Lynet let her hand fall, guilt stirring in her chest. “Nadia…” she started, searching for the right words, a safe ground between thanks and apology. “I want you to know that I understand what the South means to you, and that I appreciate your leaving it for my sake.”
There was a pause, and then Nadia said, “Part of me did think I would find traces of my father here—in the people of the South, in the hands of other surgeons. In myself, maybe. But I think the truth is that I was trying to escape my parents, too. I wanted to stop seeing their faces, still marked from illness, right before we buried them in the snow. I thought if I went south, I could imagine them alive again. I could find something full of movement and life and energy to distract me from those memories.” Lynet heard the rustle of Nadia’s hair as Nadia turned to look at her. “But I didn’t need to go south—I had already found what I wanted.”
Lynet was keenly aware of her thudding heartbeat. “Where did you find it?” she asked.
“She fell out of a tree one morning.”
Lynet hid her face, certain that even in the darkness, Nadia would be able to see the confused emotions written there. Anger and betrayal fighting for victory against forgiveness and something else that she didn’t understand, the words hidden underneath her skin somewhere she couldn’t reach. I’ve missed this. I’ve missed her.
But when Lynet turned back, Nadia wasn’t looking at her, either. She was twisting her sleeves in her hands, her head bowed low, hair blocking her face. When she spoke, Lynet could hear the cracks in her voice. “Whenever I think of what Gregory wanted from you, whenever I think of the role I played…” Nadia lifted her head, turning to face Lynet with all of her sorrow and regret on display, and Lynet knew this was an offering. Lynet had told Nadia her secrets, and now Nadia was giving her the most difficult secret she possessed—that behind her air of competence and control, she was as lost and uncertain and lonely as Lynet had been. “Lynet, I’m so sorry,” she breathed.
Lynet didn’t look away this time. She could absolve Nadia with a word, if she wanted, and part of her did want to—her resentment was no raging fire that gave her strength, but a painful weight on her chest that made it hard to breathe. But she waited so long to answer, the silence stretching between them, that the moment for forgiveness passed.
She leaned her head back against the tree and shut her eyes. When Nadia spoke again—just Lynet’s name, soft and questioning—Lynet pretended she was asleep.
*
At dawn, Lynet and Nadia continued following the main road until they came upon a group of merchants going north with bolts of colorful fabric. The merchants agreed to take them past the Frost Line in one of their carts in exchange for the contents of Lynet’s purse, and so Lynet and Nadia left the South nestled between silks and linens.
Lynet kept her eyes shut for most of the journey—the rocking of the cart on the uneven road and the moving landscape around them made her feel nauseated. But then, on their second day traveling in the cart, Lynet felt a jolt all through her body, like she was suddenly waking up after dreaming about falling from a great height. Her eyes snapped open, and there, all around them, was snow.
They had crossed the Frost Line.
She nearly cried from the relief of seeing the snow. She felt like she’d been holding her breath for a long time and had suddenly released it, the world around her clear and vivid again.
But it wasn’t enough just to see the snow. She needed to feel it on her skin, to sink into it and hear her heartbeat resounding all around her. Soon, she promised herself.
She had forgotten, though, how much slower the carts moved through the North, how often they needed to stop to clear the roads, and more than once Lynet wanted to test her power and sweep all the snow off the road with a wave of her hand. But she waited until the cart stopped at a crossroads. From here, the merchants would go west toward the estate of a nobleman whose name Lynet vaguely recognized. They didn’t bother trying to sell their expensive fabric in the villages, taking them straight to the wealthy estates instead.
Lynet practically leaped out of the cart while Nadia thanked the merchants, and she headed north into the woods. Nadia hurried to catch up with her, but Lynet only went deep enough into the woods for the trees to shield her from passing view before sinking to her knees in the snow. She hadn’t fully grasped how warm the South was until now, when the heat was finally seeping out of her.
She heard Nadia calling her name, asking her something, but nothing was louder than the blood rushing under her skin, nothing brighter than the white snow, like a beacon calling her home. She sank deeper into it, lying on her back with her eyes shut, and simply lay there for a while, breathing in and out to the rhythm of her heart until it grew steady—not too fast, not too slow.
She opened one eye and saw Nadia watching her from nearby, a fond smile on her face. Lynet remembered what she’d said about finding what she had been looking for in the North, soft words spoken in the dark, and she liked the version of herself that she saw in Nadia’s eyes.
But when Nadia noticed that Lynet had seen her, she turned away, as if she had no right to watch her anymore.
It was almost evening, so they decided to walk to the nearest village and stay the night there before continuing on to Whitespring the next day. When they reached the small, crowded streets of the next village, Lynet remembered the last time she had passed through a village like this, how she had seen all the ways she could help and yet had shrunk away and even threatened a stranger. The memory shamed her. Perhaps returning to Whitespring was a mistake, but it was a mistake she needed to make.
Her cloak wasn’t strange or out of place here, but she didn’t want or need it anymore—it was one more layer between her and the snow—and so before she could talk herself out of it, she tore the cloak off and gave it to a young woman who was walking by, her own cloak thin and torn. She pressed the heavy cloak into the girl’s hands, moving on quickly before the girl could refuse or ask questions.
She thought Nadia might worry about her being too visible in her bright red southern clothes, but she only said, “That was kind of you,” before following Lynet onward to the village’s dingy inn.
Lynet had a full purse, her magic effortless again, but for the rest of the journey, neither she nor Nadia mentioned the idea of riding in a cart, or even suggested that Lynet try making a cart out of the snow. With each step closer to Whitespring, Lynet’s fears became harder to ignore, and so she was relieved to walk the rest of the way, to prolong these last stolen moments with Nadia before they returned to their roles of the princess and the magician’s spy.
After four days of traveling, Lynet and Nadia finally reached the woods outside Whitespring just before dusk.
Nadia drew a long breath. “Are you sure about this?”