Mather watched over Winter. He saved them, like he always has—his own goal that has fueled him for as long as I’ve known him.
If we live through this, I’ll have to find time to thoroughly think over how much of an idiot I was. For now, I hold the emotion from our embrace on the rooftop like a light at the end of a long and bloody mine shaft. Another goal to aim for.
Mather doesn’t know what state Winter is in now, though. Whether or not Sir escaped; who even survived at all. My stomach cramps when I think of Henn, riding blind into a takeover—but he’s just as capable as Sir. If anything, his presence there will help.
But the one detail that slammed through all others was the last one Mather said. His lips trembled but his face remained a stoic, impassive shield as he muttered,Alysson’s dead.
The memory of his words makes me stumble now, but I kick myself faster. I should have known Noam would betray us. I should have known all this would happen—Ididknow all this would happen, felt it every moment of every day since Winter was freed, but I could never bear to face this. To tell my people what could come, what Angra could do to the world.
I underestimated them, I know that now. Some of them may have broken, but the ones behind me, as well as Garrigan, Conall, Nessa, Dendera—their lives have not beaten them down, but helped them grow into people who know how to survive.
Those people are the deadliest of all.
I stop on a rooftop a few streets from the palace to let the rest catch up. They may be fast and determined, but adrenaline courses through me in unstoppable waves, and I crouch on the roof, fingers prying at the curved clay tiles.
The king of Summer is dead. The Ventrallan queen is consumed by Angra’s Decay and planning a coup. The Cordellan king betrayed and overtook Winter.
And somewhere, out in the world, Angra is alive.
Everything is falling apart. My attempts to find the keys and keep the chasm closed to prevent the spread of the Decay—it was all for nothing.
Maybe Angra did win.
I force myself to stand. Angra won’t win until there is no one left to fight him, untilIam dead.
I choke on the words.
No.I won’t have to die. I am the queen of Winter; I am a conduit. And more than that, I am the girl who destroyed Angra’s camps. I am the girl who, even when things seemed at their worst, managed to save everyone—including herself.
So when Mather and his Thaw catch up to me, when I’m surrounded by the start of what I know Winter canbe—strong and brave and competent and deadly—I give them a firm, decisive nod.
I will stop this. No—wewill stop this, because I’m not alone anymore.
I never was.
Carriages full of guests arriving for the celebration in our honor clog the courtyard of Donati Palace. Seeing the palace’s walls glowing under the evening sun, guests in their extravagant, glittering Ventrallan outfits, footmen leading couples up the wide marble steps, I stifle a moan. The celebration. Everything going on as usual—proof that no one else knows what has transpired. Maybe Raelyn didn’t come back—maybe she fled, ran off to regroup elsewhere. Maybe I’ll have time to warn everyone.
But even as those words echo through my heart, I feel their weightlessness. Nothing is ever that easy.
I march up the courtyard, past the arriving guests, past the slack-jawed footmen who blink at my tattered pants and the arrow wound on my arm and my retinue of battered Winterians. A few servants rush toward me, try to stop me from bursting inside, and I silence them with a stern glare and a flash of my locket. They know what this is, and they know the only person who would ever wear it, even if that person has a chakram strapped to her back.
Once inside, I follow the flow of guests to the ballroom, meandering through tall, white halls with gilded mirrors. Icatch glimpses of myself in those mirrors, forgotten flashes of a girl with a ragged braid of white hair, her hands in fists, her face set with a scowl. My body hums, the tense moments of peace before a wall of snow collapses in an avalanche, so I keep my mind on only the next step ahead, afraid if I think more than that, I’ll dissolve.
Walk faster. Turn here. Chakram? No, no weapon yet. Slow down. Wait for Mather to catch up.
The ballroom appears on our right, a series of doors thrown open into the hall that let airy string music drift out on waves of laughter and clinking glasses. I stop, staring into the teardrop-shaped room, my heartbeat an alive and determined creature trying to claw its way out of my throat. The ballroom’s walls are pale peach, the floor a swirl of gold-and-white marble. Windows make up one of the swooping, concave walls of the ballroom, showing the fading light of evening and the glass garden beyond. Ceridwen told me about the garden on our way up from Yakim, how every plant is formed from glass—another example of the ways this kingdom tries to make things unnaturally perfect.
Thoughts of Ceridwen swarm me and I dig my fingers into my stomach. I’ll find her after this. I’ll save her like I should have the moment Raelyn marched into the square.
My eyes dart from the windows to the crowd. There are at least two dozen people here, mostly Ventrallans with their dark hair and hazel eyes, all wearing those maddeningmasks. They make scanning for a familiar face impossible, and I survey each person for a recognizable attribute—Cordellan blond hair, or the Ventrallan conduit hanging at a man’s hip.
Arms clamp around my neck and fear flares through me before I recognize Nessa’s voice.
“Where have you been?” she mutters. “Conall came back, and we thought—we thought something happened, and—”
I pull her off me as her brothers slip out of the crowd, their faces conflicting mixes of worry and anger. Dendera follows them, and she isn’t at all conflicted about how she feels—she flies in front of me, her lips in a tight line, her fingers digging into my arm.
“Why in the name of all that is cold did you send Conall back without you?” She stops, her focus drifting to Mather and the other Winterians around me. When she pivots back to me, her eyes open wider, her worry giving way to concern.
