If I close my eyes and cover my ears and block out everything else, I can see the court Dendera described. I can see the city Sir told me about. Jannuari’s great white palace stands above me, its sprawling courtyard filled with ice fountains. It’s so cold that foreigners have to wrap in layers of fur to walk from building to building, while our natural Winterian blood keeps us warm even in the worst conditions. And snow is everywhere, always, so much that the grass beneath it is white from lack of sun. An entire kingdom wrapped in an orb of eternal winter.
But here is where my made-up memory always crashes around me. The cold and snow dissolves into explosions. The screaming starts, pushing over the palace complex like a wave, and I’m running. Running through gray streets choked with smoke as hordes of people run too, more explosions corralling us into Angra’s grasp. That’s what they’re doing—corralling the Winterians like sheep so they can lead them to a life of slavery and pain.
Except for us. The seven who still live with Winter’s future king. Originally twenty-five refugees who kept Angra up at night, reduced to eight.
But no matter how dire our situation, how desperate Sir gets, he will never see me as an asset. Just the overexcited child he had the misfortune of raising.
6
THOUGHTS OF OUR kingdom’s destruction aren’t exactly fodder for restful dreams. Only a little while after falling asleep, I’m shaken awake by nightmares of a shadow engulfing Jannuari’s desolate streets, a darkness so complete and absolute that all buildings and people disintegrate into oblivion. I fly up, gasping on my nightmare, thankful that the tent is empty. The only noises come from the fire crackling on the distant edge of camp. It must be suppertime.
I stand, still fully clothed, and pull my white hair into a braid. The sun is just starting to set when I step outside, casting the Rania Plains in the gray-yellow haze of a day about to die.
To my left, the flap of the meeting tent swishes, and my muscles tighten. I have no desire to face Sir yet unless his face is apologetic, which is less likely than the Kingdom of Summer freezing over. So as the tent opens I hurry away from it, running until I reach the southern edge of camp and crest the hill.
The setting sun pulsates directly in front of me, a hint of relaxation creeping into my muscles. One of the only good things about this place is the sunset and how the fiery, vibrant hues bleed into the landscape until the world around me is nothing but colors. The encroaching black night, the flickering yellow sun, the reaching beams of scarlet, the waving brown prairie grass.
I slide to the ground, elbows resting on my knees as the campfire crackles somewhere behind me, and the wind hisses somewhere ahead. In the face of all that has happened, it feels good, really good, to just breathe for a moment. So in my mind, I sketch out the map I saw hanging over the desk in Lynia, my nerves calming as I focus on the withered yellow edges, the faded brown lines, something simple when everything around me is so … not.
The Rania Plains—a great swath of empty prairie lands between all the kingdoms. The Seasons—Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring to the south, wrapped together in the arms of the jagged Klaryn Mountains. The Rhythms—Yakim, Ventralli, Cordell, and Paisly, spread across the rest of Primoria. Four Season Kingdoms, four Rhythm Kingdoms, eight conduits.
The locket half flies through my mind. I bite my lip, the thin sheen of calm I constructed by building the map in my mind shattered by a victory that feels more like failure due to Sir’s scolding. Will we always fail, even when we succeed? Getting this half of the locket, getting the next half, forming a whole conduit, gaining allies to free Winter—when will it feel like enough?
“Meira?”
I whip around, heart caught in my throat until I realize it isn’t Sir—it’s Mather.
He watches me in silence, his eyes flitting across my face. My heart thwump-thwumps against my ribs and I don’t look away from him, hating how with one look he can crack me open. Anyone else I’d be able to ignore, to hide my fear behind a cocky smile, but Mather sees everything. I know he sees it, because for the briefest moment he drops his expressionless mask and the look in his eyes shows me he feels the same way. A mirror of every part of myself I can’t bear to face.
He drops down beside me and asks, his voice quiet, “Was it that bad?”
I frown. “Getting the locket half? What makes you think it was bad?”
“You barely yelled at William earlier. Either you’re sick or Lynia was … I went on and on about my own problems when you …” His eyes linger on the bruise on my cheek as if seeing it for the first time. “You wouldn’t have gone if it weren’t for me, and I didn’t even realize you’d been hurt. I’m an idiot.”