Ice Like Fire (31 page)

I will be that girl and the queen, all the parts of me. I will help Ceridwen and my kingdom—I can save everyone.

I can save everyone.

That’s it.

I blink up at Lekan, shock cooling me. I know what question to ask the conduit magic.

But it barely takes any effort to shove that to the back of my mind, the bulk of my focus going to Ceridwen.

“But where did she go?” Lekan asks.

My face tightens. “She’s gone to stop her brother.”

Conall and Garrigan protest when I order them to split up. Garrigan to stay here with Dendera and Nessa, should anything happen while I’m gone, and Conall to come with Lekan and me. Conall argues that Garrigan should accompany me, since Conall’s arm, while not broken, is still sprained. That’s the reason I want Garrigan to stay, though—he’s more capable of protecting Dendera and Nessa.

Besides, I have my chakram now. That’s all the support I need.

Nessa gives us a little wave as we slip out of my room, the soft, worn leather of my boots noiseless on the marble floor. Lekan knows where the Summerian caravan set up, so the moment we break free of the palace, he rushes in front of Conall and me and takes off down the twisting
cobbled streets of Rintiero. He wears baggy orange pants and little else under his rough brown cloak, but he makes no move to grab different clothes or more weapons. I hope he’s as prepared as he needs to be. Even Conall only needed to remove his mask before he was ready.

I follow Lekan as he ducks down an alley, scales a wall, drops down another street. Maybe we should have gotten more of Ceridwen’s allies to help—didn’t she have at least a dozen bandits when I first met her outside of Juli? Surely she brought more than just Lekan with her. But if she didn’t plan on attacking her brother, maybe she doesn’t have her whole retinue.

The odds of the four of us against one dozen, two dozen, an endless number of soldiers remind me of the other issue at hand: the question I want to ask the conduit magic.

As Lekan, Conall, and I twist back and forth through Rintiero’s medley of colored buildings and parks, as we pass Ventrallans wandering through markets or sweeping patios or drawing water from wells under the afternoon sun, the question surges through me, tight and relentless, until it’s all I can think, and I can’t believe I didn’t ask it sooner.

Cautiously, desperately, I roll the words through my mind and push them one by one into the waiting ball of ice and magic and wonder.

How do I save everyone?

Because I want to save the world, not just Winter. I want
everyone in Primoria to be free from Angra and magic and evil—to at least have a
chance
against such threats.

Maybe asking this question will give me a way to save Ceridwen from her brother’s men. Maybe it will show me how to help Winter without needing to find the Order. Maybe it will fix everything, it
will
fix everything, because it is the right question. I know this through every part of me, even the parts that still quiver and quake in fear of the magic. This is right, just like what I’m doing now. This is how it was always meant to be.

The magic hears my question. I feel it react to me, to the way I relax in the wake of my words, a gentle surrender that shakes through me. The answer pushes into my head like I’ve known it all along, an instant recognition that consumes every other thought I’ve ever had.

I stop running, unable to move beneath the answer. The answer that will save everyone. The answer that I wanted . . .

No. No, I don’t want it.
I don’t want it, and I fall to my knees, gripping my head as if I can dig into my mind and pull out the knowledge.

Hannah asked how to save her people, and the magic told her
how to save Winter
. She let Angra break the locket and kill her because she wanted to share the magic with everyone in our kingdom. She sacrificed herself without realizing there was another question to ask, a bigger sacrifice that could be made.

Sacrifice
.

The word undoes me, and I think I feel Conall’s hand on my arms, Lekan’s voice telling me we’re only a few streets away. My body moves while my mind whirls, and I’m running again, flying through Rintiero.

Magic is all about choice. Choosing to use it, choosing to surrender to it, choosing to take it from the chasm—choosing to let it break in defense of a kingdom. The most powerful magic of all is choice, and of that power, the strongest choice anyone can make is an act of sacrifice.

People took magic from the chasm. Just like it never occurred to anyone but Hannah to surrender to their conduit, it never occurred to anyone to put the magic back.

That is the most powerful choice anyone can make: relinquishing a conduit back to the chasm. Saying that I would rather be weak and human than stronger than others. I would rather the world be safe and magic free than deadly and powerful.

That ultimate of choices, an act of selfless sacrifice, returning a conduit to the magic chasm, will force the chasm to disintegrate and all magic with it. And since the Decay is magic, it will be destroyed too.

It should be easy, for a conduit-wielder who wants to save the world. Just finding the chasm, tossing their conduit in, and walking out into a new existence.

But I am Winter’s conduit.

And to destroy all magic I would have to willingly throw myself into the fathomless chasm of energy and power. The source of magic that, when people first made conduits, was found to
kill people
if they got too close.

