He frowns. After a moment, his shoulders harden again and he nods toward the fire. “You’ll get this. For yourself. Someday.”
I choke on Sir’s sincerity. “Thank you,” I whisper, and every piece of my heart aches.
Fingers clamp around my arm.
“Come on!” Nessa sings, tugging me into the fray as Sir waves me off. I wish the temptation of losing myself to such a carefree activity was enough to distract me, but I feel the pressure of Sir behind me, of his words, the sort of thing I’ve wanted to hear from him for years.
This night makes such things possible.
So I fling my body into a spin, giggling when Nessa grabs both my hand and Conall’s, knotting us into an awkward tangle. Conall smiles fully now and Nessa positively beams in the firelight and the pounding music and the wafting aroma of food—roasted pork, spicy mulled wine, and something so thickly coated in cinnamon that the air is heavy with the rich scent.
The song ends, switching to one that makes Ceridwen yelp in recognition from across the fire. By the intensity of the drumbeats, it sounds less like the lulling Autumnian music and more Summerian. And it must be, based on the way Ceridwen hurls her body into a set of choreographed movements, arms jolting, feet tapping a pattern on the ground.
Her Summerian friends are the first to join her dance. Jesse picks up on it next, and soon everyone around the fire is trying to follow, arms flapping, feet pounding, laughter roaring.
Conall hesitantly tries out the first few steps and Nessa doubles over, laughing so hard I fear she might splinter. His smile stretches even wider, and we both join him, moving our arms out, in, out, our feet sliding through the stomping pattern.
Ceridwen grabs Jesse, her Summerian friends split into pairs, and the dance grows closer, the music urging couples to bend into each other as the song continues.
Nessa’s eyes flick around the dancers. Her lips curve into a sly grin, but when I spin to find what she’s looking at, I see only more dancing bodies, nothing unusual.
“What is it?” I shout over the music.
She hooks her arm through Conall’s and shoves me away. “He’s my partner—you have to find your own.”
The force of her shove sends me flailing into another body. I barely register Nessa’s giggling before I notice the midnight-blue tunic under my hands, the chest heaving up and down, the arms on my elbows. Mather.
Heat flushes up my neck.
The music breaks, the drums beating with such ferocity that they’re practically begging us to dance.
I press myself against Mather and imitate the waving, stomping chaos of the crowd. He seems stunned at first, but it doesn’t take him long to fall into it too.
His body curves around me, his eyes just as bright as the bonfire. I’ve never been this close to him for this long, in a way that makes me breathless with more than exertion. His head angles down, our limbs keeping time to the beat even as our faces stay just shy of touching.
The music slows, quickens again, building in intensity. Each time it breaks, the crowd cheers, movements flailing ever more strongly. But the longer the song continues, the less I hear. The noises of the celebration lull, the sights and colors and smells ebb away, until there’s only Mather, his body against mine, his breath tangling with my every exhale.
I always knew he was beautiful. But the way he moves, just as exuberant as Nessa, just as confident as Ceridwen—he’s not just beautiful. He’s . . . mine.
I stop as the song ends. Another picks up, not nearly as fast as the last one. Mather hesitates, panting, his joy easing into a heavy stare when I don’t start dancing again.
One breath, just one, and he backs up a step. An invitation, an unspoken signal.
He weaves through the dancing crowd. When he reaches the edge of the clearing, he stops, his sapphire eyes never leaving mine.
Mather’s lips hover somewhere close to smiling and he plunges out toward the forest.
The magic in me tangles around my nerves until I’m walking. Slow steps, the drums thumping beats into me, the dark of the evening swallowing the firelight and the lanterns of the celebration.
I duck away from the dancers and follow Mather into the night.
21
Mather
EVERYTHING WAS SO clear here.
From where Mather perched on one of the lower ridges of the foothills that bordered Autumn, he could see the camp in its entirety. The moon had just become visible, its pale light spilling over the trees, the tents, and the clearing where the revelers still danced. The faint pounding of drums lit the air, the distance and encompassing night giving the illusion that this camp was all that existed. Not the shadow of evil that waited to devour them, not the jagged peaks of the Klaryns behind Mather, the mountains that would swallow them up in a few days.
The look on Meira’s face today had all but ripped him apart. The way she had grabbed the image of Ceridwen and Jesse’s happiness like a beggar scrambling to hoard a few last pieces of nourishment. Her brows pinched, her hands slack, those crystalline eyes showing how much she wanted exactly what Ceridwen and Jesse had.
And how much she knew she wasn’t destined to have that.
That was what scared Mather most—her look of regret. Like she knew that despite her burning need to have that happiness, she never would, and she had accepted this sacrifice in return for whatever she had planned.
Mather dug his fingers into the earth. His legs dangled over the ledge and he closed his eyes, hunching down.
Leaves crunched behind him, and when he turned, the need in his stomach thrashed at the sight of her.
Meira stood at the entrance to the path that led up here, her fingers looped around a low-hanging tree branch next to a sheer wall of rock that shot up to the next ridge. She wore a traditional Autumnian outfit, but that didn’t stop Mather from wondering if someone had designed it with the sole purpose of driving him insane. Light blue fabric cut around her body, leaving her stomach bare, skin gleaming in the delicate moonlight. A longer strand of fabric hung limp from her elbows and when she stepped forward, she let it drop to the ground, revealing her arms, her shoulders, in a way that made Mather’s chest ache.
