Breathe, breathe. That’s all I focus on, air moving in and out of my lungs, until I drift away from reality and into sleep.
At first I think I’m in Noam’s palace, but the ballroom is set up all wrong. A great white marble staircase fans in front of me, the room folding out in a symmetrical square. The same white marble floor makes the entire room glow in the calm, quiet darkness of night. This is Jannuari’s palace. Winter.
I exhale, blowing a cloud of white into the air as peace descends deep into every limb. I’m in Winter. And she’s here again. Hannah. I can feel her presence, a gentle aura waiting nearby.
In a distant hall, a baby cries.
I run up the staircase, weaving down hallways paned with ivory marble. White candles flicker on tables as I fly past, adding eerie shadows to every twist and turn.
Finally a room appears on my right, the door thrown open, light streaming out. I hurry in to see a bassinet in the center, soft white light rippling out of it. Hannah stands next to it and baby Mather screams again, wailing like he’s being attacked.
I step forward as Hannah’s ice-blue eyes flick up to me.
“I can’t talk to him,” she says. She moves around the bassinet, close enough that I catch a waft of her perfume. “But Angra isn’t watching you.”
“Angra?”
Hannah shakes her head and looks around the room, her face panicked, anxious, like something might jump out and get us. “He’s coming. But you can hear me, can’t you?”
I nod. “Yes, I can hear you.” I pause. “My queen.”
Where there had only been light in this room, there is now a shadow in the corner. Black and thick, impenetrable. Hannah reaches for me but curls her fingers into her palm.
“Hurry,” she says. “Do what you must.”
“What?” I step toward her and she twitches back to Mather.
“Do what you must,” Hannah whispers to the bassinet. The shadow in the corner grows and grows. It sweeps between us and as I scream out to Hannah, the entire world goes black.
Magic.
It’s the first thing that flies into my mind after I wake up, the blackness and lingering scream from my dream vanishing in the morning light. I roll onto my side and my eyes fall on Mather’s lapis lazuli ball on the bedside table. That stupid blue rock.
While this isn’t the first time I’ve dreamed of her, Hannah has never spoken to me before. To me. Like I was there, back when Jannuari fell. A wave of trepidation makes me shiver and I pull the blankets up to my chin. Is that what Mather gave me? Some weird rock that induces nightmares and visions? I don’t need any other reasons to hate him right now. It can’t be magic. It’s just a rock, and I’m having these dreams because I’m fatigued to the point of nightmares. Not magic.
All this on top of the late-night ball means I’m frazzled, I’m exhausted, and I just want to hurl my chakram at something.
Rose and Mona have other ideas about how I should spend my day, though. After a quick breakfast in my room over which we have an argument about the importance of attending etiquette classes, I climb off the balcony. Rose throws quite the fit when she sees me leap out into the air, but I swear Mona hides the smallest smile behind her hand. Mona is still my favorite, and despite Noam’s threat last night about obeying him, I refuse to buckle this easily. I may be trapped in this arrangement, but that does not mean I’ve become Noam’s future queen-shaped slave.
So I take it upon myself to explore the palace grounds. I’m just doing what I must, as Hannah told me to. Whatever she meant by that cryptic warning. But it wasn’t really a warning; it was my riled mind’s interpretation of events—I hope.
I jog off down a cobblestone path, skirting groups of royals who either perk up at the sight of me or start whispering to each other, eyes narrowed and noses crinkled disapprovingly. Probably because I’m wearing my travel clothes and have a chakram strapped to my back. The nose-crinkly royals grow in number and I realize I’m jogging through a royal garden area, a place where proper future queens would flit around in fancy gowns and coy giggles. Where they let the world move on around them while men make decisions and matter.
I will not be that kind of queen, no matter that Cordell isn’t actually my kingdom. But what kind of queen will I be? I know only what kind of soldier I’ve always tried to be—active, alert, eager, desperate to be a part of Winter. Is that the kind of queen I’ll be too? Or will Noam see to it that I remain a helpless figurehead, some pretty ivory statuette to position just so in one of his alcoves?
All of my thoughts echo back to me in a wave of shock. How I thought about being queen definitively—what kind of queen will I be. Not maybe, not might. Like I’ve accepted the life that Sir and Mather thrust on me. I know I have no choice—I know this is my role now. But I still don’t want this life, and a part of me sneers at the part that knows I need to find a way to not hate this.