I would have to die.

Lekan stops along a wall and I have no idea where we are. Somewhere deep in Rintiero, the sun pulsing above us, and I can’t see anything but the blinding light of late afternoon casting golden rays. It’s warmer now, not the sweltering heat of Summer, but enough that sweat breaks across my body—though I can’t tell if it’s from the sun or my own panic.

Lekan’s eyes flick over my face. “Are you all right?”

I can’t form a response. I can’t feel anything around the knowledge in my head, how much I hate it, and how much I hate Hannah now too. I want to collapse on the road and wipe the word
die
from my memory, because that’s all I can see now. Hannah intended for me to die to save Winter; the only way I can save everyone in Primoria is to die.

If Hannah had never asked her conduit the wrong question, if she had never let Angra break the locket and kill her and turn
me
into Winter’s conduit, I could do it. I could save everyone and myself, and nothing would hurt as badly as my chest hurts now.

I fall against the wall next to me, the rough stone tugging at my sleeve as I cover my face with my hands. I want to live. I want to find a way to save everyone and LIVE. Is
it so horrible that I want to save myself too? Is that such an awful request?

Lekan pulls my hands down. His eyes are soft, his brows drawn, and he tips his head to mask his words even more. “The caravan sits just around the corner. I realize this isn’t your fight, Winter queen, but I need your help.”

The caravan. Ceridwen. I’m supposed to help her. She has the tapestry—the Order is still out there. Maybe they have a way; maybe they know something that could help me.

Maybe, maybe,
maybe
. That’s all I’ve been lately, one big swirl of possibilities, never anything definitive or sure. I won’t waste time on maybes anymore. I’m done, I’m
done.

The only definitive thing I know right now is that Ceridwen needs me, and that’s all I can see. Not the new weight of the answer driving nails into my skull. Not the magic, trapped and confused and wanting to burst free now that I surrendered to it and asked a question and got my answer. But no, I am not surrendering to it anymore. I may have for a brief flash of a second, but I will not give in. I will not accept this.

Tears glaze my eyes. “All right,” I tell Lekan.

Meira

LEKAN BOWS HIS
head in thanks and starts to say something else when a flash of movement makes me spin. Conall whips a dagger into his good hand as Ceridwen comes racing up the street behind us, her face alive with toxic anger.

“What are you doing here?” she barks, but I can’t help but feel that her anger isn’t directed at us. It’s just a part of her, hungry and wild.

Lekan steps forward. “We came to stop you from doing anything stupid.”

I draw a shaky breath.
Focus, focus. Don’t think about anything else. I am a soldier; Sir trained me to keep my emotions in check. I can do this.

I don’t want to die. . . .

“Lekan said you were missing,” I start, my hands in fists that grow tighter to counter the tremble in my voice. “I figured you were off doing something reckless—like stopping
your brother from collecting more slaves.”

Ceridwen’s lip twitches and she flicks her eyes from Lekan to me. “I’m not stopping
a
collection,” she says. “I’m stopping
the
collections.”

Lekan realizes what she means before I do. He glances toward the road beyond our alley and cuts a snarl to her when he sees the way still clear. “You can’t take him, Cerie.”

“I definitely couldn’t take him in Summer, but he only has a fraction of his men here. It’s now, or I lose the opportunity. You know better than I do that this has to end.”

Lekan runs a hand through his hair, the red strands bouncing wild around his fingers.

“How will this stop the collections?” But as soon as I ask it, I know the answer.

She’s going to kill her brother.

“Ceridwen.” I gasp her name like someone landed a blow to my gut.

She glares at me. “Don’t. Don’t you dare judge me. He’s the last living male heir of Summer—if he dies, we’ll be free of magic. Summer will get a chance to be more than fogged with bliss, and if someday I have a son, I’ll make sure he’s a far, far better king than my brother. You have no idea what it’s been like, what he’s doing now, and I can’t—”

“Why now?” Lekan asks so I don’t have to, his tone dark. “If this is about Jesse—”

“This has nothing to do with him!” Ceridwen’s voice
threatens a scream, but she catches herself, warping it into a sharp whisper. “Simon . . . he . . . you’ve seen it, Lekan.” She squints at him. “Didn’t you see it?”

Lekan shakes his head.

“With the non-Summerian slaves,” she starts. “He can control them, like he controls his own subjects. I don’t know how, but he cannot be allowed to continue this, especially if his influence is stretching into more kingdoms. It’s too much.”

“Wait—the others in Juli acted just like the Summerian slaves because
Simon
controlled them?” I clarify. She nods.

