Ice Like Fire (32 page)

“This is better than promised,” she says, raising her voice for all to hear. She enjoys the audience, the stunned Summerians, her leering Ventrallan soldiers.

Simon stomps forward, a few Summerian soldiers following with drawn weapons. “What are you doing? This isn’t—”

Raelyn waves, beckoning some of her men to restrain the Summerian soldiers. When they’re just as helpless as Lekan, she shoots a look at Simon.

He falls to his knees before her, gasping like an invisible hand slowly clamps around his throat. His face dims to a violent purple, and Raelyn pushes her long fingers through his riot of hair.

“Dear Summer king,” she says. “I’m afraid nothing will happen according to your plan.”

“Angra . . . promised me,” Simon pants, his strain clear in his clenched arms, his face darkening more and more.

I crouch lower behind the roof, quivering so hard that the building must be shaking too. Simon’s words echo relentlessly through my mind.

Angra promised me.

“To ally Summer with Spring.” Raelyn reprimands like he’s nothing more than a misbehaving child. “Yes, I know. But you didn’t honestly think someone so powerful would
ally with
Summer
, did you? Angra only gave you true magic to keep you occupied while real rulers decided what would become of your land.” She pauses, still stroking her fingers through his hair as he coughs and gags. “And we have decided Summer will best serve our new world without its conduit bloodline. So you see, Spring will not ally with you. Our goals do not require you at all.”

With Raelyn focused on Simon, Ceridwen’s pain stops, her body relaxing. She eases onto her elbows, her fingers digging into the cobblestones as she looks at Raelyn as if the Ventrallan queen is more rabid beast than person.

“True magic?” Ceridwen dares.

“Spring.” Raelyn turns to her, Simon gagging still. “They discovered the true source of power, and it is not useless baubles imbued with centuries-old magic. Spring holds a power stronger than any conduit.”

Ceridwen shakes her head. “Angra’s dark magic? After what he did to Winter, after the vacant control he enacted over his own people? You’re insane. This is just another form of slavery. Jesse will never let this happen!”

Ceridwen stops, her gaze frozen on Raelyn. That name echoes around them.
Jesse.

“You’re quite right,” Raelyn snarls, and kicks her in the stomach. Lekan cries out, but no one pays him any attention, everyone enthralled by the building storm of the Ventrallan queen and the Summerian princess. “Jesse is too weak. He will fear this power, and he will doom this
kingdom as he did when he bedded
you
. But we don’t need him anymore—
I
don’t need him anymore.”

“No . . .” Ceridwen chokes, sucking air in uneven spurts.

Raelyn lifts her skirt and slams her foot against Ceridwen’s throat, pressing as she shouts words down on her. “I will kill him, sweet girl. I will kill him and those brats and every remnant of the Ventrallan conduit’s bloodline, because I don’t need them. The time of the Royal Conduits is over. The time of true power has come.”

“Stop . . . Raelyn . . .” Simon spits out one gasping plea. “Leave her alone!”

In a swirl of green and black, Raelyn spins away from Ceridwen. As if she can sense what will happen, as if every moment had built up to this inevitable end, Ceridwen scrambles to get onto her hands and knees.

“No!”

Raelyn flicks her wrist, and Simon utters a single, trembling gulp before his neck breaks, the bone grating in the jarring snap of a quick and easy death.

Ceridwen’s scream fades to silence and she hovers there, watching her brother’s body fall lifeless to the stones. The other Summerian soldiers move to action, but the Ventrallan soldiers are faster, and the square is soon coated in so much Summerian blood that it’s hard to imagine the stones were ever anything but this gruesome red. The branded Summerian and Yakimian slaves drop to their knees, cowering, spared in their meek surrender—even Lekan is left
alive, hanging limp from the Ventrallans who hold him, his eyes on Ceridwen in a look of pure sorrow.

