Snow Like Ashes (18 page)

Framed paintings of every size and shape sit in haphazard stacks around the room, leaning against the bureau and the wall and the chairs, with smaller paintings spread across the tabletop on a thin cotton sheet. Elaborate masks covered in jewels and gold accents dangle from ribbons on the corners of paintings. Books in towering stacks lean against the fireplace and on small end tables, and crowd the bookshelves so tightly I fear the entire structure will burst in an explosion of paper and dust. They’re large books too, great archaic things that look so old, so fragile, that I worry I might disintegrate them just by breathing too hard.

I lean over the dining table, my eyes flitting across palm-sized paintings of oak trees and books with yellowed pages poking out of the covers. One rectangular tome with a gold-embossed title reads
History of Trade on the Feni River
. Another book next to it reads
Stories of Mountain Dwellers
in thick leather thread. Beside it sits a stack of fresh parchment, a few illegible lines scratched in the same frantic hand as the poem in the library. Theron’s work. I squint but can only make out a few words this time—
true
and
could
and some others—and turn to a collection of oval portraits in a small box, each painting encased in a thin silver frame. I run my hand over one of a woman with her hair done up in a taut bun, staring grimly at the painter as though he and he alone was responsible for pulling her hair so tight.

A cupboard door slams behind me and I flinch away from the table to peer into the other room. All I can see is a canopy bed drenched in pale white light from an open window. The cupboard slams again from within and I step toward the door just as Theron steps out, pulling his now-wet hair back into a ponytail. He’s changed out of his training clothes and into something more princely—black pants with thin gold stripes running down the sides. A close-fitting white shirt buttons up to his neck under a black vest, hiding his bandaged chest.

He tightens his hair. “What would you like to see first? We have quite the menagerie in the forest, an art gallery in the north wing—”

I cock an eyebrow. “An art gallery? Are you sure there are any paintings left in it?” I wave my hand at the room. “From the looks of things, this prince business is just a front for your life of art thievery.”

Theron glances around the room and absently moves to the nearest stack of books, lifting one and running his fingers down the spine. He looks up at me, an expression of mock hurt on his face. “I rob libraries too, I’ll have you know. And I have two good reasons for this”—his eyes narrow as he considers—“collection.”

“You want to have a standby profession in case being king doesn’t work out?” I guess, smiling, even as I realize how truthful it might be.

Theron shrugs, setting the book back on the stack. “Partly that. But mostly it’s because my father thinks this obsession is wholly unbefitting of a future king, and as long as I keep my chambers clogged with relics, he refuses to come here.” He beams at me. “But also because many of these belonged to my mother.”

“Your mother?” I run my eyes over the bookshelf, remembering Sir’s lectures. Theron, half Cordellan, half Ventrallan, is probably expected to take after his father’s side more than his mother’s.

I reach out and touch the spines of the books on the shelf. They remind me of the fire pit Finn brought back. Holding on to some part of your past even if it means also holding on to the pain of never again having it. That pain is less horrible than the pain of forgetting.

“I’m sorry,” I say, though I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for.
I’m sorry your mother isn’t here anymore. I’m sorry your father uses you.

Theron shrugs it off and steps closer, standing at the other end of the bookshelf. “Do you read much?”

I trace the lettering on the spine of one particularly fat book. “Only as much as Sir made me. I prefer to slice my time away.” I smile but Theron just watches me, his lips cocked thoughtfully.

He pushes away from the bookcase and toward a stack of paintings in the corner. “I have a landscape I think you might like,” he throws over his shoulder, sorting through great square frames. “An older one, but it’s in good condition—”

He keeps talking but his voice fades to a murmur, a distant lull at the back of my consciousness. I stare at the fat book I’ve been running my fingers over, the letters spelling out a title that makes my mind squeeze with sudden curiosity. It’s old, very old, one of the brittle tomes that looks liable to disintegrate into a cloud of dust at any moment. I read the title again.

Magic of Primoria
.

Magic like . . . my dreams of Hannah?

I know nothing about magic beyond what Sir told me through lessons, but there has to be a reason for my dreams—if they aren’t caused by stress, that is, which is still a possibility. But if that’s not it, they have to be coming from somewhere else—the stone? Another source of magic? And if there’s magic coming from somewhere else, then there has to be a source of magic other than the Royal Conduits. I mean, there’s the chasm, but the magic there only affects the Seasons, just as all the Royal Conduits affect only their citizens within a certain radius. Maybe, if I was in a Season Kingdom, I could attribute my Hannah dreams to remnants of magic emanating from the chasm—not that I’ve ever heard of that happening—but here, in Cordell, what could be causing them? If it even was magic. If I’m not just losing my mind.

As I sift through my thoughts, a weight of doubt drops in my chest.
Thousands of years.
That’s how long it’s been since there’s been anything but the eight Royal Conduits, since the chasm of magic had an accessible portal through the Klaryns before it was lost to avalanches or sabotage. If there was another magic source, if there was more power,
if there was anything else
, someone would have found it by now. Wouldn’t they?

None of this stops me from pulling the ancient book off the shelf and holding it in both hands. A seal sits in the bottom right corner, deep red wax rubbed almost smooth by the years. An indecipherable phrase curves around a picture of a beam of light hitting a mountaintop. I can make out a few of the words—
OF THE LUSTR
—before it fades into age-warped gibberish. A maker’s seal? Whatever it is, I run my fingers over it, biting my lip in thought.

Doing some research can’t hurt, right? And it’s a far better alternative to sitting in Bithai’s palace getting primped as a future Cordellan queen while Sir and Mather and Noam go on making decisions without me. This way I’m
doing
something. Something small, but still something.

It’s a start.

“—yet interesting, I think,” Theron is saying.

I turn to him, hugging the giant book to my chest. He holds a painting by the top corners near his waist, the base of it barely brushing his boots.

All breath flows out of me, sucked away like the painting is a vortex of wind and I’m caught up in the storm.

It’s Winter. Or, well, it could be a Rhythm Kingdom in its own winter season, but when I see that painting, it’s Winter. A forest there, the trees bowing and bending under the weight of ice, their brown branches frozen into glittering columns. Drifts of snow flow around the base of the trees, broken only by boulders or small snow-covered bushes. Everything sits in the peaceful stillness of morning, the sun’s rays just barely cresting the trees and turning everything the hazy blue-yellow of dawn.

Prove it.

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.