“Golden leaves,” Theron hisses from the ground.
I don’t see Mather’s face. I don’t see much of anything when I turn and Theron looks up at me, blood speckling his chest, a few red-black splotches in the shape of Mather’s spiked boot.
“Medic!”
It’s Dominick. He drags a tiny man with an overflowing pouch of bandages, and they duck under the rope, instantly yanking Theron’s hand off his chest.
Dominick turns to the men still gaping at their prince and the foreign Season king. “Fun’s over. Back to training now!”
The men hurry away. It’s such a violent switch in priorities that my brain can’t catch up, stuck on Theron’s blood and Mather’s anger and the echo of the Cordellans’ shouts, of my own voice in my head, screaming at me to choose.
To choose Winter. To always choose Winter. Over Mather, over Theron, over … me.
A sword drops behind me, the metal clanking in a hollow ring on the dirt. I turn, the world spiraling even more.
“Meira.” Mather holds his hands out, staring at them like he’s covered in blood. “I didn’t mean to—I don’t know what—”
The whole training yard shakes when Sir leaps into the sword ring. He stomps forward, ready to rip into us with his own in-charge threats. But his eyes fall to Theron on the ground, Mather standing over his sword, and me in the middle of it all.
A wave of fury sweeps over Sir’s face when he returns his gaze to Mather. He doesn’t say anything, just takes two quick steps forward and grabs Mather’s arm, dragging him out of the sword ring as neither look back. When they get a good distance away, far enough that I can’t hear what they say, Sir growls something that makes Mather shake his head once, twice, and shout something in return.
Fingers brush the back of my hand. Theron stands beside me, and he doesn’t smile or nod or do anything I expect him to do; he just stays there next to me, blood tingeing the bandage on his chest. A calm and steady reminder that I’m not alone.
“Are you all right?” I ask, nodding to the bandage and trying desperately to ignore the lingering ripples his fingers left on my skin.
Theron drops his gaze to the wound and shoots me a roguish grin. “It takes more than a boot to stop me.” He touches the fabric and purses his lips. “But I should probably cover it up. Just in case my father—”
His eyes go to Mather and Sir, still in a heated argument a few dozen paces away. When Theron looks back at me, he inhales and stands up straighter.
“No need to cause more trouble,” he says, and points toward the palace. “Care to come with me? I’ll wash up and show you around, if you like. Far less”—he pauses—“dangerous activities.”
My gaze darts from him to Sir and Mather and back again. Should I stay and talk with Sir? Should I go over and try to defend Mather?
I pull my shoulders back. “I’d love to.”
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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14
THERON LEADS ME up the servants’ passage to his chambers, winding through the bowels of the palace to avoid any run-ins with Noam. We walk up three flights of stairs and down unendingly long halls, all far less luxurious than the main walks of the palace—just simple green carpets and unpainted wood walls and milky white candles on brown tables.
Maids with baskets of linens and errand boys with messages tucked under their arms scurry past, performing the daily tasks that keep a palace functioning. Everyone we pass stops to drop a bow to Theron, their faces easing from the focus of work to the pleasure of seeing someone they know.
Theron nods to each of them. “Is your mother feeling better?” he asks a passing maid, who dips a curtsy as she says yes, quite, the doctor worked a miracle. “I hope your brother is enjoying his new post,” Theron says to an errand boy, who beams at the mention and says he is, my lord, he was made lieutenant.
I trail behind, eyebrows rising higher with each brief conversation. He knows all of them. Every single one. And not only that, but he seems genuinely interested in them, remembering not only dozens of faces but also the smallest details about how that back acre of farmland is doing, did the trade with Yakim go well last week, is your daughter settled with her new husband yet?
We stop in front of a door in the third-floor hall. Theron turns the knob, moving on like none of the interactions were anything out of the ordinary, and I cast a glance behind us. None of the servants seem to think anything is unusual either. Is he that familiar with them? I can’t imagine Noam allows his son to mingle with those beneath him.
