Her eyes met mine and she nodded.
Across the room, I saw a Snow Jackal jump on Howl. It was on top of her, its open mouth dripping ice-laden saliva. The monster leaned down to take a bite of Howl.
I pushed through the mess of beasts and soldiers to Howl.
I grabbed my knife again just as Howl twisted away from the Snow Jackal’s jaws. The beast sank its claws into a clump of her hair.
I raised my dagger over it. When the hot dagger pierced its skull, the Snow Jackal tore apart and split into pieces.
Snow Beast guts fell all over Howl. But she grinned, happy to see me.
“We came back to save you,” she said with a smile, still flat on her back, exhaling heavily, the enormity of the close call hitting her.
“Obviously,” I said, giving her a hand up.
“How’s that dagger treating you?”
“Burns like hellfire.”
“Good! Then it’s working. Fathom will be thrilled.”
I could see Fathom across the room, disappearing and reappearing around a soldier. He slumped to the ground in her wake. He dropped without even registering a look of surprise. Fathom had moved so fast that her opponent didn’t even know he was dying.
My reunion with Howl was short-lived, as an oversize Snow Bee came at both of us. She daggered it with one hand. Then fished something out of her pants pocket and tossed a glowing blue vial at me.
“What is it?”
“You’re going to need to be a better fighter. Fast.”
“I have my snow,” I said defensively.
“Suit yourself, but everyone—even Your Highness—can use a little help sometimes.”
In truth, I wasn’t sure how the vial would make me feel. It might make me faster, but I needed all my senses sharp when the King broke through the ice trap I’d made for him back in Temperly’s bedroom. Just like all villains, he would be back.
I took the vial and slipped it into my skirt pocket. I felt it make contact with the compact.
I heard a cracking sound upstairs and knew that the King was breaking through at least the first of the ice walls. We didn’t have a lot of time.
“Thought you could use an assist, Princess,” a voice came up behind me. He bashed the nose of a Snow Beast that had just set its sights on me. It stumbled backward and roared forward again, but in a different direction.
I knew the voice belonged to Jagger before I turned around.
“You came back! You said that Robbers never do.”
“Hopefully I will live to regret it.” It was meant to be a joke, but he wasn’t smiling. “The place is surrounded,” Jagger said.
“I noticed that right after I learned that the Duchess is my secret twin sister,” I whispered, waiting for the words to have their effect.
For the first time since I met him, Jagger looked genuinely surprised.
“I have the mirror. We need to get all the Robbers and go.”
Jagger’s eyes lit up, but then he looked around the room. “We can’t leave all these people to die.”
I could hear the other Robbers around me, fighting and grunting. I did not want to hear Temperly’s guests dying.
“Careful. That sounded almost noble,” I said.
Jagger caught himself, as if “noble” were the dirtiest word in all of Algid.
“We don’t have enough travel potion to take everyone back. Let’s get our people to the tree line. Margot knows a way through the woods on foot back to the Claret,” he corrected.
Before I could say anything more, the air above the ballroom began to swirl. And in an instant a spinning white funnel was heading toward me.
When I looked up, the King was on the balcony.
“Snow,” the King called my name, and it echoed through the ballroom.
Jagger squeezed my shoulder and then began throwing glowing daggers in the direction of the balcony.
I sent a tornado of my own in the Snow King’s direction. My tornado met his in the middle, and they clashed together, forming a larger funnel that neither of us controlled.
It dipped down into the center of the ballroom where I had danced with Jagger. Now the evening’s theme had changed from heist to carnage.
Amazingly, the funnel touched down in an area clear of guests. A few remaining suitors threw themselves to the ground to avoid getting picked up by the icy vortex.
Kai, I thought. I searched for him even as I tried to wrest control of the giant tornado. I could feel Lazar’s pull on the cyclone, too, but I forced it from him and pushed it toward the stage. It tore through the wall, opening the ballroom up to the world.
Some of the partygoers saw the opportunity as a chance for freedom. They rushed for the gaping hole in the wall.
It was a fatal mistake. As the debris cleared, I could see how much so.
The field behind the castle was full of hundreds of the King’s men and even more Snow Beasts. They were waiting for us.
I watched in horror as the beasts attacked a woman in a pink dress. I tried to send snow to rescue her, but the beasts were already clamping down on her. One had picked her up and was tossing her around in his mouth like a chew toy. I recognized the woman. She was the one who had gossiped with me about Kai on the dance floor.
The sick, dull ache inside me deepened.
Behind the palace there was a field of Snow Beasts—too many for me to count. And behind them was another wave of the King’s soldiers outfitted in the same color as his armor. It was a sea of red.
I turned to Jagger and shot him a look that said maybe it was time to retreat.
He and the Robber girls had wanted to face Lazar on their own terms with the help of the whole mirror, not just the piece I had in my pocket.
“The only way out is through. By now the King’s men have sealed off the moat. The plan is to get to the tree line. Don’t be a hero, Snow.”
The other girls assembled beside me. Margot, dusting off her gown, took her place next to me.
“It’s not going to be nearly as pretty as we are,” she quipped. Not exactly a pep talk, but I assumed that was just another thing that Robbers did not do.
