Ice Like Fire (25 page)

“No, dear heart. From outside Yakim, actually.”

“Ventralli?” Ceridwen asks, her eyes analyzing his features. “You don’t look Ventrallan.”

He bobs his head in something like a nod. “You’re familiar with Ventrallans, yes? It’s odd that I’d be here, but
someone
should care for these books. Because, honestly, this is shameful. So I’m mending what I can, providing fodder for a kingdom that right
adores
studying unusual folks.” He winks at me. “No manners, Yakimians. I’m afraid I’ve picked up a plethora of unseemly behaviors from them. Ah, here we are—the Library of Clarisse, home to books of history and records.”

Rares pushes open a door at the back of the law library, revealing another room that stretches just as large beyond. An identical layout too, with balconies and chairs and orbs of light, the same mirrors marking each row with numbers. This library is far less crowded; the only other person here is a servant sweeping a carpet to our left.

Rares saunters in as if he knows exactly where he’s going, stopping only to yank a book from a shelf and plop it into my arms. “A census record, but just for Yakim, and only through the last proper spring. The rest are in this row and around. They list people, businesses, even the occasional horse—if anything named the ‘Order of the Lustrate’ exists in Yakim, it’ll pop up here.” He turns to a row behind him. “And this row starts census records for Ventralli, that one for Cordell. They tried to do censuses in the Seasons, but
you know how their relationship with you lot goes. Over here are a few for Paisly—old ones, and mostly inaccurate. Journey up there is a nightmare, I hear—even more treacherous mountains than your Klaryns.”

Rares whisks off to the next row, tugging me along. I throw a questioning look at Ceridwen, who stifles a laugh and shrugs as if to say,
You asked for it.

“Now, this is good—Bisset’s
Analysis of Secret Societies
.” Rares whips a book out of a shelf and stacks it in my arms. “It’ll chill you to your veins! Though I’d imagine chilling isn’t as uncomfortable for you as for the rest of us. Ah, now, this one should help—
A Study of the Unknown.
Oh, and you must have
Forgotten Worlds—
Richelieu clearly adored the sound of his pen scratching on paper, but every few dozen pages he provides good information. Oh, and—”

By the time Rares is done, Ceridwen, Lekan, and I all have our arms stacked with books and more recommendations waiting on shelves. I gawk at Rares, my arms threatening to buckle just so I can spend time cleaning up the loose pages instead of reading all this.

Seeking information about the Order of the Lustrate might not have been one of my better ideas. How easily I forgot the misery of trying to read
Magic of Primoria
—but my brain remembers it well, already lurching with pain as I look down at the cover for
The Reign of Queen Eveline the First and Societal Cultures During Her Time
.

Merciful snow above.

Rares claps his hands. “When you’re finished, dear heart, feel free to leave the books on the table, as disorganized as you possibly can.” He motions to a table behind me, situated in a break in the rows of books. “The librarian in residence in charge of the Library of Clarisse is an offensively irritable man, and I would like nothing better than to make unnecessary work for him. Do let me know if any of these books help, or if you need more!”

“Wait.” Ceridwen dumps her burdens on the table after Lekan and pauses, cheek caught between her teeth. “Lustrate,” she says again, rolling the word around her tongue. “That sounds like a word Ventrallans would favor.”

Rares’s eternal smile cracks wider, like he can see what she’s getting at, but I’m lost.

“Why?” I ask.

Ceridwen presses her hand just below her collarbone, eyes averted, and I can’t help but think she’s looking away more to avoid revealing something than to think. “Because of what it means—to purify by sacrifice. Ventrallan culture is full of words like that—luscious words for dark acts, dark words for luscious acts. Artistic, extravagant meanings.” She turns to Rares. “Where are your books on Ventralli? And not censuses.” Her nose curls and I smile. At least I’m not the only one who cringes at the thought of reading all this. If Theron were here, he’d dive in without hesitation.

My gut twists, but I brace myself against thoughts of him.

Books on Ventralli might be a good place to look,
actually—the final clue in the chasm entrance was a mask, pointing to the Ventrallan culture of wearing elaborate ones. Maybe Ceridwen is on the right path.

Rares taps a finger to his lips. “Quite deductive of you, Princess. We’ll make a Yakimian out of you yet.”

Ceridwen’s lips twitch in a snarl. “Don’t insult me.”

