“There is more to this than you think. Much more…”
“Like what?” I asked.
She paused and bit her pretty lip. She wrung her hands that were shaped just like mine but seemed somehow more delicate. “Don’t you think I want to take my guards and fight against the King? I want to save my love from that prison on high and never look back. But if I were to fail, then it would not be just me who suffers. It would be the whole land. There are people who depend on me.”
“But aren’t they already suffering?” I remembered the little boy in the square. If the Duchess thought that keeping quiet was helping her people, she was wrong.
“You don’t know the King the way that I do. It could be so much worse. This, comparatively, is mercy.”
I nodded, accepting it. But something in my gut twisted. Maybe a touch of shame of my own. This was supposed to be my fight. And I wouldn’t take it on, either.
I tried to push it away. I concentrated on the Duchess, whose bottom lip trembled as if she were fighting back tears. I wanted to halt them.
An old story that I’d read back in Dr. Harris’s library popped into my head.
“There’s a tale where I come from about a woman whose husband goes away and is presumed dead. She waits for him to come home, but she’s pressured to marry again. She promises that once she finishes her father-in-law’s funeral shroud, she will comply and pick a new husband. So every day she wove the shroud, and every night she unwove it.”
It was the Greek myth of Odysseus and Penelope. But the Duchess looked as if I was reporting something real and important. Something possible. In truth, the Duchess was already weaving and unweaving her own little engagement drama for the people and the King to believe every day.
“And how does the story end?” she asked quietly, her voice laced with expectation. She was rooting for the girl in my story because she was rooting for herself.
“It takes a long time. Years. But she and her love are reunited. I think Odysseus might slay all the suitors. I can’t quite remember.”
I left out the part where the hero slept with a couple of other women on his journey while Penelope was weaving her shroud. But I didn’t want to undercut the romance.
“No matter,” she said quietly.
“The point is that I do love someone, but I love my people more. And he understands that. The world is bigger than us.”
Despite everything I had done in the last few days, I still believed that my world was just me and Bale. Wasn’t it?
But looking into my sister’s identical face, my plan was blown to bits. I felt the wrong emotion for the millionth time in my life. I had not wanted to save the land. I had not wanted to save the Robbers. I wanted to get me and Bale free. I wasn’t noble or magnanimous.
But I had a sister in the world now. Did that change anything? Did it change everything? It didn’t have to. I didn’t know her. And yet I felt something like gravity in her presence, pulling me into her story, letting her into mine.
“We may look alike. We may share the same DNA, but we don’t know each other and we aren’t anything to each other,” I blurted defensively.
“And we never will be unless you get out of here at once.”
She waved her hand, and the mirror shrunk back into the compact. She extended it to me.
“You’re giving this to me?”
“Take it. You need it to find the other witches and broach a peace.”
“What will happen to you if the King discovers I have the mirror and that you were involved?”
She paused and then said, “Whatever happens, I will know that I have finally done something.”
Temperly thought her long nightmare was finally over. She thought that I was here to fix everything. She could not be more wrong. I couldn’t take the mirror without telling her my truth.
“I don’t want to kill our … King Lazar. Not that he doesn’t deserve it. But the King has someone of mine, too. I just want to take my friend and go back to the other side of the Tree. His name is Bale.”
She shook her head in disappointment.
“But you can come with us … if you want,” I offered.
I couldn’t imagine this royal girl back in upstate New York. Not that I could really imagine myself there again, either. I couldn’t go back to Whittaker. I didn’t know how me and her and Bale would survive back in the real world. But it had to be better than Algid. For all Algid’s magic, there were equal parts of potential pain.
“So you’re going to give the mirror to the Robbers? You know that you can’t trust them.”
“You just said that I had found friends who were enemies of the King. They have the same goal.”
“You’re not what I thought you were,” Temperly said.
“Temperly…”
“I thought you were a hero.”
“I never claimed to be. What about you? You had the mirror all along. You didn’t need me or the power of snow to broach a peace with the witches.”
A look of hurt crossed her face, and then it settled into something like shame.
“You’re right. I didn’t have your power. And the prophecy says it has to be you.”
I felt the frost again—the inside-out squeeze of anger and fury. No one was going to tell me what to do or where to go or who I was.
But she was right. I wasn’t a hero. Far from it. And right now, she was standing in the way of what I wanted. I needed that mirror. It was my and Bale’s passport out of Algid. I wasn’t going to save the world, and neither were the Robbers.
A ring of frost began to form at my feet and make circles around us. Temperly looked down, startled, then back up at me.
I could see that she knew I could just take the mirror if I wanted to.
“I need you to give it to me, Temperly. I am sorry. You can come with me—or you can stay here. But I will have that mirror.”
Temperly’s face crumpled. But it wasn’t disappointment this time. It was fear.
“Guards!” she yelled, clutching the mirror to her chest. And then her eyes darted to someone behind me.
When I turned, I saw King Lazar standing in the doorway. My father. Or rather, our father.
