She dropped her shawl in her chair, and Rule crossed the room and threw his arms around her. Again, that same rush of electric energy from his touch shot through Margot. And again the look of longing that was for more than magic danced in his eyes. This time, she was almost sure that the look was just for her.
“You’re in a funny mood. How was Sir Go—”
Margot put a finger to his lips.
“Remember when you . . .” She paused, trying to find the right way of bringing up the time she rejected him. “What you said about me distracting you?” she asked, removing her finger from his lips.
“I apologized for that. I thought we agreed to forget it ever happened.” His cheeks reddened as he remembered.
“What if I don’t want to forget?”
A look of confusion crossed Rule’s face before what she was saying set in.
“Distract me,” Margot ordered.
He bent down and kissed her. It wasn’t a gentle kiss of love. It was the fireworks of magic.
That night, they did not talk and they did not sleep. And in the morning she woke and he was gone.
Margot did not wait for him and his cups of coffee. She did not check for his clothes in the closet or the shoes under the bed. She was as sure he was coming back to her as she was of the North Lights in the sky. They had more robbing to do together.
She got up and put on her orange dress and went to try again to see her brother.
19
“I’m here for Go, I mean, Goddard,” Margot said impatiently when she arrived at the palace the next day. She wanted to tell Go all about their latest heist, or rather, the spoils from the heist. She was sure she had enough to buy a house.
The guard frowned.
“Dangerous work, being a friend of the Prince. I am so sorry,” the guard said almost gently.
Margot felt the world tilt.
“There was an accident. None of the Prince’s companions made it. I am so very sorry.”
Margot walked away from the palace doors not believing it. She would feel it if her brother was gone. She would know. Wouldn’t she?
Margot heard a rush of steps after her.
She turned around and saw that it was the maid from the visiting room. She had brought Go to her month after month, year after year. Some bit of her rose in futile hope that there had been a mistake and that Go would be a second behind her.
“Ingri?”
But Ingri shut her eyes hard as if blinking back tears. And Margot felt her hope crashing as quickly as it had risen.
“It wasn’t an accident, exactly. It was magic. It was the Prince. He froze the lot of them,” Ingri said in a rough whisper. “I had to tell you. I wouldn’t want to go through life wondering what happened. I would want to know . . . Goddard . . . Master Goddard . . . He was a good boy . . . It’s easy to get caught up in all this . . . but he never deserved this. No one does.”
Margot’s insides were still protesting against the maid’s words. It couldn’t be true.
“What do you mean froze?” Margot demanded.
“I can’t say any more. I am so sorry for your loss.” The maid turned and made quick tracks back toward the palace.
But as her footsteps retreated against the palace gravel, Ingri added, “The Prince did care for him. He gave him a gentleman’s burial among the court. He’s never done that for anyone.”
Margot didn’t care what the Prince thought of Go. If her brother had never known the Prince, he would still be alive. Margot tried to imagine what it must have felt like—what Go’s last moments were like. Did he see it coming? How did he feel? Did he suffer?
Go was dead. They would not have their happily ever after. Together or apart.
Margot wandered through the village and that was where she spotted him. She could just see the back of him. A boy whose size and shape matched Go’s when he was four and she was seven and they parted ways at the palace. She believed in magic. Not ghosts. But her feet didn’t care. They propelled her forward toward the boy, through the crowd. When she finally reached him, her hand made contact with his very real, very solid shoulder. The boy turned. It was not Go. It was the little beggar boy she’d seen the first day she got to the city.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered.
Go was gone.
The boy looked at her with his silvery, sorrowful eyes and said, “Mother.”
Margot fished in her pockets for coins and found one. The rest she’d left in the room. She handed it to him and ran back to the boarding house, the tears finally coming. At the boarding house, she opened the door without bothering to wipe her eyes. Rule was hunched over something on the bed.
“Rule?” she said. He turned around and stood in front of the bed blocking her view from something. His smile was wrong. It wasn’t the one that belonged to her. It was the one she’d seen out in the street and in the opera house. The smile he gave while his hand was in someone’s purse.