Lekan grunts and slaps her in the shoulder. Ceridwen glares at him, and he unabashedly returns her glare, an exchange that makes little sense to me. But after half a breath Ceridwen relents.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, but while it would seem like the apology should be directed at Rares, Lekan is the one who nods and accepts it.

Rares overlooks this interaction and points to the back left corner of the library. “Last row, shelves labeled 273 through 492. You no doubt noticed the markers on the ends of the rows? Lovely, aren’t they? Mighty helpful, you’ll find. Anything else?”

“Not if life is at all kind,” I groan, realize how ungrateful that sounded, and straighten. “I mean, thank you.”

Rares winks at me. “Enjoy Yakim, Your Highness.”

He leaves, angling back through the library in the opposite direction Ceridwen and Lekan head, toward the Ventrallan books. Since my only options are to stay and start sorting through Rares’s choices or follow them, I unload the books from my arms and dart off into the shelves without hesitation.

The orbs of light flash off the mirrored plates, the numbers dancing in the reflective surfaces until Ceridwen stops before a row labeled with an oval that proclaims “
273
–
492
.”

“Order of the Lustrate, you said?” she asks as she starts surveying book spines.

“Yes—”

My attention sticks on the marker at the end of this row.

Did it . . . change?

I step closer to it, head angling. The light from the nearest orb catches on it and—

I chirp surprise and hop up onto the chair that stands guard over this row, providing an easy lift to get close to the marker. Ceridwen turns to me while Lekan shrugs and goes back to watching the empty rows.

“What is it?” she asks, voice low in the stillness of the library.

I brace my hands on the bookshelf and tip my head to the side. Normal, just the oval with the numbers etched, nothing of importance. But as I ease to the other side, the light shifts, and a luminescent picture reveals itself. A beam of light hitting a mountain.

The Order of the Lustrate’s seal, hidden in the reflective surface of the metal oval.

“It’s here,” I say, though I still don’t know what
it
is. Something is here, though, in this shelf, or in a book on this shelf.

My pulse accelerates, trampling my lungs as I run my
hand over the oval. My fingers glide down the edge and I spit unexpected laughter.

The oval
moved
.

I do it again, the mirrored plate spinning, crank by crank, under my fingers.

Ceridwen’s attention returns to the shelf and she springs away in surprise. “Flame and heat! Keep doing that—there’s a compartment opening behind one of these shelves.”

I jerk to the side, eyes scanning the library’s floor beside the shelf. “Watch out for—”

But Ceridwen is way ahead of me, testing the floor with her feet and holding on to the shelves should a surprise pit open up here too. She shoots a cocked eyebrow up at me. “Just keep cranking.”

Books smack into the floor as she tears them off the shelf. I keep easing the oval, gear by gear, until it locks into place, the numbers upright again. Skirt flurrying around me, I leap off the chair and step into the row, careful to avoid the stacks of books Ceridwen removed to make room.

One of the shelves has lifted out, swinging horizontally away from the rest, revealing a hidden compartment.

Ceridwen, holding a cluster of books against her chest, turns to me. Her shock eases into smug amusement and she tips her head, curls bouncing.

“See?” she says, triumphant. “You do need me, Winter queen.”

My surprise evaporates into the slightest tingle of unease as I wrap my fingers into the door and pry it the rest of the way open, the wood crying out with age and more than a few bursts of dust that spray into my face. I cough but open the door wider, allowing a nearby orb of light to shine into the narrow compartment. My fingers twitch to reach inside, but memories of my last encounter with the Lustrate’s key make me hesitate. Is this one a conduit too?

In the back corner sits a smashed cloth. I ease my hand around it, waiting for the hard bite of metal to warn me of a key, but the thick weave of the cloth curves around something lumpy.

I pull it out and guide it open in my hands, my stomach knotted up with two different emotions. Hope that it will be the key—and dread that it will be the key.

The cloth unrolls and reveals a key within, identical to the one I found in Summer—iron, ancient, with the Lustrate’s seal at its head.

So easy.
Again
.

Warning hums in my throat, the instinctual rearing of danger coming. But I should be relieved. I’m that much closer to finding the Order, or at the very least, having leverage over Noam. This is good. Not threatening—
good
. Maybe the Order wanted the keys to be found easily. Maybe they separated them only so they wouldn’t be easily accessible.

