Snow Like Ashes(78)
“Don’t—” I start, my body twitching involuntarily.
Herod smirks up at me as he eases out the stone. I fling myself forward, my fist sliding through air, but he easily ducks my exhausted attempt at fighting and jams his arm back into me. I crash onto the obsidian floor with a dull thud, pain cutting through my elbow and hip.
But none of that holds my attention more than the thoughtless way Herod chucks the lapis lazuli ball to the dais, where it clatters at the feet of his master. All I can do is stare at the circular stone, that brilliant blue piece of rock, and see the day Mather gave it to me. How certain he was that I should have it, a remnant of our lost kingdom. I never thanked him. Not enough.
My insides crumble as Angra curls his fingers around the stone, closing his eyes for a moment as if trying to absorb its magic himself. He looks at me, a grin tearing across his face. “Was this the magic, girl?” he asks. “If so, it’s empty now. And if it wasn’t what you’re using, believe me, I will find the source and rip it out of you.”
His words break my panic. It’s not magic? It was all just Hannah? One last vision before she has to leave me alone in Spring? Loneliness swells inside of me, cutting through every nerve, leaving me holding back sobs in the horrible nothingness around me.
History, the past, whatever Decay Hannah fears—it doesn’t matter anymore. Because it’s gone, every bit of it wrapped up in Angra as he grips the stone in a powerful fist. There’s nothing left to help me now.
Herod grabs me off the floor, the look on his face telling me he isn’t done yet, not this easily.
Breathe, Meira. Don’t think, don’t analyze, don’t even react.
Angra relaxes into his throne. “Not now, general,” he orders, and I freeze as if I know what he’s going to say. I do, don’t I? I’ve known since we first entered Abril.
“Take her to them,” Angra hisses. “I want them to break her before you do.”
Herod pauses next to me, his disappointment silencing him as he flings me around and the two guards march me back down the dark hall.
The dusk sky seems bright compared to Angra’s palace, even with the light streaming into his throne room and the encroaching darkness out here. I blink it away and notice, heart dropping, that the Winterian slaves are gone. Only their shovels remain, sticking out of the dirt. I have a feeling I’m about to find out where they were taken.
“Put her with the rest. Oh, and Meira?”
I keep marching down the stone path, my body jolting with each step. I’m healed, but Angra’s magic made me unsteady, wobbling with each footfall like a leaf on the wind.
“I will see you again,” Herod calls after me. “Very soon.”
He laughs, voice fading as he returns inside the palace. The doors slam and the smallest bit of tension unwinds from my muscles. He’s gone, for now.
The guards take me through Abril’s slums, the buildings getting worse and worse the deeper we go. Rotted wood collapsing into rooms, piles of rancid garbage littering street corners. Spring citizens watch us as we pass, smirking at the newest Winterian prisoner. But the lives around them—their collapsing houses, the dirt smudged on their children’s faces. How can they be proud of destroying one kingdom when their king doesn’t even care for his own?
The soldiers and I reach a barrier of spiked wire that vanishes into the city. Its high walls cut off the slum from what I can only assume is a—
“Winterian work camp. Welcome home,” one guard grunts, and unlocks the gate.
It takes all of my remaining strength to keep walking, one foot in front of the other, as they close the gate behind us. These aren’t even buildings; they’re cells. Just like Herod said. Cages with three solid sides, a roof, and one gated door, small and cramped and stacked on top of each other like blocks a toddler spilled. Some are empty but most hold hollow, vacant Winterian prisoners watching with soulless eyes. They don’t care. How could they? Angra’s beaten any care out of them, left them to rot in these hovels until he needs them for work.
The soldiers shuffle me down the long row of cells. Dust coats my boots, the wind sings in my ears like a desperate wail. Cages stretch for rows and rows, so many that my stomach aches with nausea again.
Three other camps like this sit throughout Spring. Angra really did imprison an entire kingdom, enacted the worst dominance over his victims by turning them into slaves. As a child it was always impossible to imagine—so many hundreds of people locked away? But now …
How did we let this happen?
The guards shove me into an empty cell on the bottom row. There’s nothing in here, no cot or food or furniture. Just a dirt-covered space with a view of more cells across from me.