Ice Like Fire (35 page)

And now Angra has both keys. Theron had the key from Summer; Angra took the one from Yakim, and the one in Ventralli . . .

I jolt in Theron’s hands.

Where is the third key?

Theron pulls me down the palace’s gilded halls until we reach a door. Alongside every other beautiful thing in Ventralli, this one stands plain and blank, just a simple iron door with simple iron bolts, hovering in an alcove. The door to the palace’s dungeon.

The colorful brilliance of the palace vanishes in favor of heavy gray stones that spasm in the dancing sconce light. A staircase shoots down, taking us deep beneath the palace, farther from any chance at escape. We reach a long, straight hall lined with doors, each one the same heavy iron as the one above. But these have windows, small, barred openings. Cells.

“Lock them up,” Theron commands.

Nessa’s screams die as a door slams on her, Conall, and Dendera. The Children of the Thaw are corralled into a cell beside them, Mather shoved in last. He fights the Cordellan soldiers, fights with every bit of strength I no longer
have, kicking off of the door frame and slamming the men holding him against the opposite wall. My body seizes in Theron’s grip as a soldier lands a blow to Mather’s cheek.

“Stop.” Theron opens a cell and shoves me in. “Put him in here, then leave us.”

I stumble forward, swinging around in time to catch Mather as the soldiers toss him in after me. He rights himself and spins in front of me, keeping one hand on my arm to hold me behind him as we both face the door. I cling to him, using him to ground me here, the way he crouches defensively, his cheek already red.

The Cordellan soldiers leave, as instructed, marching back up the long stairwell. Theron tips his head and the moment the door above slams shut, he enters the cell.

“Touch her and I’ll kill you,” Mather growls, taking a step back toward me.

But Theron walks past us, stopping at the wall on our right.

Leaving the path to the door open.

Mather notices it when I do, and every one of his muscles formerly poised to attack uncoils, dragging me to the door without hesitation. We get halfway there, so close to being out, to some advantage, when a noise makes me stop.

The heavy, solid click of a lock.

I yank free of Mather’s grip. He whirls, panic tightening his features, but I turn to Theron, who faces the wall. Theron, whose hands hang by his sides, one wrist manacled
to the chains that drape from the bricks.

He chained himself to the wall?

He slides onto his knees, face to the grimy stone floor. Tremors rock his body, make him sway forward and back.

“Theron?” I try, sure the desperation roiling through me makes my voice pinched.

His eyes flicker with the briefest, most fragile spark over his shoulder. “I can’t hold on like this for long.”

I fly forward as Mather launches at me. “Stop! What are you doing? We have to go!”

“No!” I shout, the word echoing off the empty walls. “I’m not leaving him here—”

“Yes, you are,” Theron snarls, his fingers digging into the mortar between the stones. His knuckles turn white, sweat beading on his forehead. Sconces in the hall flicker off him, painting him in jagged streaks of light. “I shouldn’t let you go. I should keep you here, but I—you need to go,
now
.”

I recognize this for what it is. One last burst of clarity from the Decay. A final gasp for breath before it yanks him under.

I step toward Theron. Theron, whose goals for the world completely conflict with my own. Nothing may remain of us, but I know I cannot, will not, let Angra take him.

“No, you’ll come with us.” I step closer. “You have a Royal Conduit now—you can use its magic to get the Decay out of you. You just have to want it, Theron, you
just have to—”

“I
don’t
want it.” He pulls the dagger out of his belt and tosses it away from him like it’s a live flame and he a stack of dry wood. “I—I agree with him. I want his magic, not the conduits.
No more conduits
. I want the world to be free,
equal
—but I don’t want . . . I won’t hurt you. I
won’t
hurt you.” His strain releases in a sob that wracks his whole body. “I won’t hurt you like I hurt my . . .”

He crouches over, hands in his hair, sobs mingling with jagged moans.

I open my mouth, but nothing comes. What can I say? What can I
do
?

I kneel before him, my hand on his where he cups his head.

He’s a conduit-bearer now. And whenever I touch a conduit-bearer skin to skin, we’re connected, the inexplicable magic linking us. Scenes fly into my mind, and I watch them, muscles frozen in anguish.