But I only have two keys—no answers. No information
about the Order itself, or anything that could help me with my magic. Yes, I’m a step closer to being able to keep the chasm closed, but I need more than that. And it’s only luck that I found these two first—it could have been Theron with just as little effort. It makes no sense that the Order would bother to hide these keys in places that are so simple to find, unless they
wanted
them found. But why? And further—why Yakim? Summer, Yakim, Ventralli . . . what do these three kingdoms have in common?

No—calm down, Meira.
Right now, it’s just two keys, nothing dangerous. I won’t let myself worry until a viable threat materializes. I certainly have enough other things to worry about.

The cloth around this key depicts a scene much like the tapestry the Ventrallan queen sent with Finn and Greer. Mountains circle a valley filled with beams of light and, in the center, a tight ball of even more brilliant light woven in yellow and white and blue threads, all of it swirling around.

Magic.

I exhale, hands shaking. The placement of the key in a tapestry, hidden in a row of books about Ventralli—it’s purposeful. The final key is definitely there.

I look up at Ceridwen. “Now we—”

She winces before I even talk. I glance at Lekan, who eyes her with a lingering sympathy.

Ceridwen bobs her head. “Ventralli next. That was the plan, anyway.”

“Yes,” I say slowly. “But . . . you don’t have to come with us.”

Ceridwen sets the books in her arms on the floor. “Thanks, but I know someone in Ventralli who can help with that.” She nods at the tapestry, her expression void of emotion. “It’ll lead you to something, right? Admit it—you’re helpless without me.”

I start to smile, warring with pressing her discomfort regarding Ventralli. But I flinch when the stillness of the library shatters around the sudden chiming of music.

Meira

A PIANO DISTURBS
the silence, the player unleashing the melody from close by, steady notes that tinkle like raindrops beating on a window.

I know who it is without needing to see him, some deep-seated link tugging even tighter. Just as the instinct hits me, I’m swarmed with familiarity—finding a key with Ceridwen, only to be distracted from the find by Theron.

In Summer, I brushed it off as a coincidence that Theron was in the cellar. He went looking for me—he probably asked a servant, who directed him there.

But for him to be here, again, just after we found the key . . . did he follow me? Why would he have followed me without revealing himself earlier, involving himself in the search?

My body quakes with another tremor of unease. No—I won’t distrust him that much. Theron is still my friend,
he’s still
him
, and he wouldn’t do anything like that.

But he has already,
my instincts whisper.
Twice, now—in Winter, when he told Noam about the chasm, and here, when he gave the goods from the Klaryn mines to Giselle.

I curl my fingers around the tapestry. Is this key a conduit too? Probably—both my reaction to the barrier in the magic chasm and the last key hang all-too memorably in my mind. But I only had visions when I touched the key
and
Theron—so if I don’t touch the key, I should be safe.

I open one of the pockets on my dress and slide the key in via the tapestry. The iron thumps against my thigh, but the fabric of my gown keeps it from touching my skin.

“Guard this,” I tell Ceridwen, and thrust the tapestry at her. “Please.”

She hesitates, her eyes narrowing. I can’t tell if it’s from finding a Ventrallan tapestry hidden in a Yakimian library or her finally reaching the end of her endurance.

“Only if you explain what’s going on. All of it,” she demands.

I pause. She waits.

“I will,” I relent, and even I don’t know if I’m lying. “Soon. I promise.”

Ceridwen considers, one beat, two. Finally she rolls her eyes, takes the tapestry, and closes the hidden compartment. “Fine. Deal with your Rhythm prince.”

I start that she knows who the pianist is too, but she doesn’t say anything more. Ceridwen leaves the books
strewn about as she and Lekan duck out of the row, heading back for the main door.

Absently, I clutch the locket at my throat, the empty conduit giving me some sort of relief. Which is completely absurd—I’m stuffed with magic, and yet a small piece of useless metal comforts me?

I leave the row, letting the music pull me through the shelves. One last turn and a small opening reveals a few chairs with a piano against the wall. Theron leans over it, his fingers brushing the keys to make the music swell abruptly, cut off, and plunge down again. Each note . . .
aches
. Slow and palpitating, filling the empty air with melancholy, so even before he says anything, I feel broken.

He doesn’t glance up as he plays, his head plunging side to side, lips tight in concentration. But I know he sees me enter the area—his shoulders jerk sharply, one note faltering ever so brokenly under his fluttering hands.

