Snow Like Ashes(99)

I fly up, stumble back, not sure where I can go or where I can hide. I can’t just die—not this easily. It can’t end now, just like that—

Angra throws open a door. “Herod! Bring him, NOW!”

I pause, hands out, chest heaving up and down. Him. Has Mather been captured?

Angra turns back to me as footsteps draw closer from the hall. “Winterians, always getting in the way of greater things,” he says, riled into a fantastic desperation. “You may be able to resist me, but there’s another way to get you to talk.”

Resist.

He didn’t hear any of it. He doesn’t know. For him, the image of Jannuari must have dissolved once I left the cottage. Hannah used the conduit magic to keep us hidden because she needed to prepare me; she took the risk to give me a fighting chance to save our kingdom.

My chest gets cold again, a small shiver that darts down to my hands.

Footsteps pound into the throne room, shadows falling on two figures. One is Herod, his looming shoulders recognizable anywhere. The other is smaller. Still strong, still big, but—

Herod throws the other man into the beam of light in front of me. He collapses, clothes ripped and stained with blood, body bruised and scattered with cuts and gashes. When he looks up at me, everything else vanishes.

It’s Theron.

“Tell me everything,” Angra orders, stomping toward me, the black of his staff creating a cloud of shadow around his hand. “Or I’ll break every bone in your prince’s body.”

Theron sits back on his heels. Theron is here. In Spring.

A cut on his forehead trickles blood into his eye and half of his mouth cocks to one side in a pathetic attempt at looking happy to see me, even here. I fall to the ground in front of him, running my hands over his face, his arms, hesitating on his injuries. “How did you get here?”

Theron’s smile falls. “I could ask you the same thing.”

Angra’s staff cuts between us, slamming into Theron’s head and sending him sprawling onto the floor. Theron lifts up onto his elbows, draws in a calming breath, and looks back at me.

“Don’t you want to tell her how you handed yourself over to me? Gallantly tried to sneak into Spring to save her, but ended up in the same situation.” Angra sneers at Theron, but his usual smugness is marred now, his control wavering in the face of my resistance to his magic. “Shall I show your prince how visitors are treated in Abril?”

I surge forward as Herod rushes to me, both of us colliding an arm’s length from Theron. “No!” I shout, the word echoing around me. I don’t have time for nausea or revulsion or Herod’s slow leer as he wraps his arms around my body and grunts when I kick against him.

“Do you know what happened to the last refugees we caught?” Herod’s voice brushes my hair, my neck, flowing over my body as he pulls me to him.

Angra steps over Theron and lowers the staff’s orb, pressing it against Theron’s spine. But Theron doesn’t flinch, his eyes on mine, his breathing labored and quick as he gathers determination for whatever might lie ahead. He doesn’t know about Angra’s Decay—he doesn’t know Angra’s magic can affect him—

The first rib snaps and Theron cries out, surprise shattering any chance he might have had at remaining stoic. True, unyielding fear washes away the color on his face as he gasps in the silence after the break, his eyes finding mine in a surge of unasked questions. I can’t explain anything though, not as Herod presses his face against my ear, not as the second rib cracks in Theron’s chest, an echoing pop of bone grating against bone that makes my own body ache with memory.

“You do, don’t you?” Herod continues. “Because we let one of them go, so he could tell you what your fate would be. The one who died—R-16? She was a fighter, just like you. Determined to resist. But they always come around in the end.”

The third rib breaks and Theron releases a strangled cry into the floor that makes my heart seize. Angra’s eyes flick to mine. He’s smiling with a child’s delight, his hand twisting around the staff as he continues to break Theron’s ribs one by one. I can stop it. I can stop it if I just tell him who I am—

“I’ll make your prince watch,” Herod whispers.

He made Gregg watch. He kept him chained to a wall in his room while Crystalla was kept in a cage, a doll that Angra made Herod take out and play with at his bidding. Angra showed her a Winterian’s place in Spring by having Herod torture her to death in ways a body can’t fathom.

Theron groans from the floor as Angra finishes healing the ribs he shattered. Herod finally releases me and I fall on top of Theron like my body can shield him from Angra’s magic.