Snow Like Ashes(47)

Rose’s lips twitch. Her eyes narrow, a tight sweep of a glare, before she drops back to work tying the dark-blue ribbon around my waist.

I can’t hide my smile. One small victory.

The next week flies past in a whirl of Cordellan history and curtsying properly and learning which fork to use while eating salad. I clearly surprise Rose and Mona by paying attention, and every time an instructor compliments me on answering a question correctly, they twitter excitedly from the back of the room. But I’ve always been a good student—in camp, it was only when I saw Mather sparring without me that I started to get twitchy and disruptive, and Sir would throw his hands in the air and shout at me until I broke down in tears. Now, though, I really am trying to be good at this whole future-queen thing.

If only because, every morning, I find a way to be me.

In the earliest cracks of dawn, when the sun is still fighting a black–blue war with the night sky, I slip on my clothes—my real clothes, a shirt and pants and boots—and scurry through the still-sleeping palace to the library, where I stashed Magic of Primoria. This coupled with my chaotic schedule of classes and meals in my room means I haven’t seen any of the other refugees since Mather and Theron’s disastrous sparring session. Certainly not for lack of trying on their part—I dart down side halls when I see Dendera coming, scale walls when I hear Finn’s voice around the corner. I have no desire to face anyone until I can present a revelation. Until I can prove that I can still be useful in this position as me.

Part of me wants to sneak out to the shooting range each morning instead of creeping to the library. I haven’t used my chakram since I started queen training, and even though I take it with me to every lesson, it’s starting to feel too much like a prop. But the other part of me, the part that’s resigned to this arrangement, knows how important it is that I try to read Magic of Primoria.

Emphasis on the word try.

Every line on every page of the almost-disintegrating-in-my-hands book is filled with the tiniest of tiny words written in cramped, illegible script. The letters bleed into one another from age and from the fact that the writer pushed the lines so close together that the text looks like one big blob of ink. As if that wasn’t enough, the lines I actually can decipher are beyond unhelpful, either filled with archaic language or riddles, but mostly just history I already know. How the chasm of magic has rested beneath all the Season Kingdoms for as long as anyone can remember, a source of mystery and magic that has existed as long as our world itself. The chasm sits deep, deep beneath our land, so even if a Rhythm did conquer a Season Kingdom and chose to dig through it in an attempt to get the magic, they’d be digging for decades.

There used to be an entrance to the chasm through the Klaryns, a shaft that was opened one day when miners stumbled into it. No one knows where the mine actually was—shortly after it was discovered, it was lost to landslides or deadly weather. But I like to think it was in Winter’s part of the Klaryns—after all, what other Season Kingdom is as good at mining as we are? Then again, we haven’t been able to find another entrance to the magic chasm since the first one vanished, so maybe we aren’t that good.

When the entrance was open, thousands of years ago, an expedition was sent to retrieve magic. According to legends and a few of the more legible lines in the book, the magic sat in the center of an endless cavern, a great ball of energy snapping and crackling as it hung in the negative space of the cave.

To be removed from the cave, the magic needed a host, an object imbued with its powers. The great ball of energy pulsed around the cavern, striking rocks here and there like uncontrollable, chaotic fingers of lightning. And the rocks it struck became infused with magic. So monarchs started leaving other objects close to the source, waiting for the bolts of magic to strike swords or shields or jewelry and fill them with power. They also tried more dangerous ways of creating conduits, of letting the magic strike their servants. This led to the discovery that only objects could be hosts for the magic—people didn’t turn into conduits so much as they turned into overcooked meat.

That was how the Royal Conduits were created. The monarchs of the world ordered their conduits made first, connecting them to their bloodlines through even more magic. But those ended up being the only conduits ever made, because just after the eight Royal Conduits were created, the entrance to the chasm disappeared and our world changed forever. Not only did we have magic now, but we had prejudice too—the Rhythms hated us for losing something so vital. They might have hated the Seasons before anyway, for any number of reasons, but it’s the loss of the magic source that hangs with them to this day, even when no one can remember our lives being any different than they are now. There have always been the eight Royal Conduits, nothing more, nothing less.

That’s all I can decipher. And the more I stare at Magic of Primoria, the more my flicker of doubt grows into a full-on flame. What am I even looking for? I’ve had the same Hannah dream every night this week, the one where I see her surrounded by the refugees in the study. But I can’t figure out any connection between the dream and the things I do or don’t do—I even tried hiding the lapis lazuli ball and not touching it for a few days, but I still had the dream. So it isn’t magic? But what did I even want to find, anyway? Some long-lost source of magic that I could present to Sir, proving that I can matter to Winter in my own way in addition to linking us to Cordell?