“No!” she uttered, her hand flying to cover her face. My face. She reached for her mask on the floor and quickly put it back on. The pretty lace tentacled itself back onto her skin.
I watched as her body language shifted back to regal poise. She bowed deeply again. The curtsy held something more: an opportunity to slide the mirror into the pocket of one of her skirts.
I looked at Lazar’s face. But his expression was stone-cold. It didn’t betray anything. I didn’t know what evil was supposed to look like. But I hadn’t pictured this.
I had never seen my father—at least I didn’t remember him. I was only a baby when my mother had taken me away. But I didn’t need to remember what he looked like to know my biological father. His face was handsome and younger than I expected. I had always thought that my features were the spitting image of my mother, but something around the eyes and about the shape of the face I had in common with him. And the smile, the one I rarely used, was on his face right now, smiling at me.
Stephen Yardley, the man who claimed to be my father and made visits every other month to the Whittaker common room, and I had not one feature in common. He was round where I was angled. He was large where I was small. Maybe he hadn’t just been disappointed in his madwoman of a child. Maybe he didn’t want me to figure out the truth: that we were not connected at all.
Looking at Lazar, I wished that I was wrong about Stephen Yardley. I wished for a blood tie where there was none. And I wished to rid myself of the tie with the one who was standing in front of me.
My father’s armor had the same symbols carved into it as the Tree and as the Enforcer’s armor, but his was a burnished red instead of the Enforcer’s black.
His skin was weathered like he had been exposed to the sun, and there were markings on his face and arms that re
minded me of the marks I’d seen on the arms that took Bale.
Looking into the cold blue eyes of my father, I knew that it was always supposed to come to this. Did I really think I could get in and out of Algid without facing him? Just because I didn’t believe in fate didn’t stop fate from showing up in a suit of full armor five minutes after I’d met my secret twin sister.
“So there are two of you. That Ora was always a clever one. And right under my nose. What a quaint family reunion …,” he said finally, his voice deep and sure.
“You are not my family,” I said evenly. I didn’t want to show any emotion. He didn’t deserve to see it, but I couldn’t hold it in.
The frosty pattern on the ground cropped up into spikes. Snow flurries floated through the air. All my doing.
“Your snow begs to differ. Come now, is that any way to greet your father?”
Temperly looked from me to her father, our father.
The veins in his face rose beneath his skin and filled, making his blue blood visible. With a wave of his hand, streams of ice created a globe around Temperly. She was trapped.
She pressed her hands against the ice and mouthed something at me.
Kill him.
39
I was stuck for a moment staring at my sister in the ice bubble.
His snow is different from yours, Fathom had said.
And she had examined both of us up close. Did I not have the same gift? Or was it just that he’d had longer to practice?
“I think this will give us some time to talk,” he quipped behind me.
He reminded me of someone. My first thought was Storm on The End of Almost, because Storm was the biggest, baddest villain Haven had ever seen, but the thing was he didn’t know he was a villain. He thought every evil thing he was doing was right. He had his reasons, just like King Lazar apparently did.
I was pretty sure that Temperly hadn’t figured out if she liked me or not. I wasn’t sure if I liked her, either, but looking at her now I could see she hated Lazar as much as I did. Maybe more. I sent a sharp icicle at the globe to crack it open. But it deflected off the rock-hard surface and landed on Temperly’s rug.
“Let her go,” I demanded.
“I’m afraid I can’t do that.” The King ignored me and Temperly, whose poise was completely broken. She was banging against the ice.
I threw a snow-cicle at him, which he deflected with a wave of his hand.
“I have plans for you, Snow,” he said as I sent another icicle in his direction. He deftly stepped out of its arc.
Meanwhile, Temperly’s soldiers entered the room in response to the commotion.
“Your Highness,” the lead guard said, seeing his mistress trapped in a snow globe.
The King froze him first. The others raised their swords, and the King froze them in formation, their mouths still open, their swords drawn.
It had happened so fast, I hadn’t even managed to raise my hands to counteract him.
I realized it was my turn to run. Lazar raised his hand toward me. Perhaps to stop me. Perhaps to hurt me. I considered the door. But the sight of Temperly in the globe stopped me. I dropped an icy wall between him and the door. I didn’t know how long it would hold. But I could see his smiling face through the ice wall. He was amused by my efforts.
I made another attempt to crack the globe with a blast of ice, but the surface remained unblemished. Behind the ice wall I could already hear the King powering away at my handiwork. Inside the globe, Temperly was shaking her head, telling me to save myself and go.
Then I remembered my dagger.
I hitched up my dress and slipped it out of the garter sheath that Fathom had given me. I took a deep breath before holding the hot handle in my hand. The blade glowed as I pierced the ice. In an instant, it cracked like a giant ice egg and I pulled Temperly out.
Still holding her hand, I fled the room, walling it up with more ice after we crossed the doorway.
She looked at me. Her face was a question: What now?
“You stayed for me?” she said, surprised.