Ceridwen doesn’t react when Raelyn grabs her hair and jerks her head back to peer down into her eyes. “Isn’t this why you came here? To kill your brother? I saved you the trouble of having to murder your own family. You should be grateful.” Raelyn twists Ceridwen’s neck back and she yelps in pain. “You will be grateful, Princess. You will beg me for death, and before I grant your wish, your last words to me will be
thank you
.”

The chakram leaves my hand, my great, spinning blade swirling through the air, but I know as it leaves my palm that my aim is off, my horror sending shudders up my arm that make my chakram teeter and bend.

It licks off Raelyn’s shoulder, a hand’s width below my intended target. She screams in a deadly mix of pain and fury. All eyes in the square follow my chakram’s path back to me, and as I leap to catch it, arrows fly.

I drop to my back, hidden by the point in the roof, the chakram to my stomach. Arrows pierce the roof behind me with sturdy
thwacks
and a few graze the point just over my head, sending sprays of tile raining down over me.

“Hold!” Raelyn cries, and the arrows cease.

I stay down, one foot lodged in a few clay tiles to keep me from sliding off the roof.

“Winter queen?” Raelyn calls, her voice taunting, and I curse myself for letting my aim falter. “I won’t kill you,
Winter queen. That honor has been reserved for another Rhythm. I will, however, deliver you to him, so be a good child and surrender now. There is no escaping this revolution.”

My lip curls and I pull whatever strength I can from revenge, for Raelyn’s treatment of Ceridwen. From horror, for the murder of the Summerian king. From the hard, unavoidable realization that all of this, every moment of this trip, was a trap. A trap I not only fell into, but helped build. Who else has been swayed by Angra’s power?

Raelyn said
Another Rhythm.

Noam. Cordell.

I whirl to my feet and wind my chakram, knowing this time, I won’t miss. Raelyn will die, her smug grin the last expression her face will form. But as I rise above the peak in the roof, my body lurches back, instinct realizing the threat before my mind has time to comprehend it.

Ventrallan soldiers. Five of them, climbing up the roof. Raelyn distracted me long enough for them to scale the building and gain on me.

I take off across the roof and slide my chakram into its holster. Arrows whizz past as I hurl myself onto the steep roof of the next building. My boots twist awkwardly and I slam onto my elbows, rolling down the incline. One arrow slices across my arm, a deep gouge that makes me wince, but I don’t have time for it to hurt before I’m thrown off the roof, flailing through the air.

Another building, one story shorter, stops my fall, a few tiles crumbling when I crash onto it. But this one is infinitely flatter and I take off running again, ignoring the way my arm screams. A quick glance tells me the Ventrallan soldiers are just behind me, one roof away and getting closer. I leap into the air and grab the edge of the next building. Once I’m on it, I spot the palace to the northeast, its riot of colors standing out against the sweep of dense green park. I reel toward it and push myself into a sprint, aiming for the next building, a story taller than this one but easily reachable—

Until a Ventrallan soldier hops up in front of me, swinging to his feet and drawing a blade in one smooth movement. I rip my chakram out and let it sing through the air, but the soldier sees it coming, knows it’s my weapon of choice now, and deflects it with his sword. The chakram drops with a
clunk
against the curved clay tiles, and the soldier kicks it behind him, sending it clattering to the street below.

I whirl to run back the other way but jolt to a stop. The other four Ventrallan soldiers stand at the edge of the roof, swords drawn. I’m surrounded, I’m weaponless, one of my allies is imprisoned—or worse—by the people closing in on me now. . . .

Which is why, when the soldiers in front of me start falling, one by one, I have trouble understanding what’s happening.

Hands swing up from below the edge, grab the soldiers’
ankles, and yank two of them down, while a knife whirls out of nowhere and lodges in one man’s gut. Another soldier drops when a girl leaps on his back, slashes a blade across his throat, and spins her whole body around his, her legs whirling as she twists, shoves, and sends him flying over the edge.

