Snow Like Ashes(52)

Theron shrugs it off and steps closer, standing at the other end of the bookshelf. “Do you read much?”

I trace the lettering on the spine of one particularly fat book. “Only as much as Sir made me. I prefer to slice my time away.” I smile but Theron just watches me, his lips cocked thoughtfully.

He pushes away from the bookcase and toward a stack of paintings in the corner. “I have a landscape I think you might like,” he throws over his shoulder, sorting through great square frames. “An older one, but it’s in good condition—”

He keeps talking but his voice fades to a murmur, a distant lull at the back of my consciousness. I stare at the fat book I’ve been running my fingers over, the letters spelling out a title that makes my mind squeeze with sudden curiosity. It’s old, very old, one of the brittle tomes that looks liable to disintegrate into a cloud of dust at any moment. I read the title again.

Magic of Primoria.

Magic like … my dreams of Hannah?

I know nothing about magic beyond what Sir told me through lessons, but there has to be a reason for my dreams—if they aren’t caused by stress, that is, which is still a very likely possibility. But if that’s not it, they have to be coming from somewhere else—the stone? Another source of magic? And if there’s magic coming from somewhere else, then there has to be a source of magic other than the Royal Conduits. I mean, there’s the chasm, but the magic there only affects the Seasons, just as all the Royal Conduits affect only their citizens within a certain radius. Maybe, if I was in a Season Kingdom, I could attribute my Hannah dreams to remnants of magic emanating from the chasm—not that I’ve ever heard of that happening—but here, in Cordell, what could be causing them? If it even was magic. If I’m not just losing my mind.

As I piece through my thoughts, a weight of doubt drops in my chest. Thousands of years. That’s how long it’s been since there’s been anything but the eight Royal Conduits, since the chasm of magic had an accessible portal through the Klaryns before it was lost to avalanches or sabotage. If there were another magic source, if there were more power, if there were anything else, someone would have found it by now. Wouldn’t they?

None of this stops me from pulling the ancient book off the shelf and holding it in both hands. A seal sits in the bottom-right corner, deep red wax rubbed almost smooth by the years. An indecipherable phrase curves around a picture of a beam of light hitting a mountaintop. I can make out a few of the words—OF THE LUSTR—before it fades into age-warped gibberish. A maker’s seal? Whatever it is, I run my fingers over it, biting my lip in thought.

Doing some research can’t hurt, right? And it’s a far better alternative to sitting in Bithai’s palace getting primped as a future Cordellan queen while Sir and Mather and Noam go on making decisions without me. This way I’m doing something. Something small, but still something.

It’s a start.

“—yet interesting, I think,” Theron is saying.

I turn to him, hugging the giant book to my chest. He holds a painting by the top corners near his waist, the base of it barely brushing his boots.

All breath flows out of me, sucked away like the painting is a vortex of wind and I’m caught up in the storm.

It’s Winter. Or, well, it could be a Rhythm Kingdom in its own winter season, but when I see that painting, it’s Winter. A forest there, the trees bowing and bending under the weight of ice, their brown branches frozen into glittering columns. Drifts of snow flow around the base of the trees, broken only by boulders or small snow-covered bushes. Everything sits in the peaceful stillness of morning, the sun’s rays just barely cresting the trees and turning everything the hazy blue-yellow of dawn.

Prove it.

Those two words again. My fingers tighten on the book the longer I stare at the painting, something like determination coursing through me. Sir was right. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what Winter feels like, I don’t know what forest this painting depicts. I don’t know anything, I’ve never seen it, because it’s gone. Just like that, one horrible war, one vicious takeover, and thousands of people were slaughtered, imprisoned, destroyed. Just like that, an entire existence was shattered, and the most I’ve ever been able to do is hope that someday I have my own Winter memories.

I’ve been so selfish, haven’t I? Selfish and narrow-minded and wrong, because I wanted to matter to Winter, but in my own way. Within my own set parameters that would also fit who I wanted to be. I choke on a laugh, hating that it’s taken me this long to realize that Sir was right. Damn him—I long for the day when he’s wrong for once.