Theron in Winter before we left, giving the order to his men to take over Cordell in my absence. Whatever Noam did, or thought he did, he wasn’t in control. It was Theron—and even Theron didn’t know he was doing it. Entire moments and orders and wishes struck out and snuffed away, flames that lit, burned brightly, and extinguished.

Theron in Summer, talking to a man in the wine cellar. A Ventrallan slave with a snide, unnatural smile that spoke of a deeper possession.

“You remember what happened, don’t you?” the man asks, easing out of the shadows. “You remember what he showed you?”

The wine cellar flashes away, a spurt of memory taking its place.

“Father, stop!”

Angra, barely older than I am, screams at his father, a man who looks similar to how Angra himself does now, only taller and heavier. They stand in the entryway of the Abril Palace, shadows and flickering sconces of light making the scene hard to grab. An arm raises, falls, bone cracks on stone, Angra screams. His father storms away, stumbling across the darkness, leaving Angra crouched over a body on the floor.

Blonde hair cascades down the woman’s shoulders, one side of her head a mess of congealed blood. I recognize her from the paintings that hung in the Abril Palace, portraits of a little boy—Angra—and this woman.

She gazes up at Angra the same way Hannah gazed at me—this woman is his mother.

The scene fades and Theron teeters back, slamming into the shelves of the Summerian wine cellar, hands on his temples. “No . . .”

But his voice is uncertain, weak, like part of him does remember. Like part of him throbs with the memory, revels in it.

Angra’s father killed his mother—and Angra used this similarity to break Theron.

“No!” Theron screams.

“You’re the same,” the slave encourages. “He’s coming. He’ll always come for you.”

The flash of a blade. Theron stands over the man, the corpse, blood pulsing through a wound across the man’s neck.

Theron didn’t remember it any of it, the Decay tugging him this way and that as it tried to eat away at his mind. Some of it he wanted—like a power strong enough to spread through the world. Some of it he didn’t dare admit he wanted—like overtaking Winter, forcing my kingdom into a path he thought would make it safe. For me.

He remembers it all now, though. He sees it as I see it, my connection to the magic linked to his blood drawing out the memories as, moment by moment, heartbeat by heartbeat, the Decay crawled into his mind and settled inside of him like a dream he could feel but couldn’t recall.

And now, after weeks of unconscious games, Theron can’t fight anymore. He resisted—he fought it almost as much as he wanted the chasm opened. But one desire trumped all others, one Angra latched on to, wrestled into submission.

Theron’s desire for a unified, equalized world.

He groans and I pull back from him, my throat raw.

“I need you here,” he mumbles. “This is right. This
is
right, this will save everyone . . .”

“Theron?”

He turns to Mather, his voice deep and resonant. “Get her out of here!”

Mather obeys. He grabs me under the arms and lifts me, sweeping Cordell’s dagger into his belt as he does. I kick against him, surrounded by the uncontainable certainty that I’ll never see Theron again. Angra will consume him,
the Decay will destroy anything good in him. Gone, like everything else Angra took, all the other parts of our lives that have been cleaved away.

Unless I save everyone.

I cannot live in a world where Theron is Angra’s toy. And that’s my only other option, isn’t it? To not live in this world.

Mather shoves me out into the hall and slams the door on Theron, throwing the heavy bolt to lock him inside. As soon as it’s in place, Theron’s groans turn to shouts, the chain rattling in a cacophony of noise.

“Release me!” Theron screams. “Soldiers! The prisoners escaped—release me!”

I collapse against the door to his cell, listening to him shout, lost to the madness of Angra’s Decay. Detachment consumes me, clouds every part of me, and all I can do is blankly gape at the hall.

Mather runs to the cells across from us. The soldiers didn’t lock the doors with keys, merely shoved bolts that can’t be opened from the inside. He tugs at those bolts now, and they groan but only budge a little as he snaps panicked words at me. “We don’t have much time! We need—”

He stops.

A man stands at the bottom of the staircase. Thin black hair twists atop his head in loose coils, golden patterns swirl along the thick maroon fabric of his cloak, the collar rising high around his ears.