I barely have time to register who these people are when the soldier behind me shouts. The roof trembles beneath his stomping feet, and I swing around into a crouch, arms up as if I’ll be able to fight off his sword with my fists.

But he stops, body rigid, mouth lurching open with a gurgle. He grips a spot on his chest, a hole that slowly saturates his uniform with blood, before he collapses on the clay tiles, revealing a man behind him. A man holding a bloodied sword in one hand, my chakram in the other, his sapphire eyes pinned on me.

“Are you all right?” Mather asks.

Mather

ONE WORD FUELED
Mather all the way from Winter to Ventralli
.

When he and the Thaw reached the Feni, saw dozens of Cordellan ships freshly docked, soldiers disembarking to swarm Winter with reinforcements—
go.

When they crept aboard the smallest ship, launched it out into the water in the dead of night and bobbed away from their newly enslaved kingdom—
go
.

When they sailed up the river, packed on that maddeningly small boat, nothing to do for days but pace the deck and stare at the passing scenery and plan, think, worry
—go.

Go,
move, fight—
Mather’s whole body was an arrow pulled more and more taut against a string, ready, so ready.

None of the Thaw tried to talk to him about what had happened. No one mentioned Alysson’s death, or Cordell’s takeover, or Meira’s possible fate. They just patrolled the
boat, quiet, obeying Mather’s sailing orders—which were rudimentary at best as he’d only been on a boat a handful of times in his life.

When Mather had started training as a child, it had seemed more like an elaborate game played with wooden weapons and clunky armor. It wasn’t until his first kill, when he was eleven, that he realized the seriousness of it. He’d gone out on what should have been a simple reconnaissance mission with William and they’d run into a Spring patrol. Only three men, but while William dealt with the two who swarmed him, Mather drew his blade, instinct moving his muscles so that he didn’t even feel like he was the one fighting. A detached, hazy interaction that had ended with blood on his hands and a body at his feet.

That shock of realizing that the things William had been teaching him weren’t games, but tools to
kill people
, was one of the most jarring moments of his life. He’d always known what fighting would result in, of course—but he hadn’t understood it,
felt
it, until that moment.

And Mather knew that was what had happened to his Thaw.

They had real weapons now; they had seen the reason for their training erupt before their eyes. This wasn’t some game they were playing to pass the time. This was the difference between a free kingdom and slavery, happiness and misery, life and death.

This was the future of their kingdom. The seven of them, barely more than children, with only enough training to defeat soldiers if they had the benefit of surprise and numbers.

But Spring had been defeated by such a small number—though the refugees in Winter’s nomadic camp had been populated with seasoned fighters, not teenagers.

There was no room for doubt. No room for worry.

Go.

They reached Rintiero a few hours before sunset, the seven of them flying off the boat in a swirl of white hair and desperation. The docks were mostly silent, boats bobbing lazily in the current, sailors tidying up their wares for the evening.

“Where do we go now?” Phil asked as the rest of the Thaw stretched and gawked at the city before them, their faces mixes of relief at being on solid ground and awe at being so far from home.

But Mather didn’t have it in him to stop and let them wonder. He nodded at Phil’s question and stomped down the dock, grabbing the first person he came across—a sailor winding rope up his arm.

“The Winter queen,” Mather snapped. “Is she here? Has anything happened to her?”

The sailor yelped at Mather’s fingers clenched around his forearm. “I . . . um . . . what? Who—”

Mather shook him.
“Is the Winter queen here?”

“Y-yes!”

She’s here. She’s alive? Don’t lose focus. GO.

Mather gripped the man tighter. “Is she at the palace? Where is it?”

The sailor nodded, trembling as his eyes shot over Mather’s shoulder. The Thaw must be behind him, and Mather realized how odd this must look, a group of Winterians appearing on a dock and surrounding a poor Ventrallan sailor who probably was thinking of nothing but a mug of ale and a warm bed.