“Rule?” She said again.
He stepped aside. On the bed was her stash and her vials of magic.
“What are you doing? Where are you going with that?”
His smile dropped. He looked at her with a mix of confusion, surprised that she was surprised. “I told you exactly what I was. A Robber,” Rule said.
It was as if he believed that this moment was inevitable, that there was no outcome other than him betraying her.
She calculated the scene. If he had only taken the coins, she would have been able to let him leave. But he was holding her vials, too. She even spotted the handle of her dagger in his back pocket. Rule was trying to take her magic from her.
He smiled a small smile. “Last night was great, but I thought about it and I realized that you were right before. I shouldn’t get distracted. We shouldn’t—”
Margot felt the anger that was already there begin to boil. “You’re doing this because I didn’t return your feelings at first. Because I hurt your ego.”
“I’d say you more than made it up to my ego last night.”
“Poor little Robber boy. Hurt before you get hurt . . . is that it? So now you steal from me?”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I have been planning to leave from the start. But then you took your treasure chest with you.”
He nodded at the shawl which she’d left behind this morning. He had been waiting for his moment to take it from her from the moment he’d seen it.
Margot felt her stomach turn. She had not had an ounce of regret when she woke that morning. But now . . . she was flooded with it.
Rule was going to leave in the night and take everything with him. The money almost didn’t matter now. But the vials of magic and her dagger? She couldn’t let him have them.
She stood in front of him. “I don’t want to hurt you. But I will,” she said defensively.
She considered letting Rule go, but she couldn’t give up magic. Those vials brought her power. Somewhere to belong. Even if it was with the witches.
Margot grabbed the vials and they began to struggle. When she realized he had no intention of letting go, she tried to scream. Rule cupped a hand over her mouth and she felt her panic rise. She bit down on his hand. When he released her, she reached for one of the vials and threw the contents in his direction. Without thinking, she murmured the words and the fireworks began. But the explosion did not go off into the air. It did not scare him like she’d intended. This time it went right through him.
Margot pushed Rule away and he landed with a thud beside her. He was still—too still. She had wanted to stop him, not to kill him.
His eyes had glassed over and were cold. She scrambled through her vials futilely looking for something to save him. But nothing could fill the gaping hole in his chest. There was nothing to still the blood that seeped out onto the floor and all around him. Margot got to her feet. She whispered something between an apology and a prayer over his body before slipping out of the room.
20
She walked through the night and th
ough the woods to the Hollow. She knelt beside the River and rinsed her bloody hands until they were clean before she entered.
Ora came upstairs, rubbing her eyes from sleep. She stopped cold when she saw Margot standing in the center of the hearth room.
“Margot? What are you doing here?”
Margot didn’t answer. She just let Ora wrap her arms around her.
Then, Margot spilled out the entire story, from losing her brother to defending herself against Rule.
“What must you think of me?” Margot said, trying to stop the tears that she could not seem to halt.
Ora started to cry, too. “None of this would have happened if it weren’t for me.”
“What are you talking about?” Margot asked.
“Maybe everything would have been different if I hadn’t done what I did. You would have left us sooner. You would never have even met that thief boy.”
“Ora, what do you mean?”
“I made the spark that first time in your palm. Not you. When the witches were testing you, I did it.”
“I don’t understand,” Margot said quietly. “I did it once. You saw. You all saw. I have the gift. I felt it. I know I did.”
“The spark went through you. But it was mine.”
“I felt it.”
“I gave you just enough. That’s why you felt it.”
“Why would you do that? I don’t understand.”
“I wanted you to stay. I wanted a friend . . . I was sure that your magic would come eventually.”
“You lied to me.”
Ora’s full pout turned into a resolute line. “I did. But I did it for you. For us.”
“I spent all those years believing . . .”
“I know . . . I thought you just needed time. I am sorry.”
This is who they were now. Liar and victim. Witch and thief.
“And now you have blood on your hands. Because of me,” Ora said, her voice full of what sounded like regret.