I thought the reason was more the slaves’ own way of coping with their lives, but . . .

Simon
controls
non-Summerians.

Only one person has ever been able to influence people not of his own kingdom: Angra.

“No, Cerie. He just drugs them,” Lekan says, uncertain. “Doesn’t he?”

But Ceridwen dives between Lekan and me, sweeping out toward the road and, beyond it, the waiting caravan. Lekan grabs her arm and swings her to a stop, but she wrenches away, pointing a steady finger at him.

“I need you on the ground,” she says, and pivots to me. “And you—you
owe
me, Winter queen. Your chakram would be better on a roof. Your guard, though, should be with me.”

“I’m not here to fight for you,” Conall states. “I’m here
to protect my queen.”

Ceridwen’s lip twitches, her rage rekindled, but I grab Conall’s good arm, my body moving independently of my spinning, chaotic mind.

“I’ll take the roof,” I tell him. “You can stay on the ground below me. Fight down here.”

Angra. Simon controls people who are not his subjects? No, no, she has to be wrong . . .

Conall doesn’t seem at all appeased, but he hears the order in my voice and nods curtly.

Ceridwen grunts approval and takes another step backward.

Lekan moves after her. “Wait—”

The scowl she gives him could burn through a brick wall. “He’s been hurting our kingdom for too long, and if he’s using magic on non-Summerians . . .”

I want to scream at her, a wave of fear swelling in me. No, it can’t be the Decay—it
can’t be
magic. There’s been no sign of Angra or his darkness for months.

But the Decay needs a host, like any magic. It has to be coming from someone . . .

Lekan grinds his jaw, and the way he springs forward makes me think she pushed him too far. But he just hovers there, muscles hard, staring at her with eyes that say more than any words could. Finally he nods, one firm jerk of his head, and Ceridwen flashes a deadly smile before sprinting around the corner. Lekan moves after her, already holding
a pair of knives drawn from somewhere within his cloak.

I watch until I can’t see their shadows on the street anymore, the surrounding city quiet except for the distant murmurs of people moving about their day and, closer, the harsh voices of soldiers. I look at Conall, but he just waits. He didn’t read the threat in Ceridwen’s words. He didn’t come to the same conclusion that drains me.

Angra’s magic didn’t dissipate.

He might be alive
.

I force a nod at Conall and he moves to the corner of the building, blending into the shadows that put him between this street and the one just over, the one Ceridwen and Lekan ran for.

I don’t give myself time to do anything else. No thinking, no chance to reflect on everything that threatens to destroy me from the inside out. For now, for this fleeting moment, I am just a girl helping to stop a terrible act. I am nothing more than the tightness in my arms as I pull myself up the side of a building, window to window, ledge to ledge. I am nothing more than the shiver that spreads across my arms as I stand on the roof in the unbroken wind.

Angra is alive.

He’s alive.

He’s—

Those words beat in my head alongside my pulse, and I take slow, careful steps up the inclined clay tiles of the roof, crouch down, and peer at the square, three stories below.

Just focus on this task. Help Ceridwen. Maybe I’ll see something that will explain what Simon is doing—maybe it’ll all make sense.

And that, honestly, terrifies me more than anything else.

Buildings form a cage around a small, open square of pale yellow cobblestones. Rintiero’s vibrant colors gleam in the bright light of the day, the magenta and peach buildings providing a riotous backdrop for the people standing in the square.

Summer’s stained wagon sits in the center of fifteen soldiers, chatting merrily, only half aware of the fact that they’re supposed to be on watch. A jug of wine passes between a few of them as laughter flies upward. More laughter radiates from the wagon along with other noises that make my stomach churn with disgust.

One of the wagon doors opens. Simon swaggers out a step, unmistakable in the soft scarlet glow that radiates from the conduit on his wrist. My eyes lock on to it, the disgust in my stomach flickering into dread. Maybe Ceridwen was wrong. Maybe he
did
drug the non-Summerians, like Lekan thought.

Or maybe Angra allied with Summer, has been allied with them, all along. Or maybe the Decay did kill Angra and sought out a new host, and I’m too late to stop any of it.

Simon snaps something to one of his guards before diving back into the wagon.

A gurgled moan emanates from across the square. My
eyes snap up in time to see a Summerian soldier collapse, motionless, as a red blur sweeps out of the shadows. She doesn’t hesitate before she moves in on the next one, and by now other soldiers have noticed her, shouting that they’re under attack. No one sees Conall on the road below me, hidden in shadows, or me on the roof.