Jagger sprinted ahead for the gap. He was fast, not as fast as Howl, but it was as if every step had more power than the last. He got to the gap in seconds and threw something. It landed in front of one of the beasts.
The package exploded and ripped through the animal, blow-ing the snow to bits. Fragments of ice and bone flew everywhere.
Jagger smiled back at me, ever cocky, but the pieces began to drag themselves together again in his wake. And his smile faded. He jumped through the gap and raised his cuff to blast some fire over the pieces.
I joined Margot and the others in a race to the gap, but they were all enhanced by vials and they were there in seconds. Only Margot stayed beside me, perhaps protecting her investment until the mirror was in her possession.
“Thank you for coming back for me,” I blurted.
“Who says I came back for …” Margot stopped midsentence. There was a garrote around her slender neck and a soldier standing behind her pulling the wire tight.
I produced a tiny snow tornado in the palm of my hand.
“Is that supposed to scare me, Princess?” he asked.
“Just imagine what it will do when it’s inside you. Let her go, or I will tear you apart from the inside out.”
He dropped the wire and backed away.
Margot laughed.
I stared at her for a long beat. I had saved her and she was laughing.
“It’s been too long since we had a good fight,” she said thoughtfully.
I took a last look back at the ballroom, which was destroyed. The door that Temperly had disappeared into was shut, and her guard and suitors were nowhere to be found. The balcony where the King had stood was empty, too.
As Margot and I made it to the gap, a figure larger than the beasts stood imposingly in front of Jagger. It was the Enforcer. With one swift move, he knocked Jagger to the gro
und.
In the distance, Cadence was in trouble between two Snow Wolves.
Margot nodded at me before racing off to Cadence’s side with speed that I did not possess.
“Jagger!” I yelled. I couldn’t tornado my way to him without hurting people. I had to run and jump through the gaping hole in the Palace, just as Jagger and the other girls had.
But once I crossed into the field, a soldier was on me—his sword inches from my heart as he debated whether or not to kill me or take me back to his King.
I looked back to find the Enforcer still on top of Jagger. The Enforcer’s fists were raining down on him. Jagger had magic, I reminded myself. The Enforcer used brute force, but Jagger was quick.
Jagger dodged the Enforcer’s fists as he tried to pummel him. And without warning, he pushed the Enforcer off him. The Enforcer was thrown into the trunk of a nearby tree, which shook from the impact.
Jagger apparently had taken a strength potion. It explained how his daggers earlier had sailed such a far distance.
Undaunted, the Enforcer returned to his feet and began to make another run at Jagger as fast as the armor would allow.
The Enforcer opened his mouth, and I stopped cold. Fire blasted out of it in Jagger’s direction. Thinking quickly, Jagger grabbed a chunk of the palace wall and used it as a shield.
What was the Enforcer—part dragon? Why hadn’t he used his fire on me in the square?
I sent some snow to extinguish the Enforcer’s flames. But a sound overhead distracted me. I looked up. The King had left his spot on the balcony and was flying above me.
On his back were wings made of ice.
I shot snow arrows at the King as he came for me, but they pelted off his wings. He took a sudden dive, but it wasn’t from one of my arrows. I looked beneath him. On the ground stood Margot. Her hands were outstretched toward the King, and waves of light like the sun were radiating toward him.
She was casting a spell. She was melting his wings.
He fell to the ground in front of her.
I knew in a heartbeat that she’d made a grave miscalculation. The King was sprawled on his back, but he would be back on his feet again in seconds. She might have brought him down from the sky, but she put herself directly in his path.
Margot continued punishing the King with her heat rays, which worked on his wings but did nothing to his armor. He kept advancing.
I summoned my tornado to bring me closer to them, but by the time I touched down, the King had sent paper-thin ice discs spinning into the air. They sliced into Margot with incredible accuracy and speed. I was too late.
“Until we meet again, Your Majesty,” she said with a deep bow before crumpling to the ground. As I had always suspected, it sounded as though she and the King had a history.
It had not been like in the movies. The King had taken her without so much as a word of preamble.
There were tons of tiny cuts all over Margot’s body. And ice shards stuck out of every single one of them.
I looked up at my father, who was savoring the moment, watching my pain with as much interest as Vern watched The End of Almost.
I pushed him back with a walloping torrent of snow that shoved him hard against a tall snowbank. I concentrated on the snow above him, causing it to avalanche down. He tried to push back, but he disappeared under the weight of snow and ice.
I knew that this wasn’t the end. He would not go gently under that avalanche. But I’d bought a few minutes before he could dig himself out of the temporary grave I’d built for him.
Cadence had managed to put down the soldier she was battling and had draped herself over Margot. The girl’s eyes were wide and wild.
“Can we save her?” I asked as Fathom joined me at her side. Tears poured down her face.
Blood was already Rorschaching around Margot, staining the snow redder than red. There was so much blood. Too much.
Margot opened her mouth to laugh with difficulty. My chest stung, and I swallowed hard.
“My magic …,” Margot whispered.
