CHAPTER 13
HALF OF THE barn is made up of stables with horses poking their curious heads out of enclosures, while the other half is a wide room filled with oak tables and cabinets and rusted iron weapon racks. The open barn doors make the place airy and cool, while the light dusting of straw on the stone floor gives it a distinctly masculine feel.
Mather struts determinedly into the room but stops when he comes to the right wall. He stares up at it, arms crossed, and juts his chin out. “I thought maybe when Winter has such a place . . .” His voice fades, his eyes losing a bit of their annoyance from moments ago.
I stop beside him and mimic his arms-crossed stance. A map covers the wall. Detailed and practically life-sized, it shows every part of Primoria from the northernmost Paisel Mountains all the way down to the southernmost Klaryns. The Eldridge Forest and Rania Plains sit in the center, a splotch of green and yellow with the Langstone and Feni Rivers nearly cutting the entire map in half.
What makes this map unique, though, is the way the kingdoms are portrayed: a small illustration of each Royal Conduit shines in the center of its respective kingdom’s territory lines.
I groan. “This is what you want to talk about? Geography?”
Mather shakes his head, his brow pinching. “No, I—” He stops and runs a hand down his face, grappling for the right words. When he starts talking again, he’s angry, his words clipped and tight. “I wanted you to see this. To see everything. I wanted to explain to you—snow above, would you just listen to me?”
I snarl at him. “Because you deserve to have me hear you out?”
“No,” he admits, and I start. “Because you deserve to hear what I have to say. You deserve it, Meira. This doesn’t have anything to do with me.”
I roll my eyes but make no move to leave or to speak again, which Mather takes as permission to talk. He looks back up at the map, his eyes lingering on Cordell. In the center of Cordell’s territory lines, a dagger gleams beneath a scripted M for male-blooded.
“Paisly’s female-blooded shield,” Mather says, almost to himself, a soft hum of noise as his eyes travel the map. “Ventralli’s male-blooded crown. Yakim’s female-blooded ax, Summer’s male-blooded cuff, Autumn’s female-blooded ring, Spring’s male-blooded staff, and—”
He steps forward and stretches his palm out to rest on Winter. Flanked by Spring to the east, mountains to the south, Autumn to the west, and the Feni River to the north, Winter’s locket dangles over the expansive mass of land, the heart-shaped pendant etched with a single white snowflake in the center. The F just above it is mocking. A visual representation of one of our lifelong struggles.
“Between meetings, I’ve hardly had time to breathe,” Mather says. “But a few days ago, I came out here to get some air, and I saw this. Captain Dominick said they put this map here to remind the men of Cordell’s place in the world. So they can look up and always know who they are. A piece in the bigger puzzle of Primoria.”
I frown. “That doesn’t sound like something Noam would encourage.”
Mather’s shoulders tighten. “Noam didn’t commission it.” He glances back, his hand on the picture of the locket. “Theron did.”
The way he says Theron’s name puts a nick in Mather’s otherwise reverent tone. Like that one detail is a black smudge in a beautiful tapestry.
Mather curls his fingers on the map, tugging against the drawing of the locket. The back half of the real one sits around his neck. Next to the palm-sized picture, it looks sad. Empty.
“Noam may like to pretend Cordell is the only kingdom in the world,” he continues, his voice getting progressively harder, “but part of what makes his men so passionately Cordellan is this map. This reminder that they could be Rhythm or Season, Yakimian, Ventrallan, Summerian—but they’re not. They’re Cordellan. And that fact is what pushes them to fight for their land.” Mather smiles in a sad way that isn’t really a smile. “I want Winter to have that.”
He pulls back from the map and steps toward me, close, closer still, until he’s barely a hand’s width away. We’re alone, all the other soldiers out in the training yard.
“I didn’t want this,” he whispers, the words cutting between us. “I want Winter free, but I don’t want—I don’t want him. For you. I don’t want you to think that you’re worthless, that this is the only place for you, because it’s not, Meira—it never could be, not with everything you are.”
My pulse thuds against my ribs, anxiety and anger rolling through me, and I can’t bring myself to look into his eyes. Just stop talking. Just please stop talking, you giant, stupid—
“I don’t know what else to do.” Mather’s breath blows across my face. “Before we left camp, Sir took me aside and told me what I was going to do. It hollowed me out in a way I’d never felt. It was the first time I truly understood how much we have to sacrifice to overthrow Angra, how much our lives don’t matter in the bigger task at hand. I always thought we would find a way to . . . to overcome this. To be together, and I swear to you”—Mather takes my chin in his thumb and finger and pulls me to look at him—“I swear to you, I will find a way to fix this. I told you I’d restore balance, and I will.”
“No.”
The word hangs in the air. I blink, confused, but I know I’d say it again. Why? I’ve wanted him to say this forever, haven’t I? Why would I feel anything but Yes! in the wake of his words?
Mather squints at me. “I will. I can. I won’t let Angra destroy even more of our lives. No matter what William says, there has to be another way—”
“No!”
I shove back from him, a part of me tearing off and staying in his hands. Each word hurts. It piles on top of Sir’s words last night, churning together in some great wave of confusion. And all I know is that Mather’s hope for another solution is a taunting, all-consuming temptation that I can’t afford to feel; already I can taste the first waves of relief cresting over his words. But there is no other way. No other hope. Sir spent fourteen years trying to find another path to take. Letting myself believe that Mather might be able to save me, only for me to end up still in this marriage game . . .
I don’t think I’d survive it.
“I’m doing this, Mather,” I say, my voice thin and weary. “For our kingdom, for our people. For you. We need Cordell. We need this.”
Mather pulls back like I slapped him. Redness creeps up his neck, sweat glistening on his forehead. “You want to marry Theron?”
My eyes narrow. “What?”
“You want to marry Theron,” he says again, and everything in his body sags. “You don’t—”
Want me.
His unspoken words drape over me, weighing me down and down until I think I might crumple onto the straw-covered floor.
“You’re an idiot,” I spit, though I hear how loudly I didn’t refute his accusation. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s about allies and saving our kingdom. You have to stop—nothing’s changed; nothing’s different between us. It’s just as impossible as it always was, and this is how it has to be.”
“I’ll find a way around it,” Mather returns. He steps toward me, I step back, a weird dance through the barn. “I was always going to find a way. I told you before we left—I told you I would fix this!”
“How was I supposed to know that’s what you meant? All I ever got was Sir’s voice hammering into my head that you were too important to waste on me!”
“I never felt that! You’ve always been everything to me. I didn’t know how to handle how much I needed you growing up—snow, I still don’t, all right? I’m trying, though. Do you think I’m that arrogant? That I let William make me believe I was too good for you?”
“What else was I supposed to think?” I’m shouting now, my voice tearing at the barn’s rafters. I step back once, twice, knowing I’ll never be able to get far enough away from him. “You may be able to look beyond the reality of our situation and imagine some other outcome, but all I ever saw, all I ever see, is a reminder that our lives aren’t our own.”
“You think I don’t know that our lives aren’t our own?” Mather grabs the locket half in a fist. “I’m the king, Meira!”