Snow Like Ashes(53)

I don’t even realize I’ve moved until Theron clears his throat. I’m kneeling on the floor before the painting, staring, the book still clutched to my chest in one hand while my other goes out toward the trees like if I reach hard enough, I can grab some snow off the branches.

Theron shifts his hold on the painting and looks down at it. “I can have it hung in your room, if you wish?”

I nod and jerk my hand back around the book. “Thank you,” I breathe, and look up at him. He smiles, soft and careful, his eyes shining as they dart across my face.

Muscle by muscle, his smile fades. “We’ll get it back.”

I hug the book tighter and swallow, forcing a sudden rush of tears to the back of my throat. “We?” I shake my head. “They will. My part is—” I stop, breath pinching, and wince. It shouldn’t hurt. This is right, isn’t it? This is what I need to do—marry into Cordell. For Winter.

Theron leans the painting against the back of a couch, one of his hands absently hovering over it. His eyes drift out like he’s remembering some long-ago tale, and when he focuses on me, I stand, quiet, holding the book like a shield between us.

“I almost joined Ventralli’s Writers’ Guild when I was eleven,” he says.

My eyebrows rise. “Really? What happened?”

“Nothing good,” he laughs. “I wrote to the Ventrallan king at the time—my mother’s brother-in-law—and got his special approval to join. I arranged for a place to stay and travel to get there and how many men would escort me. I was so proud of myself, and I wanted it so badly.” Theron’s gaze drops to a space over my shoulder, staring into the past. “Five days before I was to leave, my father sent his steward to my rooms to tell me a carriage was waiting to take me to a military base on Cordell’s coast. That I would live there for the next three years and study under one of my father’s colonels.

“My father knew my plans to go to Ventralli. I told him as I was making them, but I didn’t know until that day that he never intended to let me go. That his heir would be brought up in military methods and resource management, not art and poetry.” He frowns and looks back at me as if he forgot I was here. “But that didn’t stop me from having all this,” he waves around the room, “and from inviting the best Ventrallan writers and poets and artists to visit Cordell. There will always be a they in your new life, Meira. They make decisions; they mold your future. The trick is to find a way to still be you through it all.”

“Are we really allowed that luxury?” I ask. I don’t even think about how forward it might be or how little I know him—all I can think is how much I do know him. He wanted something more out of his life. He wanted to be an artist, though his father wanted him to be a king. And here he is, the heir of Cordell, standing amidst piles of books and paintings. He’s both. He adapted to everything his life thrust at him.

Theron exhales, his shoulders bending ever so slightly. “I need to believe so.”

I bite my cheek. Is it possible? To be both what Winter needs and what I want? Instead of fighting for only what I want, or surrendering to only what Winter needs, to find a balance between the two?

I hold up the book. “Can I borrow this?”

Theron nods before he even sees what it is. “Of course. Take anything you want.” He nudges the painting. “And I will have someone put this up for you. Now,” he tries again, a bright smile washing over his face, “the menagerie?”



15


THE NEXT MORNING, when Rose and Mona come again with pleas for me to attend etiquette class, I shock them and myself by agreeing.

Rose, holding a sky-blue gown and a navy ribbon, stops beside the wardrobe. Her eyes narrow, and after a pause she scurries over to stand between my bed and the balcony. “Is this a trick?” she asks, and I don’t miss how she tries to hold her arms out, as if to block me from sprinting around her and leaping off the balcony.

I slide off the bed, on the side opposite the balcony doors, and calmly meet her eyes. “No. I’ll go.”

Rose puckers. “Wearing a proper outfit?”

I frown. “Yes.”

“Without your weapon?”

A groan bubbles in my throat. “Going isn’t compromise enough?”

Rose’s pucker sharpens and she clucks her tongue. “Weapons have no business inside the palace.”

She takes a few quick steps across the room and lays the gown and ribbon on the bed. No sooner does the fabric relax against the mussed sheets than her hands move to my nightgown, undoing the buttons down the back like she’s afraid I’ll change my mind if she doesn’t move fast enough. I start to flinch, start to fight her off on instinct, when my muscles still. I can do this. All of this—the marriage, whatever classes Noam ordered, and help my kingdom in ways that I never even dreamed of but that will still make me feel like I belong to Winter.