Snow Like Ashes(37)

Sir stares at me for a moment, quiet, the rush of fight gone. His eyes are wet, hair frayed, body slowly caving in like he’s been beaten against the rocks one too many times. He was our rock, though.

I pull my hands through my hair, a moan escaping my lips. Something deep and hidden, urged on by the child in me who cries whenever Sir’s upset. “What happened, William?”

He hugged me, once. When I was six, still small enough to sleep in the tent he shared with Alysson, I woke up one night screaming. Drenched in sweat, crying so hard and loud my body ached for days. Sir was instantly at my side, alert and looking for an enemy.

“I saw them,” I whimpered.

“Who?” He was so concerned, his brow pinched, his eyes wide. Like he expected a Spring soldier to leap out of the shadows.

“My—” I couldn’t say it. Mother. Father. I didn’t even see them in my dream—I saw who I thought they were, who my mind created. Two loving people who were slaughtered in the street, their baby tumbling from their arms before Sir scooped me up.

In my dream, though, they were burning. Screaming at me from a building engulfed in flames while Angra stood outside, a monster of a man holding a staff. His conduit. Orange-and-red fire danced up and down the ebony surface of the staff and across the ground, feeding the inferno of the building. I stood behind him, screaming for him to stop.

Angra turned to me. “Not until you’re all dead.”

When I told Sir my dream, he stayed quiet for a long while, his face a war of emotions. Fear and regret and something deep—guilt, maybe. Or blame? But it flickered off his face and he wrapped his arms around me, nestled me against his chest, and let me lean into him.

“It’s not your fault,” he whispered. “Meira, it’s not your fault.”

Sixteen years, and that’s all I’ve gotten from him—one hug in a moment of weakness. When I lower my arms, Sir’s staring southward, like if he focuses hard enough, he can actually see Winter.

“I came here. Fourteen years ago,” he whispers.

I don’t move.

“Two years after the attack. Took me that long to beat down my pride. Cordell had been one of the kingdoms we called for aid when Spring finally got too strong, but they didn’t come. No one did, Rhythm or Season.”

Sir straightens and presses his hands to his eyes, shakes away some emotion. “When I got here, I pleaded with Noam from every possible angle. We needed anything he could give, and he had everything. But . . .” Sir pauses, chin falling to his chest as he goes deeper and deeper into memory. “Noam hasn’t changed in fourteen years, and he wanted the same thing then that he does now. The same thing all the Rhythms want—access to our kingdom, to our mountains. A legal and binding connection to the possibility of more magic.”

I nod. I didn’t know that Sir had been here before. It makes sense—his hatred of Noam, his passionate anger toward Cordell. I keep my lips pinched together. He’s never talked to me so openly before.

“There was nothing left, though. No Winterian royal court to barter with, beyond Mather, and Noam didn’t have any daughters, not even a niece. So he proposed an alliance between you and Theron, under the condition that once our kingdom was restored, you would be given a title and standing in the new Winter, something worthy of a future Cordellan queen.” Sir sighs. “But you were so young. So small. And I couldn’t—I had no right to promise you off like that. You weren’t even mine. Who was I to make a marriage arrangement for you?”

A lump forms in my throat. I swallow but it doesn’t budge.

“But that was fourteen years ago. Fourteen years and we’re still no closer to anything. Yes, we have half of the locket, but we can’t get the other half without killing Angra himself, and we’ll never get close enough to do that without support. We need help. Until its heir comes of age, Autumn is too weak and Summer would rather watch us die than make the effort. No other Rhythm has deigned to negotiate with us. So even though Noam’s a Rhythm, even though I know he’s using us—” Sir pauses, voice catching. “We have no options other than to trust that he will actually help. When Angra’s scout escaped our camp, I took Mather aside and told him what would happen. That Dendera would take him to Bithai, and he would meet with Noam, and he would tell him we accept.”

I drop onto the railing, the tower spinning.

“Don’t blame Mather; he was following my orders. And now you are going to follow them too.” Sir’s voice rises from the peaceful lull of storytelling to his abrupt bark. “You are going to do this, Meira. You are going to do what we need you to do.”

I shake my head, but Sir just repeats it: You are going to do what we need you to do. Not what I want to do, not what I can do. What they need me to do. For Winter.

I almost laugh at the irony. After all, I wanted to be needed, didn’t I? But my laugh dies. No—I wanted to matter because of who I am and what I can do, not just because I’m a Winterian female, and our new ally had a suitable Cordellan male to pair with me. I wanted to belong to Winter, to earn my belonging.

My eyes gradually drift from the floor of the tower to Sir’s face. He’s regained some of his in-control attitude and doesn’t look quite so broken now.

“Was Hannah sorry?” I whisper. “Before Angra attacked, was she upset about something she did?”