Snow Like Ashes(101)

I can’t process what he’s saying. I shake my head, drop my face into my hands. The colors from the hall swirl in my memory, Angra’s black and pastel-green and pink mixing with the brown and maroon of Herod’s chamber. Green vines crawl around me like words in the dark. Memories. Nessa’s memories. Herod is bringing her here. She’ll see him kill me.

“My father refused to go after them,” Theron continues. “He refused to go after you. He said he wouldn’t risk so much for a worthless Season anymore.”

I can’t hear him as I start rocking back and forth. Herod will kill her too. Will they make Theron watch that? How long will they keep him here before he dies too?

Theron runs a hand down his face. “Mather nearly killed him. Drew a sword and everything. But my father still wouldn’t… He’s so proud. So selfish. I hate him.”

I can’t use my conduit magic to get out of this cage. I can’t use it to free Theron. I don’t even know what it can be used for beyond the basic functions of kingdom life. How can it help me in this situation? What can I do?

“I hate the prejudice. I’m tired of watching my father hoard our power when we could be working together, Rhythm and Season against the true evil in this world. I knew what would make him act. If Spring had me, my father would finally do something about Angra.” Theron laughs an empty laugh, his eyes darting around the room. “Starting to rethink my plan now.”

That makes me stop. Makes my whirring thoughts stumble against a sudden burst of clarity, and I hear everything he said slowly, his words coming to me through my fog.

He handed himself over to Angra. He let Spring catch him.

I gape across the space between us. “You wanted Angra to capture you?”

Theron’s eyes jump to mine. Connecting us, just us now. Together. “Yes.”

A smile uncurls on my face. It feels so wrong and yet so wonderful, how much I need to smile at him.

Something pounds in the hallway, something like—footsteps. Coming closer.

I cling to the bars of the cage. “I’m Hannah’s daughter. I’m the queen of Winter,” I hear myself say.

Theron frowns and leans forward, his chains rattling. “I—”

The door to the chamber flies open and Herod’s dark mass barrels in. He hurls himself at his desk, scrambling through papers and books until he grabs the key and holds it triumphantly in a tight-fisted grip. “I’m going to destroy you,” he hisses, eyes burning into mine.



28


SEEING HIM HERE shatters me. He’s back too soon. Too fast, not yet, I need more time—

Herod stomps toward me, his eyes bloodshot, his hair sticking out around the face of someone scared, frantic. I press against the back corner of the cage. He’s mad, Angra’s evil driving his need to kill.

And Nessa, Conall, and Garrigan aren’t with him.

“Where are they?” I shout. “What did you do to them?”

Herod laughs and stops just above the cage, towering over me. “You just keep fighting,” he coos. “Keep pretending you can win. You don’t know what my master is. You don’t know how futile it is to contest him.”

“Don’t touch her!” Theron’s voice booms out from the wall and he runs to the end of his chains, a tantalizing distance from where Herod stands, bending slowly to the cage’s lock.

“Your prince brought an army with him, did he tell you that?” Herod puts the key in the lock but doesn’t turn it, waiting for my reaction. “He brought the armies of the world to save you. Bittersweet, don’t you think? All that, and he’ll still watch you die.”

An army? Is that what Theron had been saying—

Noam. He forced Noam to attack Spring. And if Cordell is attacking Spring … Autumn will attack with it.

Herod unlocks the door. Theron yanks against the chains, stretches out to Herod, yanks again. I press as far back in the cage as I can, willing myself to be as small and inconsequential as possible. I’m Winter’s conduit. I should be able to get out of this, kill him, do something to survive. Winter needs me to survive.

Herod swings the door open and reaches for me in one swift motion. His fingers grab my collar and drag me out, the bars of the cage flying past before I can find purchase and stop myself. Then I’m above the cage, soaring through the air until I smack into something soft, something covered in a quilt of silk squares on a mattress of stale feathers.

Herod’s bed.

I scramble back and press into the wall, trying to shove to my feet. Herod strides toward me, his face wild, a savage dog cornering his long-hunted prey. His eyes flash with power forced into him from someone else. Angra is here, doing this even more than Herod. Does Herod even exist beyond the things Angra makes him want?