Weavers (The Frost Chronicles)

Kate Avery Ellison

Copyright © 2013 Kate Avery Ellison

All Rights Reserved

Do not distribute or make copies of this book, electronically or otherwise, in part or in whole, without the written consent of the author.

For Jennie

WEAVERS: THE FROST CHRONICLES #3

Every day, life in the Frost grows increasingly perilous for its inhabitants. The Farther occupation continues, and food is becoming scarce. Lia Weaver’s family is facing increasing perils, too—Jonn pushes his health to the brink as he works to uncover the mysteries of Echlos, and Ivy risks everything to get food for the family. And for the second time, the Weaver family is harboring a fugitive, but Lia doesn’t trust her.

Lia has personally braved many struggles—a Farther occupation, family secrets, a heart torn between two men, and Watcher attacks—as she struggles to keep her family safe. But now, she will face her greatest challenge and uncover the Frost’s deepest secrets as she completes her most dangerous mission yet for the Thorns.

THE WORLD WAS as cold as death’s breath and just as dark as I eased open the front door of my family’s farmhouse and slipped outside. Blackness that was tinged with blue wrapped around me like a cloak, and the chill of the Frost rushed into my lungs as I took a breath. The ache of the cold went to my bones as I walked alone into the forest, carrying a lantern.

I walked a little way into the darkness until I reached a clearing framed by the suggestion of trees at the edge of the shadows, and I stopped. My heart pounded and my shoulders itched from the unshakable sensation that unseen eyes watched me. I set the lantern in the snow, and it cast little slivers of light in a circle. The wind blew, ruffling my hair and stinging my cheeks. I waited.

Crunch.

Every muscle in my body drew tight as a bowstring. I held my breath.

Crunch, crunch.

Footsteps.

The tension in me eased as Adam Brewer slipped from the shadows. The black shirt and pants he wore helped him blend with the darkness as he stepped into the clearing, and his pale blue cloak was the same color as mine—the same color as the snow blossoms that would provide us with tenuous protection from the monsters that lurked in the night.

Seeing him made me feel both safe and nervous in some inexplicable way. Danger clung to him like smoke, but at the same time, being in his presence made me feel secure. We were friends, compatriots…and we might have been something else. But we weren’t. We couldn’t.

Adam’s eyes met mine. His were dark, framed with black lashes—pretty eyes in an otherwise lean and sharp face. He was always watching, always restlessly thinking and organizing details in his brain. It gave him a wild look, but I knew now that was a misjudgment. He was careful, clever. His expression challenged me in the way it always did, unvoiced yet still apparent. He didn’t say much with his words, but every glance and gesture he made hinted at something more, something quiet and intelligent and wonderful. I wondered again as I always did how I’d missed that aspect of him before. Or perhaps he’d kept it hidden on purpose, hoping we’d all think him a stupid oaf incapable of cunning and secrets, because Adam was one of the smartest individuals I knew.

“You’re late,” I said, just to say something.

He smiled at me—a quick flick of his lips that vanished almost as soon as it appeared. He was like that, always chasing his smiles with frowns. “I didn’t think you were going to come. I know you’ve had your hands full lately caring for the latest fugitive you’ve taken in…”

“I said I would, didn’t I?” I said it quickly, because right now I didn’t want to think about that mess.

“Lia Weaver,” he murmured under his breath. “Keeper of oaths.” Faint amusement sparkled in those dark eyes.

I liked the way he said my name,
Weaver
, without condescension. To most people in the village, the word
Weaver
was an unglamorous moniker, a label that means only long hours, manual labor, ragged fingers, and tired eyes. It did not inspire admiration like Elder or Mayor or even Baker. Adam spoke the word like it meant something—like it was another word for strength, courage, or wit.

He glanced past me at the house, perhaps checking the windows to see if they were all dark. “We have only one more hour before sunrise. We’ll have to move quickly.”

I nodded. When had anyone ventured into the forests of the Frost and not moved quickly, with every glance over his shoulder straining for the sight of Watchers? Our trip would be no different.

“Ready?” he asked.

Fear churned in my stomach, but I didn’t dwell on it. I drew my shoulders straight and lifted my chin level with the distant line of black forest that marked the Frost. With one hand, I reached up to touch the snow blossoms hanging around my neck. It was a nervous habit with me. I just wanted to be sure they were there. “I’m ready.”

We plunged into the depths of the Frost together. The trees curled around us like fangs in the mouth of some ancient monster, and the bare branches snagged at my cloak and hair. I ducked down, my boots whispering across the hard shell of frozen snow, my eyes on Adam’s back as he moved ahead of me. Here, everything was dark, but my eyes were adjusting and I was beginning to make out the path ahead.

We walked quickly and said little, although our silence was a conversation in itself. He paused to hold back a branch for me. I moved to his side as I heard a rustle in the bushes, and his hand brushed mine as he signaled for me to pause.

Awareness prickled over my skin. Suddenly, everything went deadly silent except for the pounding of our hearts and the ragged rasp of our breathing in tandem. We scanned the darkness, but nothing stirred against the pale line of snow. We exhaled in unison, exchanged a glance, and moved on.

The blackness was almost luminous as the faint light of predawn began to paint the snow silver beneath our feet and along the edges of the tree limbs that touched the sky. I rubbed my arms for warmth, although I was more than cold. Seeing the Frost at night conjured up flashbacks to a time several months ago when Adam and I had trekked through the night to find the Thorns’ secret gate, accompanied by Adam’s brother and Gabe, a Farther fugitive who’d fled from the southern country with the help of Thorns operatives.

