“You’re an idiot,” I spit, though I hear how loudly I didn’t refute his accusation. “This doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s about allies and saving our kingdom. You have to stop—nothing’s changed; nothing’s different between us. It’s just as impossible as it always was, and this is how it has to be.”
“I’ll find a way around it,” Mather returns. He steps toward me, I step back, a weird dance through the barn. “I was always going to find a way. I told you before we left—I told you I would fix this!”
“How was I supposed to know that’s what you meant? All I ever got was Sir’s voice hammering into my head that you were too important to waste on me!”
“I never felt that! You’ve always been everything to me. I didn’t know how to handle how much I needed you growing up—snow, I still don’t, all right? I’m trying, though. Do you think I’m that arrogant? That I let William make me believe I was too good for you?”
“What else was I supposed to think?” I’m shouting now, my voice tearing at the barn’s rafters. I step back once, twice, knowing I’ll never be able to get far enough away from him. “You may be able to look beyond the reality of our situation and imagine some other outcome, but all I ever saw, all I ever see is a reminder that our lives aren’t our own.”
“You think I don’t know that our lives aren’t our own?” Mather grabs the locket in a fist. “I’m the king, Meira!”
I cup my hands over my ears and shake my head, blocking out anything else he might say, anything that might make me stop talking. “None of it matters. It doesn’t matter what I want or need or love, because Sir will always be there to remind me that Winter has to come first. Winter always has to come first!”
Mather stops. His face relaxes, one small muscle, and around my hands cupped over my ears, I hear him echo one of the words I said.
“Love?”
No, I didn’t say that. I’m not that stupid.
A footstep makes me fly around. Behind all the other sounds, men grunting in the yard and swords clanging and arrows firing, it shouldn’t have mattered, shouldn’t have stuck out.
Theron stands in the doorway, body hardened like he caught us rolling around on the floor. “Is everything all right?”
I throw a hand up, mouth hanging open. Yes. No. It never was, it never will be.
Theron doesn’t wait for an answer. He turns to Mather, the gleam of sweat on his skin glinting in the sunlight behind him. “King Mather.” Theron steps forward. Steps back. Looks like he wants to run out to the training yard and start hacking at someone. “I heard you have skill with a blade?”
I frown. This can’t be good.
It isn’t. Mather pauses, maybe considering how furious Sir will be, but a moment later he flashes a tight grimace that makes me fear for Theron’s life.
“Don’t worry, Prince Theron. I’ll go easy on you.”
I pull at Mather’s arm but he shrugs out of reach and marches at Theron, ducking out of the way at the last second to move around him and into the training yard. Theron follows with his own hard stomping.
The training yard again falls into a shocked silence when the three of us parade toward the sword rings. Mather ducks under the rope of one ring and rips a training sword out of a case, huffing around the perimeter like a penned bull.
“You can’t do this!” I grab Theron only because Mather’s already in the ring. Theron is my betrothed, after all. I should be worried for him. More worried for him. Right? “Don’t do this. You’re both—um—important.”
Theron’s mouth relaxes and I think he might back down. But a voice rings out, and I have to bite my tongue to keep from grabbing my chakram and slicing off one of the soldiers’ heads.
“Show him, my prince!” the soldier calls from the opposite side of the sword ring. “Show him how we fight in Cordell!”
Theron closes his eyes in a quick, almost pained grimace. When he opens them again he puts a hand over mine where I cup his arm. “If you want us to stop, we will.”
More men are cheering him on now. Shouting his name—“Theron!”—so loud and so confidently that I can see Mather deflating before me.
This is what Mather meant. What he wants for our people. Not just a poem murmured to two ridiculous trees or a map reminding them of their place in this world. Pride. Tradition. Something like the happiness on the soldiers’ faces when they returned to Bithai from Autumn, like the pride when they cheer now for their prince.
Mather paces back and forth, tearing up dirt under his boots. The louder they cheer the angrier he gets. “Come on, Cordell!” he shouts. His voice pounds through the hollering men, drawing their cries to chaotic levels. “Show me what you can do!”