Snow Like Ashes(54)

If Theron can do it, I can too. I can weave threads of myself into a tapestry already designed by others. It’s possible. And this could be good—I’m in a position of power, aren’t I? Far more power than being an ordinary soldier. This will be good.

So as Rose tugs the sky-blue gown over my head, and Mona runs a brush through my hair, I pull my shoulders straight. I’m a future ruler of Cordell. How would a future ruler act? Mather bursts into my mind, his steadiness, his calm demeanor in the face of … everything. Act like Mather. I can do this.

“I’m bringing my chakram,” I say. When Rose whips her head up, I level my eyes in a stare. Calm, in control, steady. “I don’t intend on using it, but I will have it with me.”

Rose’s lips twitch. Her eyes narrow, a tight sweep of a glare, before she drops back to work tying the dark-blue ribbon around my waist.

I can’t hide my smile. One small victory.

The next week flies past in a whirl of Cordellan history and curtsying properly and which fork to use while eating salad. I clearly surprise Rose and Mona by paying attention, and every time an instructor compliments me on answering a question correctly, they twitter excitedly from the back of the room. But I’ve always been a good student—in camp, it was only when I saw Mather sparring without me that I started to get twitchy and disruptive, and Sir would throw his hands in the air and shout at me until I broke down in tears. Now though, I really am trying to be good at this whole future-queen thing.

If only because, every morning, I find a way to be me.

In the earliest cracks of dawn, when the sun is still fighting a black-blue war with the night sky, I slip on my clothes—my real clothes, a shirt and pants and boots—and scurry through the still-sleeping palace to the library, where I stashed Magic of Primoria. This coupled with my chaotic schedule of classes and meals in my room means I haven’t seen any of the other refugees since Mather and Theron’s disastrous sparring session. Certainly not for lack of trying on their part—I dart down side halls when I see Dendera coming, scale walls when I hear Finn’s voice around the corner. I have no desire to face anyone until I can present a revelation. Until I can prove that I can still be useful in this position as me.

Part of me wants to sneak out to the shooting range each morning instead of creeping to the library. I haven’t used my chakram since I started queen training, and even though I take it with me to every lesson, it’s starting to feel too much like a prop. But the other part of me, the part that’s resigned to this arrangement, knows how important it is that I try to read Magic of Primoria.

Emphasis on the word try.

Every line on every page of the leathery, almost-disintegrating-in-my-hands book is filled with the tiniest of tiny words written in cramped, illegible script. The letters bleed into each other from age and the fact that the writer pushed the lines so close together that the text looks like one big blob of ink. As if that wasn’t enough, the lines I actually can decipher are beyond unhelpful, either filled with archaic language or riddles, but mostly just history I already know. How the chasm of magic has rested beneath all the Season Kingdoms for as long as anyone can remember, a source of mystery and magic that has existed as long as our world itself. The chasm sits deep, deep beneath our land, so even if a Rhythm did conquer a Season Kingdom and chose to dig through it in an attempt to get the magic, they’d be digging for decades.

There used to be an entrance to the chasm through the Klaryns, a shaft that was opened one day when miners stumbled into it. No one knows where the mine actually was—shortly after it was discovered, it was lost to landslides or deadly weather. But I like to think it was in Winter’s part of the Klaryns—after all, what other Season Kingdom is as good at mining as we are? Then again, we haven’t been able to find another entrance to the magic chasm since the first one vanished, so maybe we aren’t that good.

When the entrance was open, thousands of years ago, an expedition was sent to retrieve magic. According to legends and a few of the more legible lines in the book, the magic sat in the center of an endless cavern, a great ball of energy snapping and crackling as it hung in the negative space of the cave.

To be removed from the cave, the magic needed a host, an object imbued with its powers. The great ball of energy pulsed around the cavern, striking rocks here and there like uncontrollable, chaotic fingers of lightning. And the rocks it struck became imbued with magic. So monarchs started leaving other objects close to the source, waiting for the bolts of magic to strike swords or shields or jewelry and fill them with power. They also tried more dangerous ways of creating conduits, of letting the magic strike their servants. This led to the discovery that only objects could be imbued with magic—people didn’t turn into conduits so much as they turned into overcooked meat.