Snow Like Ashes(74)

One of the Winterians stops digging. She lifts her head, face caked with mud, and when her gaze meets mine across the lawn, light dawns on her face. A ray in the shadows of Spring that makes me heavy with guilt—she can’t be any older than me.

“Get back to work!” one of the guards yells, and readies a whip. It curls around the girl’s forearm and yanks her forward, but she keeps her eyes on me, her face alight with wonder.

“No,” I whisper as the guard raises the whip again. “Stop!”

Herod steps between the Winterians and me. The whip cracks, the girl cries out, and Herod leans in so all I can see is his face. “Keep moving,” he growls, and pushes the soldiers holding me. We plunge up a set of gleaming black steps as the girl cries out again and again, the whip cracking harder and faster.

“Stop!” I scream as we enter the shadow of Angra’s palace. “Stop it!”

I reach back for her, for all of them. As I do, a deadly will rises in me to help them. As hard and fast as the whip, as brilliant as the girl’s hope. But the soldiers pull me inside the palace, yanking me away from doing anything more than hurting.



20


ONCE THE DOORS shut, all links to the surrounding city vanish, sealing the palace around us like a tomb.

The entry hall is a cave of gleaming obsidian with sconces throwing yellow light onto the reflective surface, a never-ending echo bouncing off walls that toy with it just for entertainment’s sake. The only breaks in the light are portraits of Spring’s past rulers that hang at perfectly spaced intervals on the walls. A woman, her long blond hair pulled over one shoulder in a tangle of curls, beams at the painter. A little boy with pale green eyes stares into the distance, his blond curls exploding out of his head in disorderly rebellion. The same two people are in at least a dozen portraits, posing in front of Spring’s cherry-blossom trees or rivers or plain blue backdrops. The riots of color in these paintings don’t belong here; this place should be nothing but darkness. Who are these people?

When I see the signature of the artist in the bottom corner of one painting, my body falls slack. Angra Manu. If Angra really painted these, then the outside of his palace makes more sense. He embraces art in a way that would make Ventralli proud.

I turn my gaze downward, staring at the black floor instead of at the bombardment of life and color and happiness painted by the king who has brought nothing but death to Winter.

The doors at the end of the hall groan as a soldier pulls them open. I’m not allowed even a moment to gather my wits before we enter the throne room, wide and dark and filled with the poetic collision of sunshine and shadow. A series of windows has been cut into the high ceiling, circles of sunlight that create a path to the dais at the other end of the room. On that dais, the largest beam pours directly onto a towering obsidian throne, the rock absorbing the light in a subtle yet daunting show of power.

But it isn’t the throne that sucks away the most light—it’s the figure slouched on it. The figure who shields his eyes as if the sun pains him, gripping a staff as tall as I am.

All those years of fearing him, and I’ve never seen Angra. He rarely, if ever, leaves his palace, never bothers with leading his army or getting his hands dirty. From this distance, I can see the blond curls cascading over his head, so very similar to the man who joined with the Decay in Hannah’s vision. They’re undeniably related, and it makes me wince. I still don’t want to believe that the vision was real.

We get to the middle of the room and stop. I’m sure Angra can hear my heart humming in my throat, could taste the stench of my fear as soon as we set foot in his palace. It’s so quiet here—there’s no distant shuffling of courtiers, no gentle hum of voices in the next room. This fake calm is more frightening than if Angra were raging in anger. He’s the eye of a storm, everything around him waiting with growing anticipation for his madness to break.

Herod steps forward. “My king,” he says, voice echoing through the empty hall.

Angra stays silent. Herod nods at the guards and I grunt as they chuck me forward, my armor clanking on the floor. I can’t suppress my cry, the feeble sound bouncing off the walls.

Herod laughs as I writhe on the obsidian. “I have brought you a token of Winter’s weakness.”

“The boy?”

Angra’s voice stabs at Herod’s mistake—I am not Mather, and no matter how much Herod might enjoy toying with me, he failed.

A low growl resonates in Herod’s throat. “No. The thief who stole half of the locket.”

Boots descend the dais and swish across the floor. I don’t move, hands around my torso, eyes closed, neck bent. Sir trained me for this. For Angra, for Spring.