Snow Like Ashes(3)

But it’s enough to keep the eight of us alive. Eight, out of the original twenty-five who escaped Winter’s fall. Thinking about those numbers makes my stomach seize. Our kingdom used to be home to more than a hundred thousand Winterians, and most of them were massacred in Spring’s invasion—the ones who weren’t now sit in work camps throughout Spring. However few are left, waiting in slavery, they’re worth this. Those people are Winter, pieces of the life we should be leading, and they deserve—we all deserve—a real life, a real kingdom.

And no matter how long Sir restricts me to lesser missions, no matter how often I wonder if getting the locket pieces will be enough to win allies and free our kingdom, I’ll be ready to help. I know Sir is aware of the dedication pulsing inside of me; I know he understands that I share his desire to get Winter back. And someday, he won’t be able to ignore me anymore.

On one trip to Yakim when I was twelve, a group of men cornered Sir and me in an alley, raving about the barbaric, warmongering Seasons. How they’d rather we kill each other off so their queen could swoop in and pick through the rubble of our kingdom to find what they blame the Seasons for losing: Primoria’s source of magic, the chasm atop which our four kingdoms sit.

“They really want us to kill each other?” I asked Sir after we managed to escape. I had fought one of them off myself, but as we scaled an alley wall to get away from them, my pride ebbed into confused shame.

Somewhere beneath the Season Kingdoms lies a giant, pulsing ball of magic; and somewhere in our Klaryn Mountains there was once an entrance to it. Only the four Season Kingdoms’ lands are affected by the chasm—in the extremity and consistency of their environments—but every king and queen in Primoria, Rhythm and Season, possesses a portion of that magic in their conduits and can use it to help their kingdoms. The four Rhythm Kingdoms hate us for the fact that this is all we have, magic in objects like a dagger, a necklace, a ring. They hate us for letting the entrance get lost to age and avalanches and memory, for living directly atop the magic and not tearing our kingdoms apart to dig down to it.

Sir stopped and crouched to my level, then scooped up a handful of melting snow from the side of the road. “The Rhythm Kingdoms envy us,” he said to the slush. “Our kingdom stays in winter all year, in glorious snow and ice, while their kingdoms cycle through all four seasons. They have to tolerate melting snow and suffocating heat.” He winked at me and pulled up his best smile, a rare treat that made my chest cold with happiness. “We should feel bad for them.”

I crinkled my nose at the brown sludge, but I couldn’t stop myself from sharing his smile, basking in the camaraderie between us. In that moment, I felt more like a Winterian, more a part of this crusade to save our kingdom, than I ever had before.

“I’d rather have winter all the time,” I told him.

His smile faded. “Me too.”

That was only the first time I felt—knew—that Sir saw the willingness in me. But no matter how often I prove myself, I can never push beyond his restrictions—though that won’t stop me from trying. That’s what all of us do: keep trying to live, to survive, to get our kingdom back no matter what.

I find my practice sword resting in a patch of trampled grass. Muscles spasming with the effort, I pick it up and frown at Mather, who stares past me into the plains. His face is blank, his expression hidden by the veil that makes him both a perfect monarch and an infuriating friend.

“What is it?” I follow his gaze. Four shapes wobble toward us, heat shaking their silhouettes in illusions of waves. But they’re unmistakable even at this distance, and my breath catches in relief.

One, two, three, four.

They’re back. All of them. They survived.



2


MATHER BLOWS PAST me through the grass. “They’re here!”

From camp, Sir’s wife, Alysson, gathers her skirts into a knot and hurries away from the food she was fixing, and Finn sprints out of a tent with a medical bag.

I drop the sword and hurry after Mather, focused on the shapes before us. Is that one Sir? Is he leaning too far forward in his saddle? Did he get hurt? Of course he did. Two of them went to the outskirts of Abril, the capital of Spring, and the other two infiltrated one of Spring’s seaside ports, Lynia. Neither is terribly deep inside Spring’s borders, but they’re still within Angra’s domain, and any mission there ends in at least some bloodshed.

Mather and I reach them first. Finn’s girth doesn’t stop him from beating Alysson, and he stumbles to a halt seconds behind us, tearing bandages and creams out of the bag.