Stealing Snow (16 page)

Kai was in his workshop, wearing a metal mask and a tank top
that exposed his biceps, which I was completely surprised to find that he had. He was soldering a piece of metal.

“Never sneak up on someone when they’re working with fire,” he chastised, putting the equipment down on his workbench.

“What about when they’re working with a …” I drifted off. “Monster” was the wrong word. “What is she, Kai? And how could you not tell me?”

“It was not my secret to tell.”

“She could have killed me.”

“You’re the Snow Princess. I hear you’re hard to kill.”

“I could have killed her.”

He turned away.

“So she’s not your sister. She’s a…”

“She’s Gerde,” he said simply. “I saved her and she saved me, and the River Witch saved both of us. I don’t have to like the witch, but I owe her. And if you let her help you, you’ll owe her, too.”

I didn’t know what to do with that information. “So that means that you and Gerde aren’t biological brother and sister.”

“She’s my family!” he barked.

“Before the witch … you took care of her, didn’t you? That’s what the cage was for?”

“Why do you care?” he asked.

“I just like understanding you better than hating you.” The words came out in a whisper.

He didn’t respond. He let them hang there between us for another interminable instant before speaking again.

“There aren’t many of Gerde’s kind. She may be the only one. And if she had been caught … Let’s just say she’d be a hide on someone’s wall.”

They’d traded their freedom for their personal safety. So that Gerde would not turn into a beast again.

I understood it even though I wasn’t sure I would have made the same move.

But something seized me when I looked at Kai.

“Why did you treat me like shit for making the same compromise that you and Gerde have made a million times over?”

Kai didn’t answer.

“Hypocrite,” I blurted.

“I wanted you to find another way. Gerde remembers a time when she was hunted. She remembers that fear AND she channels that and she relives that over and over again. I didn’t want that for you.”

No wonder Gerde looks so faraway all the time
, I thought.

“I hoped that it would be different for you.”

“But it’s not different. I don’t like what happened today. But I need her to help me. Gerde understands that. She told me herself.”

“Gerde said she would walk away once the witch taught her to control her beast. But we are still here. She got caught up in what else the witch can teach her. I don’t know if she will ever want to leave. That could happen to you, too. Trust me, the River Witch wants more than just our thanks.”

“That may be, but I’m only here to train, and then I’m gone. We made a deal.” I looked around, thinking of the cage in Kai’s house. Before the witch, he had been the one to put her there.

“I am sorry for what you and Gerde have gone through,” I said, looking at him in a new light.

He saw the shift in me and almost flinched. “Don’t pity us. I can’t bear it. Not you.”

He stood up straighter. If I could tell a story with my shrugs like Vern said I habitually did, he told them with his vertebrae. And right now he was trying to put a wall back up between us. I wasn’t going to let him. Not until I understood what he meant.

“What do you mean, not me? You hate me. Why does it matter what I think?”

“Who says that I hate you?” He was looking at me intently. Like he wanted to say something else. But instead of saying something he closed the distance between us and in one strong, single-minded move, he kissed me. It wasn’t tentative or sweet like with Bale. It didn’t come out of a history of love and longing. It came out of a week of friction and misunderstanding and frustration that brought us to this moment. His lips were inhaling and hungry and challenging, and I felt myself responding.

And then I thought of Bale’s lips against mine, our bodies pressing close. I pulled back, suddenly pushing Kai away. He looked confused, but he didn’t stop me.

What had I done?

Why had he kissed me?

Why had I kissed him back?

It had taken me years to work up the courage to kiss the boy I loved. The boy I wasn’t even sure I liked had closed his lips on mine within a week.

I had betrayed myself and Bale. My heart ached. But my lips
burned. The kiss had had its own inertia, as if it required a force equal and opposite to stop it. But it was the curse of my kiss that I thought of before I thought of Bale himself.

“Snow …” Kai opened his mouth to say something more, seeming unsure for maybe the first time since we met.

But the look in his eyes was unfocused. He leaned against his workbench.

I helped him sit down. When I leaned over him and touched his lips, they were cold.

“I’m fine. I just feel a little dizzy … Snow, I didn’t mean to…”

I didn’t let him say anything more.

I didn’t, either
…, I said in my head as I backed out of the doorway and ran to my room.

I was pacing my room, contemplating the kiss when there was a knock on my door.

If it was Kai, what would he say? What would I do?
I’m sorry I might have frozen you a little. Good thing we stopped before I froze you to death
… Or maybe I just imagined the whole thing.

But when I opened the door, it was Gerde, not Kai, standing in front of me.

She slipped into the room, wearing a white low-cut dress I hadn’t seen before and a hint of a smile. She was feeling better. Or doing her best impression of someone feeling better.

I, on the other hand, felt more confused by the minute. And guilty. The only explanation for kissing Kai was that I’d been too long without people being nice to me, and I didn’t know how to handle it. Even before I’d come to Algid, it had been a year since I had really spoken to Bale, having only my mother, Vern, and Dr. Harris for company—when Magpie wasn’t trying to make
me miserable. My kiss with Kai had everything to do with my missing Bale and nothing to do with Kai. I was sure of it. But just almost.

What happened was all me. My kiss had done something to Kai. Not like Bale. But something. Maybe something. I wasn’t sure. Dizzy wasn’t frozen. Cold lips weren’t definitive. But how had his lips turned cold, while mine felt like they were on fire?

I tried to refocus on Gerde.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said suddenly.

“What about the River Witch?”

“She still hasn’t returned from the River. Sometimes she’s gone for days.”