“Are all royals in Cordell so”—I pause, searching for the right word—“attentive?”
Theron looks over my shoulder at a chatting group of maids. His eyes drift, just enough that I can tell his thoughts are on a not-exactly pleasant memory, and he forces a smile to cover his tracks. “No one else sneaks around the back to get to their rooms as often as I do,” he jokes, and before I can ask more, he dives into the room, leaving me to follow.
Tucked beside a bureau, the door opens onto a sitting room just large enough to be spacious but not so large as to be extravagant. A dining table lies on the left while an array of chairs and couches cluster together around a fireplace on the right. The furniture sits atop a thickly woven green-and-gold rug, the colors mimicking the dark shades of the rest of the sitting room. A chandelier hangs over the dining table and paintings of Cordell’s lavender fields or vibrant green forests or rivers trickling through yellow prairies line the walls. It’s fine yet functional, a place I could picture both a strategic meeting taking place as well as a vicious card game.
“I’ll be just a moment,” Theron says as he shuts the door behind us and disappears into the bedroom on the right.
After a moment, the sounds of water splashing into a bowl drift out. I wander around the sitting room to distract myself from the fact that Theron’s bedroom door is open and he’s probably a bit more than shirtless now.
Sweet snow, I’ve never thought about a man being undressed so much in my life. Even at camp with Mather, I never thought about the fact that he’d be in the bathing tent after me, and he’d be, um … I mean, maybe I thought about it, but I never got quite so flustered. I press my hands to my cheeks and exhale.
I stop in the middle of the room, hands still on my face, and narrow my eyes. There’s a lot of stuff in here. A lot of stuff. More than furniture and decorations. I turn in a circle, surveying the tightly packed space. I was so distracted by thoughts of boy matters that I overlooked the slightly messy, slightly unkempt quality of Theron’s sitting room—all right, the very messy, very unkempt quality.
Framed paintings of every size and shape sit in haphazard stacks around the room, leaning against the bureau and the wall and the chairs, with smaller paintings spread across the tabletop on a thin cotton sheet. Elaborate masks covered in jewels and gold accents dangle from ribbons on the corners of paintings. Books in towering stacks lean against the fireplace and on small end tables, and crowd the bookshelves so tightly I fear the entire structure will burst in an explosion of paper and dust. They’re large books too, great archaic things that look so old, so fragile, that I worry I might disintegrate them just by breathing too hard.
I lean over the dining table, my eyes flitting across palm-sized paintings of oak trees and books with yellowed pages poking out of the covers. One rectangular tome with a gold-embossed title reads History of Trade on the Feni River. Another book next to it reads Fairy Stories of Mountain Dwellers in thick leather thread. Beside it sits a stack of fresh parchment, a few illegible lines scratched in the same frantic hand as the poem in the library. Theron’s work. I squint but can only make out a few words—true and could and some others—and turn to a collection of oval portraits in a small box, each painting encased in a thin silver frame. I run my hand over one of a woman with her hair done up in a taut bun, staring grimly at the painter as thoug
h he and he alone was responsible for pulling her hair so tight.
A cupboard door slams behind me and I flinch away from the table to peer into the room. All I can see is a canopy bed drenched in pale white light from an open window. The cupboard slams again from within and I step toward the door just as Theron steps out, pulling his now-wet hair back into a ponytail. He’s changed out of his training clothes and into something more princely, black pants with thin gold stripes running down the sides. A close-fitting white shirt buttons up to his neck under a black vest, hiding his bandaged chest.
He tightens his hair. “What would you like to see first? We have quite the menagerie in the forest, an art gallery in the north wing—”
I cock an eyebrow. “An art gallery? Are you sure there are any paintings left in it?” I wave my hand at the room. “From the looks of things, this prince business is just a front for your life of art thievery.”