“I thought you weren’t feeling well,” Theron says, his attention on the piano.

I bite my lip but stay silent.

He stops playing, the song ending on a crash of keys. “I went to visit one of Putnam’s factories. Figured you found the Summerian key in a wine cellar; maybe the next one would be in a symbol of this kingdom too. Giselle has to give special permission, though, to visit the oldest factories, so I went to your room to make sure you had returned
all right, but Dendera said you left.” He cuts his eyes to me, so fast I almost miss it. “Seems you weren’t feeling as ill as you appeared at the university. My mistake.”

Theron went searching for the key without me too—luckily he went for the wrong symbol of Yakim. I don’t point that out, though, straightening before him.

“I needed to be alone for a little while. I won’t apologize for that,” I say, and I only flinch a little at the hardness of my voice. “You’re the one who should apologize to me. You had no right to give Giselle goods from the Klaryns.”

“That’s why you’re upset? That’s one of the reasons we’re here!” Theron flies off the bench. “We
had
to give her some of our mines—she’s a Rhythm. She never would have—”

“Stop.”
My chest lurches with cold and this time I welcome it, opening my body to the way every nerve fills with flakes of snow and shards of ice. I know my voice reflects the sensation, can feel just how cold I sound. “They’re Winter’s mines. There is no
our
.”

Theron lunges forward, cutting me off. Hands to my shoulders, yanking me to him; lips on mine, but not in a gentle, loving kiss—a hard, desperate kiss, his fingers stiff, his mouth unyielding, his body a formidable mountain with me trapped at the top, hopelessly lost in the clouds and wind and light.

“There is still an
us
,” he tells me. “There will always be an us.”

I heave back from him. “No,” I state, voice hard. “There will always be a
separation
.”

Theron’s arms hang open in front of him, and he pants, yanking his hands up to rip through his hair.

“You need to stop doing this,” he growls.

“Doing what?” Because I have no idea which part he’s talking about. The lying? The choosing Winter over his own goals?

One of those I refuse to stop doing.

He groans to the ceiling. “Pushing me away. How do you expect—”

I throw my hand up. “Wait—you’re upset because I won’t open up to you?”

He nods and fresh anger pools into the myriad of emotions in my stomach.

“I don’t open up to you? I’ve
tried
, Theron. I told you how I feel about the magic chasm; I told you how I feel about your father. But you push away all the bad and ignore everything but your own hope. You do not get to be angry with me. I have to hold myself together because no one else is capable of handling the truth.”

“You have to open up to someone,” Theron continues. “I understand why you can’t in front of your people, but you need
someone
. And I thought . . .” His words trail off as his tenseness eases, hesitates, waiting on the words that will follow. “I thought you would . . .”

Something changes in his eyes. Like an idea occurred to him, a shocking, ghastly idea that causes him to pitch up straight, snarling.

“Mather,” he growls. “It’s him, isn’t it?”

“Mather?” I stagger, his name a gust of wind that lashes chill across my body.

“All this time,” Theron snarls, “I knew you loved him, but I thought you’d moved on—”

“I do love—I mean, I
did
love him once, but I—”

“—and I thought things would be better now. Everything is better now! We have the magic chasm and your kingdom is free and we can be
us
—”

“I can’t do this anymore!”

I stop. Theron stops. We both gape at each other in the agonizing silence.

Theron exhales. “Do what anymore?” But he doesn’t let me answer. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you—you don’t have to keep holding back. I’m here for you, and I—”

He talks so fast, and despite the comfort his words try to form, his shoulders droop and everything about his posture says he’s talking merely to keep me from countering him.

“No, Theron,” I whisper, and his jaw bobbles open, his words falling flat. “I can’t . . . be with you. Not like this. I think I could, someday, if Noam requires our marriage; if it’s in Winter’s best interest. But I can’t be with you
now
. Not when we’re divided by so much.” I dig the heels of my
hands into my eyes as a warm wave of tears puddles against my lids. “I think I’ve known for a while, but you were hurting, and I couldn’t add to that. I’ve caused you enough pain. But now I’ve only caused you more.”

