Those two words again. My fingers tighten on the book the longer I stare at the painting, something like determination coursing through me. Sir was right. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what Winter feels like, what forest this painting depicts. I don’t know anything, I’ve never seen it, because it’s gone. Just like that, one horrible war, one vicious takeover, and thousands of people were slaughtered, imprisoned, destroyed. Just like that, an entire kingdom was shattered, and the most I’ve ever been able to do is hope that someday I have my own Winter memories.
I’ve been so selfish, haven’t I? Selfish and narrow-minded and wrong, because I wanted to matter to Winter, but in my own way. Within my own set parameters that would also fit who I wanted to be. I choke on a laugh, hating that it’s taken me this long to realize that Sir was right. Damn him—I long for the day when he’s wrong for once.
I don’t even realize I’ve moved until Theron clears his throat. I’m kneeling on the floor before the painting, staring, the book still clutched to my chest in one hand while my other goes out toward the trees like if I reach hard enough, I can grab some snow off the branches.
Theron shifts his hold on the painting and looks down at it. “I can have it hung in your room if you wish.”
I nod and jerk my hand back around the book. “Thank you,” I breathe, and look up at him. He smiles, soft and careful, his eyes shining as they dart across my face.
Muscle by muscle, his smile fades. “We’ll get it back.”
I hug the book tighter and swallow, forcing a sudden rush of tears to the back of my throat. “We?” I shake my head. “They will. My part is—” I stop, breath pinching, and wince. It shouldn’t hurt. This is right, isn’t it? This is what I need to do—marry into Cordell. For Winter.
Theron leans the painting against the back of a couch, one of his hands absently hovering over it. His eyes drift out like he’s remembering some long-ago tale, and when he focuses on me, I stand, quiet, holding the book like a shield between us.
“I almost joined Ventralli’s Writers Guild when I was eleven,” he says.
My eyebrows rise. “Really? What happened?”
“Nothing good,” he laughs. “I wrote to the Ventrallan king at the time—my mother’s brother-in-law—and got his special approval to join. I arranged for a place to stay and travel to get there and how many men would escort me. I was so proud of myself, and I wanted it so badly.” Theron’s gaze drops to a space over my shoulder, staring into the past. “Five days before I was to leave, my father sent his steward to my rooms to tell me a carriage was waiting to take me to a military base on Cordell’s coast. That I would live there for the next three years and study under one of my father’s colonels.
“My father knew my plans to go to Ventralli. I told him as I was making them, but I didn’t know until that day that he never intended to let me go. That his heir would be brought up in military methods and resource management, not art and poetry.” He frowns and looks back at me as if he’d forgotten I was here. “But that didn’t stop me from having all this”—he waves around the room—“and from inviting the best Ventrallan writers and poets and artists to visit Cordell. There will always be a they in your new life, Meira. They make decisions; they mold your future. The trick is to find a way to still be you through it all.”
“Are we really allowed that luxury?” I ask. I don’t even think about how forward it might be or how little I know him—all I can think is how much I do know him. He wanted something more out of his life. He wanted to be an artist, though his father wanted him to be a king. And here he is, the heir of Cordell, standing amidst piles of books and paintings. He’s both. He adapted to everything his life thrust at him.
Theron exhales, his shoulders bending ever so slightly. “I need to believe so.”
I frown. Is it possible? To be both what Winter needs and what I want? Instead of fighting for only what I want, or surrendering to only what Winter needs, to find a balance between the two?
I hold up the book. “Can I borrow this?”
Theron nods before he even sees what it is. “Of course. Take anything you want.” He nudges the painting. “And I will have someone put this up for you. Now”—he tries again, a bright smile washing over his face—“the menagerie?”
CHAPTER 15
THE NEXT MORNING, when Rose and Mona come again with pleas for me to attend etiquette class, I shock them and myself by agreeing.
Rose, holding a sky-blue gown and a navy ribbon, stops beside the wardrobe. Her eyes narrow, and after a pause she scurries over to stand between my bed and the balcony. “Is this a trick?” she asks, and I don’t miss how she tries to hold her arms out, as if to block me from sprinting around her and leaping off the balcony.
I slide off the bed, on the side opposite the balcony doors, and calmly meet her eyes. “No. I’ll go.”
Rose puckers. “Wearing a proper outfit?”
I frown. “Yes.”
“Without your weapon?”
A groan bubbles in my throat. “Going isn’t compromise enough?”
Rose’s pucker sharpens and she clucks her tongue. “Weapons have no business inside the palace.”
She takes a few quick steps across the room and lays the gown and ribbon on the bed. No sooner does the fabric relax against the mussed sheets than her hands move to my nightgown, undoing the buttons down the back like she’s afraid I’ll change my mind if she doesn’t move fast enough. I start to flinch, start to fight her off on instinct, when my muscles still. I can do this. All of this—the marriage, whatever classes Noam ordered, and help my kingdom in ways that I never even dreamed of but that will still make me feel like I belong to Winter.
If Theron can do it, I can too. I can weave threads of myself into a tapestry already designed by others. It’s possible. And this could be good—I’m in a position of power, aren’t I? Far more power than being an ordinary soldier. This will be good.
So as Rose tugs the gown over my head, and Mona runs a brush through my hair, I pull my shoulders straight. I’m a future ruler of Cordell. How would a future ruler act? Mather bursts into my mind, his steadiness, his calm demeanor in the face of . . . everything. Act like Mather. I can do this.