Theron glances around the room and absently moves to the nearest stack of books, lifting one and running his fingers down the spine. He looks up at me, an expression of mock hurt on his face. “I rob libraries too, I’ll have you know. And I have two good reasons for this”—his eyes narrow as he considers—“collection.”
“You want to have a standby profession in case being king doesn’t work out?” I guess, smiling, even as I realize how truthful it might be.
Theron shrugs, setting the book back on the stack. “Partly that. But mostly it’s because my father thinks this obsession is wholly unbefitting of a future king, and as long as I keep my chambers clogged with relics, he refuses to come here.” He beams at me. “But also because many of these belonged to my mother.”
“Your mother?” I run my eyes over the bookshelf, remembering Sir’s lectures. Theron, half-Cordellan, half-Ventrallan, is probably expected to take after his father’s side more than his mother’s.
I reach out and touch the spines of the books on the shelf. It reminds me of the fire pit Finn brought back. Holding on to some part of your past even if it means also holding on to the pain of never again having it. That pain is less horrible than the pain of forgetting.
“I’m sorry,” I say, though I’m not sure what I’m apologizing for. I’m sorry your mother isn’t here anymore. I’m sorry your father uses you.
Theron shrugs it off and steps closer, standing at the other end of the bookshelf. “Do you read much?”
I trace the lettering on the spine of one particularly fat book. “Only as much as Sir made me. I prefer to slice my time away.” I smile but Theron just watches me, his lips cocked thoughtfully.
He pushes away from the bookcase and toward a stack of paintings in the corner. “I have a landscape I think you might like,” he throws over his shoulder, sorting through great square frames. “An older one, but it’s in good condition—”
He keeps talking but his voice fades to a murmur, a distant lull at the back of my consciousness. I stare at the fat book I’ve been running my fingers over, the letters spelling out a title that makes my mind squeeze with sudden curiosity. It’s old, very old, one of the brittle tomes that looks liable to disintegrate into a cloud of dust at any moment. I read the title again.
Magic of Primoria.
Magic like … my dreams of Hannah?
I know nothing about magic beyond what Sir told me through lessons, but there has to be a reason for my dreams—if they aren’t caused by stress, that is, which is still a very likely possibility. But if that’s not it, they have to be coming from somewhere else—the stone? Another source of magic? And if there’s magic coming from somewhere else, then there has to be a source of magic other than the Royal Conduits. I mean, there’s the chasm, but the magic there only affects the Seasons, just as all the Royal Conduits affect only their citizens within a certain radius. Maybe, if I was in a Season Kingdom, I could attribute my Hannah dreams to remnants of magic emanating from the chasm—not that I’ve ever heard of that happening—but here, in Cordell, what could be causing them? If it even was magic. If I’m not just losing my mind.
As I piece through my thoughts, a weight of doubt drops in my chest. Thousands of years. That’s how long it’s been since there’s been anything but the eight Royal Conduits, since the chasm of magic had an accessible portal through the Klaryns before it was lost to avalanches or sabotage. If there were another magic source, if there were more power, if there were anything else, someone would have found it by now. Wouldn’t they?
None of this stops me from pulling the ancient book off the shelf and holding it in both hands. A seal sits in the bottom-right corner, deep red wax rubbed almost smooth by the years. An indecipherable phrase curves around a picture of a beam of light hitting a mountaintop. I can make out a few of the words—OF THE LUSTR—before it fades into age-warped gibberish. A maker’s seal? Whatever it is, I run my fingers over it, biting my lip in thought.
Doing some research can’t hurt, right? And it’s a far better alternative to sitting in Bithai’s palace getting primped as a future Cordellan queen while Sir and Mather and Noam go on making decisions without me. This way I’m doing something. Something small, but still something.
It’s a start.
“—yet interesting, I think,” Theron is saying.
I turn to him, hugging the giant book to my chest. He holds a painting by the top corners near his waist, the base of it barely brushing his boots.
All breath flows out of me, sucked away like the painting is a vortex of wind and I’m caught up in the storm.