I shift onto my knees and yank the chakram out of its holster, no thoughts beyond calculating which soldier will make the best target, which man gives me the clearest shot. The chakram flies from my hand, an effortless and familiar burst of movement, and in that moment it doesn’t feel like months since I threw it. It feels as if I’ve done it every day of my life, and it licks across a Summerian soldier’s leg before smacking back into my palm.

“Sister!” Simon’s voice catches against the buildings around him, his cocky tone echoing. I crouch down, eyes flicking over the scene as Simon steps out of his wagon, his men pulling back. They aren’t attacking?

Ceridwen and Lekan realize the oddness too. They stand back to back just across from me, weapons glinting and bloodied, both of them panting yet ready for an attack. But Simon doesn’t tell his men to charge again, doesn’t let his soldiers attack the two intruders.

He steps toward Ceridwen, his voice carrying around the square with intention. “What brings you to the shadier parts of Rintiero? It can’t be that you’re the one behind all the attacks on my wagons. I know my sister would never
turn on me in such a way.”

Simon’s words barely reach my ears when Ceridwen screams.

She crumples to her knees, weapons clanking on the stone as they tumble from her hands. Lekan surges toward her but soldiers pin him back and she screams again, writhing on the ground. No one is anywhere near her, touching her at all, not even . . .

It’s Simon. He’s using his conduit to hurt her.

And any magic used for the sake of harm feeds the Decay.

I lean backward until I spot Conall below me. He sees what’s happening from his hidden view between the buildings, and when I move he jerks his eyes up to me.

I point at him, then back toward the palace.

Warn them,
I plead.
Angra’s dark magic.

Were it any other threat, I wouldn’t consider using my magic—but I can’t be afraid of anything that might help me now.

Conall’s face pales with shock when my order hits him, driving action into his body in the same way other conduit-wielders use their magic to direct soldiers on a battlefield. He shakes his head sharply, but the resignation on his face cancels out his protest.

Go,
I force into him.

Conall scowls and takes off, running into the streets, away from the Summerians.

Once he vanishes from sight, I pull myself back up the
roof, fingers digging into the tiles. Ceridwen has stopped screaming, her eyes on Simon, who walks through his soldiers, taking slow, taunting steps toward her. He tips his head at her on the ground, pauses, and glances over his shoulder.

In that moment, I catch sight of the confusion on his face. He peers at his conduit, twisting the cuff on his wrist, and looks across from him, to my right.

My eyes snap to follow his and my heart sinks.

“Princess Ceridwen,” Raelyn coos. Ventrallan soldiers swarm the square, filing around as she takes slow, controlled steps forward. “So glad you could join us.”

Simon moves toward her. “This isn’t the plan. She’s my prisoner to deal with.”

Raelyn’s hair curls wildly around a silk mask that matches her gown, a swirling tempest of emerald and obsidian that ripples as she draws closer to Simon. Her soldiers take up positions around the square, barricading anyone from leaving. Even the people in the carriage, some Summerian, some Yakimian, all branded, are dragged out and corralled into a cowering group by the square’s edge.

But Raelyn has eyes only for Ceridwen, joy mixed with fury mixed with satisfaction, and I don’t realize why she’s so enthralled until she tips her head and Ceridwen screams.

Simon isn’t the only one using the Decay. Every time Raelyn twitches, Ceridwen screams, her body bending in unnatural angles. My hand tightens on the chakram, but
I’m frozen on the roof.

A
non–conduit-wielder
is using the Decay.

So is someone else the host for it? Based on the confusion on Simon’s face, it isn’t him.

When the Decay was first created, it fed on the fuel of the thousands of people who used their small conduits for evil. It made everyone’s darkest, most sinister thoughts the
only
thing they thought—and those who had conduits were also given extra strength and power. It has always been able to affect people regardless of their bloodline—Theron and I saw that firsthand in Abril. Normal conduits cannot affect someone not of their kingdom; the Decay is the exception to that rule. It’s the bridge between bloodlines, created during a time when everyone had conduits regardless of lineage or kingdom.

When Mather broke Angra’s staff, maybe Angra became Spring’s conduit, and the Decay became strong enough to infuse not only evil desires in people, but magic as well. The Decay, Angra, and Spring’s conduit could be one now, a morphed, twisted entity of limitless evil that breaks through everything we used to know about magic.

Which forms the terrifying question . . .

If Angra is alive, where is he?
Or after centuries of feeding off Angra, did the Decay finally become strong enough to infect whomever it pleases?

A heavy weight settles in me. I can’t save Ceridwen and Lekan, not now, not here, because I can only use my magic
to affect Winterians. So I just watch in helpless horror as Raelyn pauses over Ceridwen, her head tipping back and forth as she surveys the princess of Summer at her feet.