I didn’t answer. I just yanked her along the hallway. We heard loud crashing sounds coming from the ballroom as we made it down the hall. We raced out to the balcony.
For a split second I thought that the partygoers were oblivious to King Lazar’s arrival, but it was just the opposite. Some of the dancers were running hysterically. A few were standing completely still. Instead of the waiters who had circled through the floor carrying hors d’oeuvres, now there were Snow Beasts serving up their own specialty: fear.
The cage that had held Gerde was empty. And there was no sign of Kai. I hoped they were safe.
My eye caught on someone who wasn’t running or standing still. She was fighting. It was Fathom. She was sandwiched between two Snow Beasts that were deciding between fighting for her or sharing her for supper. Of course her weapon of choice was a disappearing vial. One second she was standing in between the Beasts. The next, she was sitting on top of one of them with her dagger in hand. She stabbed the beast. It fell, and she disappeared again. Then reappeared atop the other one.
I blinked. The other Robber girls were there, too.
They had come back for me, and they were fighting the Beasts. Interspersed among the Beasts were the King’s guard. A few of the remaining members of Temperly’s guard fought with them.
Each Robber had apparently taken a different potion depend-ing on their fighting style of choice or some combination.
I saw Howl blur by, dagger in hand, slitting a soldier’s throat. She had clearly taken a speed potion.
Margot was dancing with another soldier she’d apparently seduced with a waltz spell. Her dagger was raised behind his back.
I turned away before the knife went in. Instead I searched the room for one figure: Jagger. But I found the Enforcer instead. He ruled the Snow Beasts with arms raised, conducting his symphony of pain.
Temperly made a small sound. I wondered if she had ever seen anything like this. The battle raged below. It was Robber girl versus Snow Beasts and soldiers. And the girls were grossly outnumbered.
“Hide! I’ll get the Robbers, and we can get out of here … together,” I ordered. As long as she was with me, the King couldn’t use her against me.
She hesitated, unsure … A wild thought crept in, and I wondered what it would have been like if we had been on the same side of the Tree growing up. If Mom had taken her to New York, or if we had somehow managed to hide out from Lazar somewhere in Algid together.
Temperly’s face registered what I assumed was impatience. Her eyebrows shot upward. But maybe she was anxious. I didn’t know her expressions. Another thing that Lazar had stolen from us. But I didn’t have time to make up for the time we’d lost. At least not now.
“Wait … Give me the mirror,” I demanded.
“I have to ask. Were you saving me or the mirror back there?”
I hadn’t actually thought of the mirror since Lazar had shown up until this very moment.
I said, “Can it be both?”
I didn’t know why I wasn’t kinder. We were walking into a battle. This could have been the very last conversation I ever had with my sister, and still I was cruel.
She began to hand the compact over and then she stopped to say, “Find the Witch of the Woods. And I’ll find you.”
“Temperly, I can’t promise that.”
“All of Algid is counting on you—not just your friend,” she said, pressing the compact into my palm.
I nodded.
“And they’re counting on me, too,” she added. She began to head toward the ball instead of away from it. “I’m going to help people get out.”
“You’ll get yourself killed. I can’t protect you,” I warned, not sure I could keep an eye on her and fend off everyone else.
“I don’t need you to protect me. They will.”
“I thought I was the crazy one. Who is ‘they’?” I asked.
Temperly leaned o
ut on the balcony and let out a low whistle. Some of the suitors turned in unison and looked up at their Duchess. They immediately drew their swords. One of them went for one of the Red Coats, stabbing the King’s soldier in the jugular. Another turned on a Snow Wolf and made quick work of it with a sword. Another Snow Beast rose onto his haunches, and one of the Robber girls threw a glowing dagger into his exposed underbelly.
So this was what the mysterious look had meant when Temperly talked about her suitors. She wasn’t just idly waiting for me, after all; she was building an army.
“You’ve had a plan this whole time,” I said.
“The King proposed that marriage would create an alliance between families. But I thought, why not create more than one alliance?”
“You know that a lot of those men are in love with you, Temperly,” I said lightly.
“I know. But such is war. May their hearts be the only casualties today,” she said.
But despite her bravado, despite the suitors who apparently made up her resistance, when she turned back to me, her face wasn’t filled with determination. There was fear written all over it. It was still disconcerting to see a face that looked like mine look so scared.
She was not me, I reminded myself as Temperly released me and made her way down the stairs. Whatever we did or didn’t have in common, we were both stubborn and I didn’t have to argue with her. And maybe, just maybe, it didn’t matter how you looked going into battle. It just mattered that you went.
I followed her down into the fray.
40
Despite what I had said about not helping her, I cleared a path for Temperly as she edged her way around the ballroom. I used my snow to knock a beast that was sniffing in her direction out of her way. Her guards did the same, taking out a Snow Lion that lunged at her and pushing another Red Coat to the ground. She opened a door in the corner of the room, and with her suitors’ help began ushering costumed ladies through the door to a safe exit.
Temperly had no dagger, no training. But she did not run away from the fight.