It’s Winter. Or, well, it could be a Rhythm Kingdom in its own winter season, but when I see that painting, it’s Winter. A forest there, the trees bowing and bending under the weight of ice, their brown branches frozen into glittering columns. Drifts of snow flow around the base of the trees, broken only by boulders or small snow-covered bushes. Everything sits in the peaceful stillness of morning, the sun’s rays just barely cresting the trees and turning everything the hazy blue-yellow of dawn.
Prove it.
Those two words again. My fingers tighten on the book the longer I stare at the painting, something like determination coursing through me. Sir was right. I don’t know anything. I don’t know what Winter feels like, I don’t know what forest this painting depicts. I don’t know anything, I’ve never seen it, because it’s gone. Just like that, one horrible war, one vicious takeover, and thousands of people were slaughtered, imprisoned, destroyed. Just like that, an entire existence was shattered, and the most I’ve ever been able to do is hope that someday I have my own Winter memories.
I’ve been so selfish, haven’t I? Selfish and narrow-minded and wrong, because I wanted to matter to Winter, but in my own way. Within my own set parameters that would also fit who I wanted to be. I choke on a laugh, hating that it’s taken me this long to realize that Sir was right. Damn him—I long for the day when he’s wrong for once.
I don’t even realize I’ve moved until Theron clears his throat. I’m kneeling on the floor before the painting, staring, the book still clutched to my chest in one hand while my other goes out toward the trees like if I reach hard enough, I can grab some snow off the branches.
Theron shifts his hold on the painting and looks down at it. “I can have it hung in your room, if you wish?”
I nod and jerk my hand back around the book. “Thank you,” I breathe, and look up at him. He smiles, soft and careful, his eyes shining as they dart across my face.
Muscle by muscle, his smile fades. “We’ll get it back.”
I hug the book tighter and swallow, forcing a sudden rush of tears to the back of my throat. “We?” I shake my head. “They will. My part is—” I stop, breath pinching, and wince. It shouldn’t hurt. This is right, isn’t it? This is what I need to do—marry into Cordell. For Winter.
Theron leans the painting against the back of a couch, one of his hands absently hovering over it. His eyes drift out like he’s remembering some long-ago tale, and when he focuses on me, I stand, quiet, holding the book like a sh
ield between us.
“I almost joined Ventralli’s Writers’ Guild when I was eleven,” he says.
My eyebrows rise. “Really? What happened?”
“Nothing good,” he laughs. “I wrote to the Ventrallan king at the time—my mother’s brother-in-law—and got his special approval to join. I arranged for a place to stay and travel to get there and how many men would escort me. I was so proud of myself, and I wanted it so badly.” Theron’s gaze drops to a space over my shoulder, staring into the past. “Five days before I was to leave, my father sent his steward to my rooms to tell me a carriage was waiting to take me to a military base on Cordell’s coast. That I would live there for the next three years and study under one of my father’s colonels.
“My father knew my plans to go to Ventralli. I told him as I was making them, but I didn’t know until that day that he never intended to let me go. That his heir would be brought up in military methods and resource management, not art and poetry.” He frowns and looks back at me as if he forgot I was here. “But that didn’t stop me from having all this,” he waves around the room, “and from inviting the best Ventrallan writers and poets and artists to visit Cordell. There will always be a they in your new life, Meira. They make decisions; they mold your future. The trick is to find a way to still be you through it all.”
“Are we really allowed that luxury?” I ask. I don’t even think about how forward it might be or how little I know him—all I can think is how much I do know him. He wanted something more out of his life. He wanted to be an artist, though his father wanted him to be a king. And here he is, the heir of Cordell, standing amidst piles of books and paintings. He’s both. He adapted to everything his life thrust at him.
Theron exhales, his shoulders bending ever so slightly. “I need to believe so.”
I bite my cheek. Is it possible? To be both what Winter needs and what I want? Instead of fighting for only what I want, or surrendering to only what Winter needs, to find a balance between the two?