Mather released the man’s arm, took a step back, hands lifting in surrender. It took all his strength to do so, his drive to
go, go, FIGHT
warring with his conviction not to unnecessarily terrify innocent people.

“I—I think so—” The sailor waved his hand toward the northwest. “The complex is that way—a forest, in the middle of the city—”

Mather clapped the man’s shoulder in an act of goodwill, but the motion made the sailor chirp and cover his head with his arms.

“Sorry. Thank you.” Mather took off at a sprint.

Everyone followed, Phil pushing forward to run alongside him. “He feared us.”

Mather spared a glance at him, some of his tension easing as his muscles, cramped after so long on the boat, stretched in the run. “Yes.”

Phil’s chest puffed out. “Never thought someone would feel intimidated by
me
.”

Mather cut down an alley, leading the Thaw northwest. “Could’ve been because we outnumbered him. Could’ve been because we surprised him. Or it could’ve been because he saw we were Winterians and expected retribution.”

Phil squinted at him. “Retribution? For what?”

For something Mather couldn’t bear to say out loud.
For allowing our queen’s death on their soil.
“He could’ve been lying about Meira.”

Phil swerved around a barrel in the middle of the cobblestone street as understanding washed over his pale skin. He didn’t say anything more, just pressed faster, Mather matching him.

They stopped once more to ask exact directions to the palace, which took them to a lush thicket of decorative forest. A few smaller roads wound out of the greenery with one large, ornate passage open at the front, but Mather pulled the Thaw away from the main entrance, opting for some sense of stealth. Who knew what waited for them behind that forest?

A path to the left seemed the most promising—narrow, for walking only, most likely a servant entrance. But as Mather angled toward it, Hollis caught his arm.

“My lord,” he whispered in a low growl, nodding to the right, where a slightly wider path darted out of the forest from farther behind the palace. Down that path moved a
contingent of soldiers, dozens of them, all outfitted as if for war with weapons and armor and horses. Within the group rode a lone Ventrallan woman, her entire demeanor speaking of money and privilege.

The group rode out of the forest and into the city with the purposeful clip of a goal dangling just before their eyes.

Mather took a step forward, watching them vanish into the multicolored buildings.

“My lord?” Hollis questioned.

“What would a noblewoman need with a group of soldiers that large?” Mather wondered.

Trace grunted. “Nothing good.”

“Exactly,” Mather agreed, and pushed into the street, following the group. No one questioned why he chose to go after the soldiers rather than enter the palace, and honestly, the only excuse he could think of was that the knot in his gut compelled him on. So many men, led by a woman who, despite her Ventrallan mask, emanated an air of malice—nothing good could come from this at all.

And he knew Meira well enough to realize that she would most likely be wherever the bad things were happening.

They kept a few blocks between themselves and the soldiers as they moved deeper into Rintiero. The sun beat dying tendrils of heat onto them, evening creeping in, their shadows toying with giving them away. Mather pulled the Thaw back, dropping as far behind as he could without losing the contingent.

So when the confrontation finally happened, Mather and the Thaw only reached the square as the Summer king’s body fell, the conduit on his wrist proclaiming his status to all around.

“Damn it,” Mather cursed, yanking Phil into the shadows of the alley that had almost dumped them into the fray. The rest of the Thaw crowded behind them in the darkness.

The noblewoman, whose threatening speech gave herself away as the Ventrallan queen, turned to a Summerian girl, immobile with shock, her eyes on the king’s crooked neck. Mather didn’t hear whatever the queen said to her, blood pounding in his ears as he gaped at the body on the cobblestones.

The Ventrallan queen had snapped the Summerian king’s neck somehow. Without remorse, by the way she lorded it over the girl now.

Dread rushed up Mather’s body and he turned to stone, one arm still pinning Phil to the wall beside him.

If the Ventrallan queen had killed the Summerian king . . .