“I didn’t mean to do it. I had to do it. I want to come home. Please, let me come home.”
“This is my fault. But this isn’t your home anymore. It never was,” the Witch of the Woods said, appearing suddenly. “Margot . . .”
Margot hugged her and ran out of the Hollow.
21
Margot walked through town toward the boarding house. Outside, there were some of the King’s soldiers. She remembered that she had left Rule there; she could not go back. She wasn’t sure where to go. She was all alone again. But it was better being alone around people, somehow.
As night fell and the North Lights rose in the sky, she saw the little beggar boy on the side of the road again. The one who had called her “Mother.” She stopped.
“There is no such thing as family,” her mother had said when she sold her to the witch.
“There is no bind that cannot break,” the Witch of the Woods had said.
Ora’s words chased all of the others. “If you don’t have magic, make your own.”
“What’s your name?” she asked the boy.
“Jagger.”
The little boy raised his hand to her like he had before. The word “mother” was half on his lips again.
“Not Mother. I’m . . . Queen Margot. If you want, you can come home with me.”
Margot did not have a home yet. But the boy didn’t know that. The magic, the home, the everything was to come.
EPILOGUE
Margot and the boy made a home in the middle of the woods where the trees were lavender and the weather was mild. She started collecting things: little bits of things that belonged to others. They brought her comfort. She believed they made her whole and gave her purpose.
She took because she needed, she told herself. She took what they needed. And they were happy for a time.
But one day she learned of a girl named Snow who could change everything and a mirror that was rumored to hold new power—more power. Power that could be all her own. And Margot decided she had to have it.
THE PROPHECY
When the Lights go out at century’s turn,
The progeny of the King will rise to power.
She will either claim the throne herself . . .
or she will give the King more power than he has ever known.
Only she can choose the path for Algid.
But not every path is clear, and there are those who have the power to change the course of fate:
the prince,
the thief,
the thinker,
the secret.
If they are destroyed, the King will surely fall. And should the sacrifice come exactly when the Lights are extinguished, whoever wears the crown will rule Algid forever.
Read on for an excerpt from Before the Snow, Danielle Paige’s first prequel novella to Stealing Snow!
The King’s royal palace was made of stark white stones that spiraled up toward the North Lights. The sparkly glow danced above all of Algid. It looked like there was magic in the sky every night.
When Nepenthe and the River Witch entered the Throne Room, Nepenthe took in the ice sculptures. There were six of them posed in midaction—but their poses made no sense. The one closest to her looked like a soldier cast in ice midrun. His face was etched in horror. She had heard that the King had eccentric tastes, but this did not look like art to her.
She reached out to touch the ice sculpture . . .
“No, Nepenthe . . . ,” her mother stopped her. She put her arm around Nepenthe and squeezed her close, apologetic.
Nepenthe could feel the cold emanating off the statue. And then realized that these weren’t statues at all. They were people who had been frozen to death.
“I am sorry. There is nothing I can do to bring them back to life. I can’t help you,” the River Witch said as the King entered, soldiers at his side.
“This was not my doing. It was my son’s,” the King corrected.
It was only then that Nepenthe noticed the boy. He was about her age and hiding behind the throne. She knew from the way he was dressed that he was the Prince. And she knew from the expression on his face that he had done this to these people.
“He has the power of Snow,” his father whispered, confirming.
Read on for an excerpt from Danielle Paige’s Stealing Snow!
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Who you are is what matters, Princess.”
I had been called a lot of names at Whittaker. “Princess” was never one of them.
He saw that he had my full attention. A smile spread across his face. He was pleased. Then he bent down, closer. “You need to leave this place, Princess. It’s breaking your spirit. The gate on the north corner will open for you. Head north until you see the Tree.”
“The Tree?” I asked. I thought of the tree from my dreams.
This had to be another dream. It was too coincidental.
“You’ll know it when you see it. I promise. When you get to the other side of the Tree, I’ll be waiting. And they will kneel for you.”
Copyright © 2016 by Danielle Paige
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First published in the United States of America in August 2016 by Bloomsbury Children’s Books
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