“And Kai?” I said. His name felt different crossing my lips now that he’d kissed them.

“He’s in his workshop. He might not come out for days, either. There’s a little village not far from here. I think we could use a change in scenery.”

Maybe having her secret out in the open had been a weight off Gerde. She seemed different somehow. Maybe it was all in the way I looked at her. But it seemed like more than that. She was not talking about being a beast. But she seemed freer somehow.

I wanted to tell her everything. I’d already told her about Bale. But I bit my lip. Kai and Gerde were so incredibly close. I had already disturbed their delicate ecosystem. And Kai had disturbed mine.

I hadn’t been outside except to train since I first arrived days ago.

I got up to my feet and raced to get dressed.

The town was really just a street of storefronts and tiny houses all made out of the same packed colored snow I’d seen right after the tree with Jagger. But this time nobody was frozen. There were people everywhere. And through the translucent houses, I could see families cooking and eating and kids playing.

There was a big bonfire in the center of the street, and people were gathered around it for warmth. A musician was strumming on a triangular stringed instrument that looked like a small harp, but the sound that came from it was deeper and sharper.

Gerde immediately began humming along. She twirled around, her dress creating its own wind. My spirits lifted, seeing her like this. I wished for the day that I could be that light, too. But that could not happen until Bale and I were reunited.

We stopped at a table to eat some savory meat pies. They were nowhere near as flavorful as Gerde’s, but we were so very hungry. We washed them down with hot cinnamon milk in metal mugs.

“Kai is all business,” Gerde said. “He comes here only to sell. But I like to look around.”

Gerde had mentioned Kai about two hundred more times than usual today. Or at least that was what it felt like.

“Let’s play a game. Imagine a story,” I suggested, trying to change the subject. This was what I used to do with Bale. It was nice to have a friend again. “You pick someone, and you make up a whole life for them.”

Gerde picked out a tall, slender couple whose hands were entwined. The man was slightly ahead of the woman and was waiting for her to catch up. Gerde pursed her thin lips together before saying, “I think this is their third date. Neither of them are being themselves yet…”

I hadn’t expected anything quite as romantic from Gerde. I wondered if she thought of love at all. We’d talked about Bale, but not about her own love life. I wondered if perhaps her condition made it impossible to be with someone that way.

“Very sweet. I think she’s a spy trying to extract information. She’s getting close to him so that she can go in for the kill.”

Gerde laughed. “Your turn, you pick.”

“Her,” I said, pointing to a woman sitting at a table.

Her face was round and pretty. Her clothes were made of thick wool in an inky color. Her expression was welcoming. In front of her was the most intricate set of cards I’d ever seen. They were hand painted. On the cards’ faces were women holding hands in a circle, and there was a swirling symbol in the center. The images danced.

“She’s a Land Witch, the lowest form of witch. She has some power but not enough to be considered a real force. There are lots of them in Algid. Some lead normal lives. Some sell their gifts,” Gerde explained.

“Wait, I thought it was my turn,” I said, assuming that the game continued.

“No, she really is a witch. She’s a truth teller. Sorry,” Gerde corrected. She had forgotten all about our game. And this woman was a real witch, however low she was in the witch hierarchy.

I glanced down at the cards on the witch’s table. I wanted to know how they worked. I wanted to know what they’d say about me.

“Do you mean she has foresight? Like an oracle?”

“Do you mean
the
oracle?” she corrected, biting her lip as if considering. “Hardly. She probably can’t tell you what happens much longer out than a fortnight, but she can give good advice about crops and small decisions. There are lots of different kinds of witches. There are the Three and everyone else.”

“The Three?” I remembered the coven from the River Witch’s original story.

“They are the most powerful. The River Witch, the Fire Witch, and the Witch of the Woods.”

“And where does my mother fit in?”

“She left the coven to marry a prince. No one knows how powerful she would have become,” Gerde said. Her tone was filled with disbelief, as if she could not quite understand ever giving up witchy power for love.

But to me, Mom wanting to be a pretty princess instead of part of the badass witch coven made a lot of sense.

“Can we see what she knows?” I said, turning to Gerde.

Gerde glanced at the witch again. “You know what, my brother has been such a cad to you, the least he can do is buy us a glimpse at our futures.”

A few seconds later, Gerde placed coins that she’d taken from Kai’s stash in front of the Land Witch.

“Hand or cards?” the witch asked.

Gerde stuck out her hand, and the witch examined it a long beat.

“You have a secret that has recently come into the light. Now that it is in the open, you are happier.”

Gerde snatched her hand away. “Even a broken clock is right twice a day,” she whispered to me.

I didn’t think Gerde could ever be a snob, but I suppose the witch hit her where it hurt. She stepped back and nodded at me to go ahead.

“Hand or cards?”

I felt my scar glowing beneath my dress and chose cards.

“Pick six cards without looking at them. Each one tells part of your story, and together they make up your life.”

I read each one as I put them down.

THE LOVER

THE THIEF

THE THINKER

THE KING

THE CROWN

THE JOKER

“What does the last one mean?”

“That you have a great surprise in store for you. It may be a betrayal. Or a victory.”

I blinked hard at the witch. Did she know it was me? This was the River Witch’s prophecy all over again.

The Lover was Bale. The Thief was Jagger. The Thinker was Kai. The King was my father. The crown was what was at stake, and the surprise was the prophecy.

“How does it end?”

“There are only six cards per reading,” she said firmly.

“Tell me. Put down another card.”

“I have no more to tell. The cards have finished their story. The rest is up to you. And the Fates.”