Snow Like Ashes (Snow Like Ashes, #1)(97)

The permanent healing starts the moment we see Jannuari.

Winter’s capital sits just inside the border, a few hours’ ride from Spring. The vibrant cherry trees and emerald grass of Spring fade to Winter’s fields of white perfection, unbroken rolling hills of snow and frozen clusters of icy, ivory trees. The change is instant, sweeping over me in a rush of . . . right. This is right. The chill, the frozen forests, the way everything is white—the sky, the ground, the air. This is home.

But it’s Jannuari we all wait for with breathless excitement. Jannuari, our lost capital, a city I’ve only ever seen in crafted memories. The deeper we plunge into Winter, the more my chest tightens, until I fear I’ll turn solid from anticipation long before we reach our destination.

The other Winterians see Jannuari first, the hazy outline of a city in the distance. They alert me with a cry of excitement and burst free from the ranks of Cordell’s army with renewed vigor. Hundreds of feet pound in sudden delight over the empty fields, the vibrations shaking the whole world to bits.

Jannuari sits ahead of me under a snowless gray sky. Towns lie around the main bulk of the city, its wall shattered, rocks torn into a lumpy, uneven perimeter on the horizon. Within it a few towers still stand, their determined fingers reaching up to the sky like nothing’s wrong, like they have been just waiting for us to come back.

You didn’t kill us, Angra, and we will rise again.

I gallop alongside the other Winterians but pull my horse to a stop, a great war beast borrowed from Cordell’s army. The Winterians continue running, too caught in their exuberance to notice I’ve stopped. My horse dances nervously on the old snow caked on the field, Winter’s pale grass popping through the thin layer of ice beneath his hooves.

Sir pulls up alongside me, both of us sending clouds of frosty breath into the air.

“It’ll need rebuilding. And we’ll need to barter more rations from Cordell,” he says.

A cold wind pushes through the white cotton shirt I borrowed from Theron. We’re already indebted to him and his father more than we could ever repay—and the thought that we’ll need even more makes my stomach pinch with dread. I know what Noam will want for all he’s given: access to the Klaryns, to Winter, in an attempt to find the chasm of magic. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t stopped Theron from providing us with supplies. Maybe that’s why he hasn’t returned to Cordell yet, why he’s let his army linger around us like guards standing watch over an investment.

Whatever his reason, we need him and what he offers, and until he tries to collect, I can’t worry about it. Too much.

“I know.”

“But it’ll be good for them.” Sir shifts on his saddle, one hand relaxing on the reins. “It’ll be good. Rebuild the city as they heal. They need this.”

I nod. We all need this. We need to fix something, work through it with our bare hands and feel the life flow back into our veins. To do something true and brilliant and right.

Sir looks sidelong at me, turned away enough that I can’t see his expression. “You’re just like her.”

I search his face. “Hannah?”

He nods. “Every moment of your life.”

Cold twinges through me. His way of telling me I can do this. I can bring our kingdom together again, lead them on to a better future.

Whatever that future holds, Angra resides there too.

I swallow, catching my lower lip between my teeth as I inhale the cold, cold air. We’ve been so busy with the happiness of freeing the other work camps, of traveling to Winter, that I haven’t wanted to ruin the joy. It’s so fragile, this joy, and a part of me doesn’t want to say anything, doesn’t want to draw attention to bad things until we need to.

But not telling Sir could make it worse when the time does come. If it comes. If my suspicions are right, if Angra isn’t dead and his threat not over and everything we fought for still only an illusion of true peace.

“I don’t think Angra died,” I whisper, a sad sound on the chill air. “And his magic . . . it’s worse than we thought. Much worse.”

Sir doesn’t say anything, and for a moment I think maybe my voice got sucked away on the wind. I look at him and he wears that same impenetrable expression he got when I returned from Lynia with the locket half. Scared and determined, like he’s staring down the future and doesn’t have room to fear the past.

I touch the locket at my neck. It’s whole now. Whole and empty, powerless, but touching it gives me a strange calm. Just like that lapis lazuli stone. Just like hope. The Winterians around me think the power is now safely back in the locket—they think all the times I used it were what Mather told me, a fluke. A desperate surge brought on by how far we had fallen. It doesn’t occur to them that the magic could be anywhere else now, and I’m not sure I want to correct them.

Not just them, though—Cordell too. Noam especially.

“One thing at a time,” Sir says. His eyes meet mine, showing me how tired he is, how scared. “We’ll handle the future one thing at a time.”

I start to nod when horses gallop through the crowd of still-running Winterians and canter to a halt beside us. Theron and Noam shiver in their saddles, eyes darting between Jannuari, Sir, and me. Noam at least tries to look dignified in his coldness while Theron wraps his arms around himself and lets his teeth clack together like hooves on the plain. Mather pulls his horse between mine and Theron’s, an eyebrow lifted as he assesses our nearly frozen foreign guests.