“I’m bringing my chakram,” I say. When Rose whips her head up, I level my eyes in a stare. Calm, in control, steady. “I don’t intend on using it, but I will have it with me.”
Rose’s lips twitch. Her eyes narrow, a tight sweep of a glare, before she drops back to work tying the dark-blue ribbon around my waist.
I can’t hide my smile. One small victory.
The next week flies past in a whirl of Cordellan history and curtsying properly and learning which fork to use while eating salad. I clearly surprise Rose and Mona by paying attention, and every time an instructor compliments me on answering a question correctly, they twitter excitedly from the back of the room. But I’ve always been a good student—in camp, it was only when I saw Mather sparring without me that I started to get twitchy and disruptive, and Sir would throw his hands in the air and shout at me until I broke down in tears. Now, though, I really am trying to be good at this whole future-queen thing.
If only because, every morning, I find a way to be me.
In the earliest cracks of dawn, when the sun is still fighting a black–blue war with the night sky, I slip on my clothes—my real clothes, a shirt and pants and boots—and scurry through the still-sleeping palace to the library, where I stashed Magic of Primoria. This coupled with my chaotic schedule of classes and meals in my room means I haven’t seen any of the other refugees since Mather and Theron’s disastrous sparring session. Certainly not for lack of trying on their part—I dart down side halls when I see Dendera coming, scale walls when I hear Finn’s voice around the corner. I have no desire to face anyone until I can present a revelation. Until I can prove that I can still be useful in this position as me.
Part of me wants to sneak out to the shooting range each morning instead of creeping to the library. I haven’t used my chakram since I started queen training, and even though I take it with me to every lesson, it’s starting to feel too much like a prop. But the other part of me, the part that’s resigned to this arrangement, knows how important it is that I try to read Magic of Primoria.
Emphasis on the word try.
Every line on every page of the almost-disintegrating-in-my-hands book is filled with the tiniest of tiny words written in cramped, illegible script. The letters bleed into one another from age and from the fact that the writer pushed the lines so close together that the text looks like one big blob of ink. As if that wasn’t enough, the lines I actually can decipher are beyond unhelpful, either filled with archaic language or riddles, but mostly just history I already know. How the chasm of magic has rested beneath all the Season Kingdoms for as long as anyone can remember, a source of mystery and magic that has existed as long as our world itself. The chasm sits deep, deep beneath our land, so even if a Rhythm did conquer a Season Kingdom and chose to dig through it in an attempt to get the magic, they’d be digging for decades.
There used to be an entrance to the chasm through the Klaryns, a shaft that was opened one day when miners stumbled into it. No one knows where the mine actually was—shortly after it was discovered, it was lost to landslides or deadly weather. But I like to think it was in Winter’s part of the Klaryns—after all, what other Season Kingdom is as good at mining as we are? Then again, we haven’t been able to find another entrance to the magic chasm since the first one vanished, so maybe we aren’t that good.
When the entrance was open, thousands of years ago, an expedition was sent to retrieve magic. According to legends and a few of the more legible lines in the book, the magic sat in the center of an endless cavern, a great ball of energy snapping and crackling as it hung in the negative space of the cave.
To be removed from the cave, the magic needed a host, an object imbued with its powers. The great ball of energy pulsed around the cavern, striking rocks here and there like uncontrollable, chaotic fingers of lightning. And the rocks it struck became infused with magic. So monarchs started leaving other objects close to the source, waiting for the bolts of magic to strike swords or shields or jewelry and fill them with power. They also tried more dangerous ways of creating conduits, of letting the magic strike their servants. This led to the discovery that only objects could be hosts for the magic—people didn’t turn into conduits so much as they turned into overcooked meat.
That was how the Royal Conduits were created. The monarchs of the world ordered their conduits made first, connecting them to their bloodlines through even more magic. But those ended up being the only conduits ever made, because just after the eight Royal Conduits were created, the entrance to the chasm disappeared and our world changed forever. Not only did we have magic now, but we had prejudice too—the Rhythms hated us for losing something so vital. They might have hated the Seasons before anyway, for any number of reasons, but it’s the loss of the magic source that hangs with them to this day, even when no one can remember our lives being any different than they are now. There have always been the eight Royal Conduits, nothing more, nothing less.
That’s all I can decipher. And the more I stare at Magic of Primoria, the more my flicker of doubt grows into a full-on flame. What am I even looking for? I’ve had the same Hannah dream every night this week, the one where I see her surrounded by the refugees in the study. But I can’t figure out any connection between the dream and the things I do or don’t do—I even tried hiding the lapis lazuli ball and not touching it for a few days, but I still had the dream. So it isn’t magic? But what did I even want to find, anyway? Some long-lost source of magic that I could present to Sir, proving that I can matter to Winter in my own way in addition to linking us to Cordell?
I slam the book closed and press my back into the balcony railing behind me. The early morning light casts yellow rays through the towering windows on my left. It’s almost time for more queen lessons, but days of being awake so early are catching up to me, and I just want to crawl back into bed and forget about trying to be a proper Cordellan lady. My fingers tighten on the book’s cover and I regret leaving the chakram in my room this morning. A few easy slices and this uncooperative tome would be nothing but confetti.
“Sustenance?”