Snow Like Ashes(6)

But he’s not just Mather—he is Winter. He will always be Winter first and foremost, and there is a palace in his future, not a cottage.

So I help him over to the fire and hurry to pack what I’ll need for the trip, moving and doing in silence because silence is infinitely easier than talking. And now, finally, I’m moving and doing what I’ve always wanted—helping my kingdom.





CHAPTER 3

WHEN I WAS eight, we moved our camp once again to make it harder for Angra to track us—this time, to Autumn. Until then, my life had been no bigger than the perimeters of our sad little camps in the Eldridge Forest. We passed through Autumn’s capital, Oktuber, on our way to their southern forests, filling our carts and loading our horses with supplies.

Autumn was as similar to the foliage-heavy Eldridge as a snowflake is to a flame. The dense humidity of the Eldridge was nonexistent in Autumn’s dry coolness, its yellow-and-red forests sleepy and crunchy and colored with warmth. Oktuber was a maze of rickety barns and tents in maroon, azure, and sunshine orange, with the crystalline blue sky gleaming above, a sharp and beautiful contrast to the kingdom’s earth tones. But it was the Autumnians themselves who left me gaping—they were beautiful.

Their hair hung in tendrils as dark as the night sky, swaying in the dust kicked up from the roads that wove through Autumn’s tent cities. Their skin glistened the same coppery brown as the leaves on some of their trees, only where the leaves were crinkled and dry, the Autumnians’ faces were perfectly creamy.

I touched my own skin, as pale as the clouds drifting over us, and ran my fingers across the cap covering my blindingly white hair. My entire life, I had been surrounded only by the other Winterian escapees. It had never occurred to me that anyone might look different, but as I gazed at black eyes set in lush brown skin, I wished for my skin to be that pretty shade, and for my blue eyes to be a dark mystery too.

I told my wish to Alysson, who was tasked with keeping Mather and me out of trouble while everyone else gathered supplies. Her brow pinched in the wake of my admission. “The world is full of lovely people, Meira. I bet somewhere there is an Autumnian girl wanting to have skin the color of snow just as you want skin the color of earth.”

My gaze flicked around, but I didn’t see anyone watching us, at least not with the same yearning with which I watched them. I tugged at my cap. “Then why do we have to hide our hair?”

Alysson’s hand went to her own hair, wrapped up in a blue length of fabric. In retrospect, hiding our white hair didn’t do much to keep people from realizing who we were—if anything, it only made them look at us twice, noting first our hats or fabric-wrapped heads, then our pale skin and blue eyes and how wholly out of place we were. But Sir never backed down in his insistence that we needed to at least try to disguise ourselves, lest Angra get word of our location.

After a deep inhale, Alysson touched my cheek, her fingers cool. “You won’t have to hide forever, sweetheart. Someday our features will blend in, not stand out.”

I doubt she meant blending into Spring.

I shove my hands into the pockets beneath my heavy black cloak, the dense wool swaying around the weapons strapped to my back and legs. The cloak’s hood covers my head, hiding me in shadows as I stroll casually down the dirt road, the darkness of midnight falling on me from the half-moon sky. Every few seconds I peek up through the hood, noting the walls of Lynia just ahead, the gate at the end of this road flanked by flickering torches and a handful of Spring guards.

A shiver runs down my spine, but I keep my posture tall and confident, adding a cocky sway to my step the closer I get to Lynia’s north gate. The Feni River gurgles off to my left, marking the northern border of Spring before it flows out to the Destas Sea. A bridge connects to the gate up ahead, linking Lynia to the Rania Plains over the river in a wide swoop of stone and wood. My eyes dart over it, to the darkened field beyond, before swinging back ahead. An escape route to keep in mind.

The Kingdom of Spring stretches to my right, drastically different from the barren, grassy prairie lands of the Rania Plains. In the daytime, rolling hills of lush greenery cascade all around, forests of blossoming cherry trees, fields of wildflowers in a rainbow of colors. In the nighttime, Spring looks far more like what it really is—cloaked in shadows, everything drenched in black.

It didn’t take long to travel to Lynia, what with the breakneck pace Finn demanded. A little more than two days after we set out, we reached the port city. We hid our horses in an abandoned barn and waited until night, then split up to approach Lynia from the north and the south. Getting into Lynia is the easy part—getting out will be the fun part.

One other traveler strides down the road in front of me, a man slumped on his horse. He reaches the guards first, mumbles something about finding work at Lynia’s docks the next day, and after a few moments of quiet muttering, they let him pass unmolested. I swallow. Based on the recon work Finn and I did, the patrol in Lynia has been increased along the wall and gates, making it impossible to sneak in unnoticed. But it is possible to pass as a Spring citizen, and waltz into Lynia with the guards’ blessing. I keep my pace steady as I approach.

“Halt,” one guard orders, flinging out a hand to block my way.

I step back, careful to keep my face out of the direct light of the sconces on my right and left. “On my way to the Dancing Flower Inn,” I recite, the cover Finn and I came up with. My voice rumbles out low and deep to make myself as gender-neutral as possible. “Meeting a man for work.”