Queen Margot’s face began to contort. Within seconds she looked like a normal person. She wasn’t old or young or beautiful. Her hair was short, and she wore glasses. A pattern of freckles covered her pretty olive skin. The freckles killed me the most. I liked them. I hated that she covered them up.
This Margot, the real Margot, looked ordinary, but her eyes were still the same: hungry and calculating. She looked down at herself, aware of the transformation. Her power was gone.
I reached for her. She needed help. I called out to the others to help her. Fathom must have a potion to heal her.
“I’m fine,” Margot vowed. But her eyes didn’t seem to be able to focus on me. Robbers were always confident, even when they weren’t. Robber Rules.
Her body was weeping blood the way the River Witch wept water.
The battle raged on around us, and suddenly Howl appeared beside me, yellow bottle in hand. There was blood on one of her cheeks and on her pretty feathered coat.
“Go. I’ll help her.”
Howl, always ready with a million little bottles, tipped a potion to Queen Margot’s lips.
Margot began to sing.
She brings the snow with her touch,
They think she’s gone, but we know
She will come again,
She will reign in his stead,
She will bring down the world on his head.
Oh come, Snow, come…
I saw Margot differently then. Not just because she was stripped of her magical enhancements, but because she was stripped down to who she was.
Some part of me had hated Margot for bargaining for Bale’s life when I first met her. But now I understood what she was trying to do. She was fighting for her people, for her castle. She was a queen—even more than the Duchess was a duchess or the King was a king. She had laid down her life for her people.
“Your Majesty, you have done your Robbers proud,” I said to her with a bow, kissing her cold hand.
When she looked up at me, she was smiling, but her dull green eyes were drained of their light and mischief. Queen Margot was gone.
41
The dark sky was silent. It was suddenly very cold. I was never affected by temperature drops anymore, but this one I knew was not merely external.
“You need to go,” Howl said, shivering.
I had never seen her cry before. But frozen tears decorated her magically enhanced lashes.
“We need to go,” I insisted.
“I won’t leave Margot. Help the others. And by all means, finish him!” She slipped off her feathered cloak and continued, “Take this. There are more potion bottles in the lining. Bring them to the girls.”
“We’ll be okay,” I said. I didn’t want to take the coat. I didn’t want to see Howl cold.
She shrugged the coat back on and began chanting under her breath. She tenderly placed her hand on Margot’s chest.
Around us, the other Robbers had heard about Margot’s death and fought with enhanced vigor. Jagger threw the Enforcer halfway across the field using his magically enhanced fire-cuff hands.
Howl was right. It was time to finish this. I headed directly for the spot where I had buried my father in the snow.
I was ready and waiting for him when he burst out of the snow. He was breathing heavily, limbs wobbly.
The King blinked hard. He looked at me and at the snow on the ground between us. It rose and fell like the hollow of someone’s chest.
I concentrated on the snow as the pain flowed through me. I had never lost anyone close to me before. The pain was tinged with something else: guilt. If I was honest with myself, I had never particularly liked Margot—but she had died fighting for me. There should be a special word for this kind of sorrow.
Turning my attention to the mountain of snow behind me, I felt an immediate flash of pain when I thought about what King Lazar had done to me and Mom. But anger alone was not enough to fuel my magic. I th
ought of the peace I’d found with the Robbers. Finally, I thought about Kai and his buildings. Each one began with a simple snow brick. I thought about snowflakes. I thought about them multiplying. And as I thought about all of this, the snow began to stir. Finally, I thought of the light going out of Margot’s eyes.
My Champion rose from the ice in a jerky Frankensteinian fashion. She looked like me. This Champion had my face.
She was bigger and taller than me—possibly taller than even Vern. She was the fiercest, scariest version of me carved roughly out of ice and snow. She moved with my anger. With my pain. With every ounce of grief and regret that I felt over Margot. Over Bale.
My Champion tested her limbs in the air and then crushed the nearest Snow Beast with a clap of hands around its icy skull. I could hear the ice break and see the beast’s head begin to fall apart.
I saw surprise register on the King’s face.
I felt a surge of something in my chest. Was it hope? Pride? Maybe the tide was turning. Maybe I had done something he could not.
But the King looked back at the field with new determination.
The remaining Snow Beasts gathered together. Their icy hides began to merge. The group was becoming one larger beast, bigger than my Champion. It was a Snow Wolf that stood a couple of stories high.
I cursed under my breath as the giant Snow Wolf knocked down my Champion with one easy swipe of its claw.
My father laughed and advanced on me, believing that he had the battle in hand.
But I focused on the field again. Everywhere I looked, a new Champion rose up from the snow.
There was a tiny bit of red just above the King’s eyebrow. It was a caked smear of red like the paint in the Whittaker common room that I sometimes got to use when I had been good. The color was Cadmium Red Deep, I recalled. But this wasn’t paint. It was Margot’s blood. The sight of it made me angrier.
The King flew at me. A gust of snowy wind pushed my back to the ground. I struggled to get up. I felt tired. My limbs felt heavy, as if the ice in my veins were no longer propelling me but was weighing me down. I tornadoed away from him to regroup, to catch my breath, and to regain the strength I had somehow lost.