He flipped his attention back to the camp. Ice, something as simple as skin shouldn’t send him into such a pathetic flurry. But when she sat beside him, her skirt catching around her legs, Mather didn’t dare speak for fear of what might slip out of his mouth. He had a feeling it would be something inappropriate, like That dance tonight will drive me crazy for months or We should keep dancing. Up here, on this ridge, with no one else to see.
After a long pause, Meira turned to the forest below.
“Are you ready for the trip?” she asked, her voice as fragile as the leaves under them.
He shifted to face her. “Are you? Jannuari, then the Tadil. Should be easy enough, after everything else we’ve done.” He paused, daring, pleading. “Right?”
Meira didn’t agree with him immediately, and that was enough to make him feel a pang of alarm—then she sighed, the tears in her eyes barely visible in the darkness
“It was never enough,” she said. “All the sacrifices we made for this war. None of it was ever enough, no matter how much it hurt. But this one”—she angled toward him, certainty giving her a slightly mad air—“this one will be, Mather. This one will defeat Angra.”
She paused.
“A conduit must be sacrificed and returned to the chasm,” she whispered, and it seemed to take physical effort for her to push out the words. “The sacrifice will destroy all magic, Angra’s Decay included. I am Winter’s conduit, and I will—”
“What?” Mather cut her off. “Stop. This is how you’ll defeat him? You can’t— Meira, no.”
But she didn’t look convinced. If anything, she looked tired, as though she’d lost another ally.
“I don’t need you to disagree with me.” She pushed to her feet, and he followed her up as her hands formed tight knots at her sides, digging into the s
atin folds of her skirt when she whirled on him. “That’s part of the reason I’ve hesitated to tell you, but I need you to understand what’s waiting for me in the labyrinth, because . . .” Her mouth bobbed open, her eyes sheened with tears. “I want you. All of you, Mather, for however short a time I have left, but I need you to understand what that means. This isn’t something that will last, and it will hurt, because I know what I’m asking you to do. I’m asking you to love me and let me . . . die.”
Her words became muffled in his ears. It took Mather too long to figure out why he felt a sudden, heavy weight settling over his body.
She really was planning on dying for them.
Then he heard what else she said, and everything in him unraveled.
Longing balled in the pit of his stomach until he thought he might burst if he didn’t do something he had dreamed of doing for a long, long time.
“What about . . . Theron?” Mather closed his eyes.
A cold palm cradled his cheek. He blinked down at her, wariness humming in the back of his throat as Meira looked up with the exact same wariness, as if she had no idea how she had come to stand before him, her hand on his face.
“I will do everything I can to save Theron,” she stated. “But there was always something wrong with us.”
Mather sucked in sharp, short breaths, leaning into her palm more with each word she said, with each word she didn’t say. “Why?”
Damn it all, stop asking questions and just kiss her.
Meira’s hand trembled against his face.
“Because he wasn’t you,” she gasped.
That was it.
Mather wrapped his fingers around her wrist and pulled her forward, cupping the back of her head as he slid his face down to hers. He hovered just shy of her lips, panting, choking because, ice above, this moment—this was everything, the entirety of his life expanding from this one act, revolving around her because she was at the center of everything good that had ever happened to him.
His nose pressed into her cheek, his body vibrating with the compulsion to suck her up like the vortex of a blizzard, the numbing funnel that didn’t allow coherent thought. Her lashes fluttered against his face, her skin glowed pearly in the rising moonlight, making her look so untouchably perfect that Mather’s knees trembled.
She drew a breath and her lips parted in two words that rebounded through his body.
“Kiss me,” she said.
So he did the only thing he could do, the only thing he had ever wanted to do, from the moment they had been children living a nomadic existence under the threat of war and she’d been this stubborn, determined force that had shocked him and scared him and invigorated him.
He kissed her.
Soft, careful, because he wanted to discover every contour of her lips. He closed his eyes and found her through the air between them, and she hooked onto his mouth. Mather scooped her into his arms, her chill radiating into his body and adding urgency to the pulsing need that made his abdomen tight.
They stumbled back until he felt the rock face under his palms, the jagged surface a contrast to the texture of Meira’s lips, her lips, damn, it wasn’t fair that anything could be that soft. He pushed her against the rock, one hand bracing himself on the rough stone because each kiss only made him want more as he drew in ragged breaths between kisses and cursed his need to breathe at all.
His fingers turned to claws, digging into the rock, crumbling chunks of stone and dirt off into his palm as his other hand stroked lines down Meira’s arm, found her waist. He brushed over the gap in her dress, a moan echoing in his throat as his fingers connected with the tantalizing bare skin of her stomach, the curve of her hip. Her wearing this dress was too much and not enough all at once, and she didn’t make it any easier when she knotted her fingers into his hair and echoed his moan, a low, intoxicating purr that made him grip the rock wall harder.