And a scar stretches from his temple down to his chin.

When the man steps forward, Mather flies toward him, raising the only weapon he has: Cordell’s conduit. I fling my hand out to stop Mather before I even know why.

Rares. The librarian in residence from Yakim.

“You . . .” is all I can manage. His presence here makes no sense, clogging my mind with details that don’t fit.

Like the way he watched me in Yakim, studious, amused. Like the outfit he wears now and how similar it is to something else, something that—

The tapestry in the Donati Palace’s gallery. The heavy robes, the dark skin.

He isn’t Yakimian.

Rares is
Paislian
.

He smiles, a quick flash of recognition. “The lie was necessary, dear heart. I didn’t know you; you didn’t know me. Of course, you still don’t know me, but if you want my help, we must hurry.” He swings toward the stairs, leaving me gawking after him, Mather staring with a wrinkled brow, and Theron shouting for freedom from his cell.

I leap forward. “Wait! What are you—”

Rares whirls back. “You wanted help,” he states as if he’s telling me winter is cold.

I shake my head. Mather’s eyes flick to the staircase, waiting for the door to open, waiting for us to be caught and Theron’s sacrifice will mean nothing.

“I—why
you
?” I gasp.

Rares reaches into his robes and pulls out a key.
The
key. The last one.

He
was what the tapestry wanted us to find?

He steps forward and places a palm on my cheek.

Mather lurches and Rares would be dead if I had blinked instead of waving him off.

I can’t breathe as I look into Rares’s eyes, his skin warming my face. An image flies at me, a mountain, brilliantly gray and purple, bathed in a beam of yellow light.

The symbol of the Order of the Lustrate.

Rares pulls his hand back. “I had to make sure you could be trusted.”

“How—” I croak through my shock.

He grins. “I’ll explain all, dear heart, I promise. You will come with me now?”

My brows pinch as I feebly try to connect everything. This only happens with conduit-bearers, seeing images when I touch them skin to skin. No one else in Primoria has magic, and not even the Decay inhabiting someone could cause the same reaction, or I would have known something was wrong with Theron much sooner. But Rares has a key—so maybe the key’s magic showed me an image again? But no, that only works when
I’m
touching the key.

Whoever this man is, he has magic. He’s a member of the Order. And he’s
Paislian
.

The Order is Paislian?

My mind flashes to that mysterious kingdom, the Paisel Mountains surrounding it.

Ventralli, Yakim, Summer.

Our Klaryn Mountains.

The kingdoms where the keys were hidden were the ones leading from Paisly to the Klaryns. The Order to the magic chasm. Was that why the keys were there? But why were they so easily found? So many whys—

But I know how to get answers.

And I know where the keys were leading me, all this time.

“Meira,” Mather says, a warning.

My arms tremble. I’ve known all along the right things to do. If I had made better choices, if I had listened to my heart instead of my head and done what I
knew
my kingdom needed from the start, I could have stopped all of this.

So I nod to Rares. If he has magic, if he’s part of the Order of the Lustrate, if there’s even a
chance
that he knows things that can help me stop this horrible, deadly mess around me, I have to go with him. Whatever threat he might harbor, whatever danger the Order might possess—
I need answers
.

Staying would ensure the world’s enslavement at Angra’s hands. Leaving at least ensures a possibility of hope.

Mather balks, Cordell’s dagger going limp in his hand. “What?”

I spin to him. “You have to free them and get as far away from here as possible. And Ceridwen—the Summerian
princess, you have to free her from Raelyn and—”

“Are you insane? I’m not letting—”

“I’m not asking you, Mather.” I’m absolutely out of my mind to be doing this. “I’m
ordering
you. As your queen.”

That undoes him. Whatever strength he’d been clinging to shatters, his eyes shaded with the glaze that broke me weeks ago when he stood in my room in the Jannuari Palace and cut the bonds that kept us together; when he left, shedding tears that hollowed every part of who I had once been.

But I’m the one leaving this time.

That difference doesn’t make this any easier. I stumble forward, my arms going around his neck, a remnant of the hug when I first saw him on the rooftop. Touching him—it had been like coming home. Even now, holding him for this one short moment . . .