*
The cart emptied a little more at each stop until Lynet was alone with the merchant, who thankfully paid no attention to her. She was fortunate she was alone when they crossed the Frost Line, because the moment it happened, she visibly jolted.
Even if she couldn’t see for herself that the snow was gone, she would have known it at once. She simply couldn’t feel the snow anymore. She had never thought she could feel snow in the first place, but now that it was gone, she could sense its absence, like a low buzzing in her ear that had suddenly been silenced.
And then there was the warmth that was slowly spreading through her body, making her feel heavy and listless. When she lifted her arm, it seemed to move more slowly than usual, like the air itself was trying to push it back down. Looking at her hand, she remembered her experiments with Nadia, and she wondered if her skin was still cold to the touch. She’d have to be careful not to let anyone brush against her here; her cold skin wasn’t too strange in the North among the snow, but people would probably think she was ill if she was icy to the touch even under the sun.
I don’t fit here, she thought suddenly, and she wondered if Mina had felt the same way when she had first crossed the Frost Line from the other direction. Mina always felt cold, no matter how many years she had spent in the North, and Lynet knew, without being able to explain why, that she would never get used to the heat under her skin now.
Lynet looked around and found an entire world she had never seen before. Green hills rose up near the horizon, and above them the sun was almost painfully bright now that it wasn’t hidden by dense clouds. She had seen trees before, of course, but she only knew them to come in two varieties: green or bare. As the cart jostled along the path, she watched their surroundings change. She saw trees with red and gold leaves, trees with pink flowers, trees full of fruit or berries. She marveled at them all, thinking of Mina’s rooms, her attempt to bring these colors to Whitespring. How faded those colors seemed now, compared to the sights in front of her.
They passed through miles of farmland, rows of wheat and other crops that Lynet didn’t even recognize, but they never needed to stop—the road was smooth and unobstructed. Lynet closed her eyes and conjured the maps of the kingdom she had studied in her lessons, picturing the narrow strip of land, both protected and isolated by its heavy mountain ranges along the northern and western borders and the wide expanse of sea to the south and east. A little less than halfway down from the northern border was the Frost Line. Mina had once said that her journey north had taken nearly a week, but Mina’s village had been closer to the kingdom’s southern border. Lynet’s destination, the largest city in the South, was farther north, not too far south of the Frost Line, and so the hardest part of the journey was already behind her.
They reached the city as the sun was beginning to set that night, almost three days after she’d begun the journey. Lynet stared, mesmerized, at the pinks and golds spread across the sky. Now she knew that she had never truly seen a sunset before.
The merchant would spend the night here before continuing on his way, so the cart moved on, slowly now, through the winding city streets, constantly stopping as people walked by with no regard for the horses. The air was warm and enticing with the smell of burning meat, and when they crossed a bridge over a river, the remaining sunlight reflected off the water so brightly that Lynet had to look away.
Mina had told her once that this was where Gregory went during his visits south, to the university that Mina had reopened not long after becoming queen. Thinking of the university made her think of Nadia, of course, but Lynet pushed her out of her head, trying not to imagine how different this journey might have been if Nadia had run away with her when she’d asked. It was risky, perhaps, to go to Mina’s father for help, when Mina was supposed to think she was dead, but Lynet remembered the way Mina always bristled when she spoke of Gregory, and she remembered the way Gregory had been so pleased to see her the one time she’d run into him. She wasn’t sure where his allegiance would lie, but he was the only one who could answer her questions, and so she had to take the risk.
When the cart stopped in front of an inn, the merchant helped Lynet step down, and she thanked him for taking her all this way. At first, all she could do was stand still on the street while everyone moved around her, the whole city spinning as she fought to keep her balance. When she’d recovered, she asked the merchant where she could find the university, and he simply pointed at a spot ahead. When Lynet looked, she saw a large dome rising up above the other buildings not far away. She thanked him and started walking in the direction of the dome.
But the streets here were not simple lines pointing straight ahead. They wound and curved, leading Lynet away from the dome, and then toward it again, and then slightly to the left. All the while, she was sweltering under her cloak and trying not to notice the strange stares people were giving her as they passed by in light, airy clothes, their arms bare. Lynet thought she must have looked like a storm cloud passing through.
And everywhere she went, she kept hearing Mina’s name.
“Stop fidgeting,” a mother told her child. “What would Queen Mina think if she saw how impatient you are?”
“To Queen Mina’s health!” two men exclaimed as they passed a mug between them.
As she neared the university, she heard a rabble of drunken young students laughing and cheering. “To the queen!” one of them called out, and the others answered in turn, “To Queen Mina! To the southern queen!” The southern queen—how different those words sounded now, compared to when the Pigeons sneered them.
They love her here, Lynet remembered, pulling her hood farther down over her face. She had heard Mina tell her father about grateful letters she’d received, but she had never fully considered how important her stepmother must be to the South. To these people, Mina was their champion, and Lynet wondered, then, how they would have felt about her father’s plan to give the South to his northern daughter.