Mather emitted a strangled sound that was more pain than pleasure. All his instincts screaming, he pulled away from her.
She blinked up at him, her hands on his chest. “What’s wrong?”
What could possibly be wrong? He finally had her. He could finally touch her and kiss her and spend the rest of his life with his arms around her—
But that was exactly it. He wanted to spend the rest of his life like this, with her, but she would leave his life empty in a matter of days. Just the thought made agony snuff out most of the desire that swarmed him when he felt her move under his hands.
“I won’t let you die,” he told her.
She went slack against the rock. “It isn’t your decision.”
“It isn’t?” He pitched toward her, but he didn’t dare kiss her again, didn’t dare lose himself in the way she watched him and touched her swollen lips. “How can you think you’ll be the only one affected by this?”
Meira sagged even more. “I know I won’t be. Why do you think it’s so hard for me to do this? Why do you think I started to ask you to help me?” She pitched forward until her head fell against his chest, her fingers gripping his shirt like a tether keeping her from flying away. “I’m not strong enough to hurt you and everyone else like that. But I have to. Please, Mather,” she begged, her head shooting back up. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Let’s just be here.”
So many images of her being strong crowded his mind that he had trouble seeing her like this, begging, broken, scared. But he was broken and scared, and ice above, if he didn’t crumple at the thought of casting away everything bad in favor of one night. Just one.
Mather fell into her again, and he knew he’d never be able to regain control of himself. Tears burned his eyes but he didn’t care; instead he lost everything in the way Meira met him with equal fervor, her body bending against his like they were two stalks of grass swaying with each other.
Their kisses went from gentle to chaotic, hands and tongues and sighs that could have been whimpers. And through it all, Mather wove words in a haven around them on the ridge.
“I love you,” he said, and promised, over and over again. “I will always love you, and I should be able to protect you. . . .”
He felt Meira break under his words, tears streaming down her cheeks, mingling with his.
“I love you,” she told him. “And I will protect you.”
22
Meira
DON’T WAKE UP.
The camp had been quiet when we finally crept back last night, everyone safe and asleep in their various tents. Which made it far too easy to nod in passing at the soldiers and meander through the dusty paths, the tents the only audience as Mather and I . . .
We . . .
I’m fully awake now, a grin stretching my lips as I bury my face in the pillow. I lie facing the flaps of my small tent, and when I finally pull my face free, I thank last-night-me for her good sense to tie the flaps together, what with Nessa’s propensity for diving in unannounced. The delicate, hazy light visible around the edges tells me it’s not yet late morning.
My body cools, the iciness of magic reacting to my intense emotions, a sensation that roiled through me so often last night that I all but went numb with wonder. I press a hand to my lips, memory drawing up the feel of Mather’s hands on my waist, my fingers nestled in the grooves of his muscles, my mouth finding his.
My grin widens and I roll onto my back, head lolling to the side.
A pair of jewel-blue eyes meets mine.
His smile is just as wide, maybe even more so, and he props himself up on his elbow.
“Hi,” he says.
I dissolve into giggles, covering my mouth to mute the sound through the thin tent.
Mather’s smile stretches. “What?”
“Hi? I don’t know. It just feels a little too simple.”
“What would be better?” He wraps an arm around me and nuzzles into my hair. “Good morning, my queen?” A kiss on my shoulder. “Or lovely to see you this morning, Lady Meira?” A kiss on my jaw. “Or I had the most inde
cent dream about you last night, Your Highness?”
That does nothing to help my laughter. “Odd, I had a rather indecent dream about you too.”
He chuckles and goes back to lying on his propped elbow. The blanket tucked around us falls down to his waist, and despite everything, my cheeks flush at the sight of his bare chest.
“Oh?” he asks. “Maybe we had the same dream. What happened in yours?”
His mouth flutters in that smile he knows disarms me. But I can be just as disarming.
I roll over, burrowing against him, my fingers tracing every line of muscle honed from years of fighting, a few rough scars that knot his skin. “You know, I can’t recall,” I say. “It must not have been very memorable.”
Mather howls and tackles me. I squeal, giving up on trying to stay quiet, and catch his lips with my own, our bodies aligning in a way that makes every touch from last night flash through me at once.
I knot my fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck and pull back to look at him. Another laugh spurts out, this one incredulous. “How did this even happen?”
Mather rolls back. “I can tell you exactly how it happened.” He squints in a rather overdramatic show of thinking. “About twelve years ago, a five-year-old girl pushed me down in the training yard and stole my sword. That incident was only the beginning—eleven years ago she talked me into painting a tent with ink, six years ago she stole a bottle of wine and got me drunk . . .” He trails off, his eyes drifting down to my smirk, and he beams. “I was too stupid to realize that I willingly sauntered into whatever crazy plan she concocted. It was only a matter of time before she got me here.”
“Oh, so this was my plan?” I lift up so I’m eye level with him. “You got all the dates wrong, though. The wine stealing was five years ago, and eleven years ago we were five.”
Mather’s brows twitch. “I knew I should have reminded you.”
“Of what?”
“Our birthdays. Well, yours at the very least—it was a few months ago. You really missed it? You’re seventeen now, Meira. We both are.”