Gabe
. Just thinking about him made my stomach twist into painful knots.

Adam held up a hand, jerking me back to reality. I heard the sound of branches snapping.

My terrified exhale escaped from my lips in a ghostly spiral, white and clouded in the freezing air. I mouthed Adam’s name. Holding a finger to his lips, he grabbed my wrist and pointed.

The darkness formed a solid curtain, so it was impossible to see what was moving through the forest ahead of us, but the faintest gleam of red light sparkled off a line of icicles hanging from one of the rocks. My heart turned to stone and dropped to my knees as the icicles shattered.

A Watcher.

Adam grabbed my arm and shoved me in the direction of the farmhouse. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the rush of blackness, the glint of glowing red, the shiver of light across a back of metallic spines. I ran. Adam was beside me, his hair streaming in the wind.

“Hurry,” he shouted, but the wind snatched the word away.

The ground shuddered as the Watcher bore down on us. I clenched my teeth against the burning pain in my lungs and pumped my legs harder. Behind me I heard branches ripping. A snarl shuddered through the air. The branches dragged at my clothes and slapped me in the face. A sob caught in my throat. We weren’t going to make it.

I felt a faint swish of wind as something sliced the air beside my ear. I swallowed a scream and tried to run faster, but I was slowing.

“Cut right,” Adam yelled, panting.

We rounded a thicket of trees and suddenly he was shouting “here!” and I was slipping, stumbling after him under the low-hanging limbs and through the snowdrifts. We fell together into the shadows beneath the tree.

The Watcher thrashed in the forest a few feet beyond us as we lay on the ground, flattened in the snow and lying still as stones. I was spread-eagle, my cloak stretched over me and my body sunk into the freezing wet. I trembled as the monster searched the underbrush.

Splinters of red light skittered across the ice and danced on Adam’s face. He was very still. His breath streamed up from his mouth in a wisp of white.

The Watcher snarled, and the guttural sound rattled me to my bones. I squeezed my eyes shut as he drew closer. Claws scraped rocks as the creature’s hot breath filled the air with steam. Something fell beside my hand with a plunk, but I was afraid to look.

And then, with a hiss of wind and a scrape of tree branches, the Watcher was gone.

We stayed motionless, listening. I counted my breaths and listened to the wind. Finally, Adam let out a shaky breath and sat up, his sharp eyes scanning the shadows.

“I think it’s gone. We’re safe now.”

I opened my eyes and looked around. Light stained the horizon, and the forest had shifted from black to a dull gray. I could see Adam’s face clearly now—his jaw flexed as he gazed at the churned snow where the Watcher had been. He turned to me, his gaze flicking over me gently as he checked my visible limbs for wounds. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

He nodded. He wasn’t going to coddle me—I knew that. I shut my eyes again, gathering my strength. When I opened them, Adam was offering me his hand.

“Come on,” he said.

I willed myself to take his hand and stand, even though my legs were still trembling and my whole body felt like wrung-out yarn.

We continued on through the Frost. There was no sign of the monster now, but unease hummed a song in my blood, and my movements were jerky, skittish. Adam’s gaze flicked over the ground, and he took a few more steps before crouching and brushing his fingers over a patch of frozen dirt, clearing away small stones and pine needles.

“Here,” he said, producing a set of blunt digging tools from his belt.

I joined him, and together we hacked at the crust of ice and earth. My back prickled with unease as I turned it toward the trees, but Adam was a bastion of calm. His dark hair brushed the tops of his eyebrows and hid his expression, but I could see that his shoulders were relaxed. My stomach gnawed with worry as I hacked at the dirt and wished for a shovel.

When the hole had grown sufficiently deep, Adam produced the items he’d been carrying beneath his cloak: a knitted net covered in snow blossoms that Ivy and I had worked on for weeks, a few extra cloaks, and a tin of dried meat. It was an emergency package for someone traveling through the Frost at night, someone seeking the gate or shelter from Watchers. He wrapped it all in oilcloth and lowered the bundle into the hole, and we scooped the dirt back over the place and patted it down before kicking the snow back into place. Adam made a mark—a long curved line with a shorter one branching off the side, like a misshapen Y—in the bark of the tree.

The mark of the Thorns.

Only a few weeks had passed since we’d completed our last mission. Now, we’d been burying such packs for weeks in an effort to prepare for the renewal of the Thorns duties my parents had performed when they had been alive, duties that had gotten them killed.

“How will someone see that in the darkness?” I whispered, running my fingers over the mark.

“It’s not just the tree,” he said. “You’ll learn to memorize the landscape as well.” He turned and gestured at the trees around us. “See how they clump together in thickets here? There’s a stream over there past the rocks and a clearing beyond it. And that rock looks almost like a man. See the neck, the head?”

I studied the place where he pointed, trying to commit the details to my memory. These night excursions were part of my training. Adam had begun to train me more thoroughly as a Thorns agent, teaching me what I’d need to know to survive in the forest or conduct spy work in the village. My life could depend on these lessons.

We continued on, slipping through the trees that were just amorphous shapes in the near-darkness. The snow crunched beneath my boots, and I could smell earth and pine and the cool wet scent of ice. We broke through the forest into a clearing. A field. Across the huddled, snow-covered stalks of grass, I saw the black waters of the river, and beyond it, the road.

The Farther road.

It was too dark to make out the wagon tracks that crisscrossed the frozen dirt like scars on a mangled cheek, but I knew they were there because the sight of them was branded in my memory forever. Soldiers carted prisoners along this road all year long. From one such wagon, Gabe had escaped across the river and into the Frost. The wind blew against my cheeks, teasing water from my eyes.