And I’d changed my mind too late.
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