What had she done to Meira?

Mather’s eyes shot around the square, but no other bodies lay there. What about the palace? They needed to go back. Was this some kind of coup on the Ventrallan queen’s part, or was the king also involved? Did he have Meira—was he tormenting her the same way this queen tormented
the Summerian girl?

The dread in Mather’s body caught fire, burned cold and hot all at once as he spun back up the alley. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, just the thumping of his heart pushing images into his mind of Meira’s body lying in these too-pretty streets—

“Mather!” Phil grabbed his arm, but no, there was nothing else in this city, nothing else in this world, just him and Meira and he
would find her—

“Mather!”
Phil snapped. “Look!”

Phil whirled him around just as a projectile caught his eye, something flat and circular cutting a line from the Ventrallan queen to a roof across the square. The queen roared outrage and grabbed her shoulder, glaring at the object.

Mather lurched forward.

It was a
chakram
.

He noted the building it came from and every tightly wound muscle sprang into action.

“Follow me,” he said, and shoved back into the alley, sprinting around buildings, cutting up side streets, making a haphazard path around the square toward the building from where the chakram had come. Adrenaline numbed everything but the barest, most instinctual thoughts—
Soldiers were climbing up the building, gaining on her, but only five, easily dispatched; were those swords clashing? The queen must have turned on
the rest of the Summerians
—

A shadow flashed over him, yanking his attention to the sky. A few more shadows followed, soldiers in pursuit, and Mather jerked to a stop.

“Trace, get to the next roof—you’ll be our ranged weapon. Everyone else, go up the south side of the building—quiet, though. Surprise is all we have.”

They dove into action, and just as Mather leapt for a window ledge on the building, something dropped off the roof and clattered to the road.

Meira’s chakram.

He plopped back onto the cobblestones, swept it up, and scurried up the building with renewed force. She was up there—she was alive
.

Frigid ice above, he hadn’t realized how horrified he’d been until he felt the relief those words brought: like fresh air chasing away the rankness of a battlefield, like the cooling respite of herbs healing the agony of a wound.

Mather’s grip on the chakram made his desperate climb awkward, but a beat after his Thaw made it to the roof, he swung up himself.

Their surprise had worked—the four soldiers at the opposite end of the roof went down without more than a few startled yelps. One man remained, bellowing fury with his back to Mather.

The soldier lifted a sword above his head and ran
forward. Mather slid out his own blade and dove, impaling the man through the back and yanking his sword free. The soldier collapsed, rolling to the side, revealing—

Meira.

She crouched, her arms up defensively. Her eyes shot from the soldier’s body to Mather, her brows furrowed, and he knew if he was having trouble catching up, she had to have been completely stunned.

Mather remembered their last interaction, the conversation that he regretted more than he could express. And while he had reconciled himself to loving her, she had told Mather she didn’t want him and had spent the past weeks with Theron. Nothing had changed for her—so although every nerve in Mather’s body ached to dive forward and scoop her into his arms, he stayed back, poised, ready,
hers
.

“Are you all right?” he asked, because he had to say something, had to break free of this moment before it consumed him whole.

She blinked, her confusion flowing off her face in a rush that left her gasping, trapped somewhere between screaming and crying. And before Mather could explain or ask anything more, she launched forward and knotted herself around his neck.

“You’re here,” she panted. “How are you here?”

The weapons clattered from his hands as he wrapped his arms around her, pressing her more firmly to his body. Ice above, he’d forgotten how she felt against him—she was so
small yet so strong, all but choking him with her grip. He clung to her, drowning in the way
she
hugged
him
, how she buried her face in his shoulder, her lungs filling on raspy inhales.

He let himself have this moment. He needed this, needed it to soothe away the event that had hollowed out a permanent abyss in his body.

Meira was alive. She was alive and safe, even if Alysson was not.

Mather leaned his forehead against Meira’s temple, exhaling long, inhaling even longer.