I lower my hands, sight blurred so I only see the hazy outline of a boy before me. “But I don’t know how to fix you. I don’t even know how to fix
myself
. You may think everything’s better, but it’s not, Theron. I can’t go along with what you want. I don’t want the magic chasm opened—and I will do everything I can to keep it shut. We aren’t united on this journey.” My heart scratches at my throat, choking me, but not the ache of regret—the choking of words that needed to be said long ago. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you, but I didn’t want . . .”

I scrub my fingers over my eyes until he comes into focus, and when he does, a part of me shrinks. He watches me, his face hurt and distant and hard, and the combination drives nails into my gut.

“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I finish.

“That’s the only reason you’d love me?” Theron spits. “If my father ordered you to?”

“
That’s
all you took from what I said?” I wheeze, but as soon as I do, his face collapses. The wrong thing to say, and he angles forward, body coiled.

“I took that you were
using
me. I thought you of all people understood what it’s like to be used so violently that
you wonder if there are any pieces of you left. But you’re just like my father.” He gasps. “You’re just like—”

“I am nothing like Noam,” I snap. “Because I’m sorry, Theron. I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry for everything, but I don’t know
anything
anymore, and everything I do is my instinctual reaction to what I think will keep Winter safe. Has your father ever once apologized for the things he’s done? No. So don’t you dare compare me to him. I am
not
Noam.”

Piece by piece, Theron’s anger breaks, revealing the boy beneath. The trembling shadows we all harbor within our all-too fragile shells, terrified someone will one day see.

After another long second of neither of us knowing what to do or say that could make anything better, he slides back a step.

“The treaty,” he whispers. “If Giselle agrees to sign it, will you? It
is
what’s best for your kingdom.”

“Yes,” I say before he can go on. The treaty doesn’t matter, honestly—if that will appease him, I’ll sign it. But I hold, waiting for him to ask how I’ll proceed on the next issue, the biggest one, the goal that makes him touch his pocket absently.

He still has the key I found in Summer. He doesn’t know I found the one here yet.

I fight to keep from touching my own pocket, but I can feel the heavy weight of the key on my thigh. What will
happen when he searches on his own and doesn’t find it? Will we still press on for Ventralli?

“Can we at least agree to share what information we find?” Theron adds, his voice quiet.

“Information?”

He tips his head. “Information regarding the pursuits that might bring you to this library.”

I swallow. He’s never used that tone with me, a distant, emotionless timbre that plants clear expectations between two people—politics and propriety, nothing more.

My body hums with the magic still swirling through me. It isn’t fed by anger now—it’s fed by grief, bright and hot and expected, like now that I’ve outright admitted what Theron and I are, my body unwinds in resignation.

No more lying. He knows what I want with regard to the magic; I know what he wants.

So I don’t tell him I have the key. At least, not directly.

“We should continue to Ventralli,” I manage. “As soon as the treaty is signed.”

Theron’s brows launch skyward, understanding written in shocked lines over his face. When I don’t elaborate, he snorts in incredulity and runs a hand through his hair, pausing with his eyes on the floor, his shoulders stiff.

“You’ll see,” he starts, “when the chasm is opened, that everything I’ve done has been to keep you safe.”

I didn’t think it possible to hurt more than I do, but an ache thuds in me, pounding where my heart should be.

“
I
don’t need to be safe. I need
Winter
to be safe.”

Theron drops his hand and looks at me. “You’re more than that kingdom.”

He’s trying so hard to be sweet, to be the Theron I fell for in Bithai. But sweetness isn’t all I want anymore. I want . . . Winter. I want someone who thinks of protecting Winter first and me second. Not the other way around.

“No,” I say. “I’m really not.”

Theron gapes at me, but snaps away his shock with a curt shake of his head.

He turns and marches toward the door without another word.

I watch him go, waiting for my grief to rear so high it paralyzes me, waiting to crack into pieces and fall apart. And at one point in my life, I think I would have. But knowing what he wants with the magic chasm, I feel more certain than I have in a long time.

There is very little that I would choose over keeping Winter safe.

And Theron isn’t one of those things.

I reach into my pocket as the door shuts behind him. My fingers close around the key, a resolved, firm grip. I have one of the keys. I have a way to—

The old metal grinds against my skin, and I know as soon as I touch it that I was wrong. Whatever magic these keys possess—it isn’t simple; I don’t have it figured out.

Numbness launches up my arm, spreads across my chest,
sends me toppling to the floor. I can’t do more than reel as I tumble, too annoyed at myself for touching the key to be scared.