Snow Like Ashes(69)

She drops a half-empty bowl of stew on the ground, forgotten in the way she stares at me. “You’re here,” she breathes like she’s just as shocked as I am. Like this is some dream come to life, and she’s afraid if she doesn’t say it, I’ll vanish.

The two men sit behind her, their eyes on me, a dull flicker of interest hiding behind their wounds as they sip at their own bowls of stew. They’re more wary of me than the girl is, but the weight of their lives sits even heavier on them.

I exhale, inhale, still unable to believe the girl touching me is real. They’re all real, and here, and alive. Seeing them from a distance was hard to accept, but this is impossible.

The girl says nothing else. She sits next to me, our hips touching, and curls her arm around my shoulders. She’s so thin that I’m afraid I’ll break her if I touch her at all. But we just sit in silence, the men staring through the bars, the girl holding me or me holding her.

As sunlight fades over the work camp, a small voice resonates from the back of my mind, something that makes the horrors not quite so overwhelming:

You will understand how to use all this when you are ready.

It really was Hannah, talking to me. And if she thought it was important to tell me about the past, to try to help me figure out something, then maybe there’s still a way to win this.

The girl shifts. She’s asleep now, her head on my shoulder and her breathing slow. I lean my head onto hers and close my eyes.

Sir and Mather and Theron might be lost, but the Winterians aren’t. And as long as they live, I’m not entirely alone.





CHAPTER 22

THAT NIGHT, SLIPPERY, fleeting dreams suck me down like a hungry wave. Dizzy and disorienting, soulless eyes and faces from my past, and darkness, always darkness. From that blackness come monsters, clawing fingers and bloody teeth lunging for my throat—

I fly awake, every nerve tight. But there are no monsters here. At least, not in this cage.

My panic fades a little at the sight of the three people staring at me. The two men, both at least ten years older than me, and the girl. Her blue eyes gleam, set in a sunken, pale face, and she studies me like she can see my whole life story written across my forehead.

“I’m Nessa,” she says, and points over her shoulder. “Conall and Garrigan, my brothers.”

Garrigan nods but Conall keeps his eyes level with mine. His expression is a vibrant contrast to Nessa’s—she is open and willing, he is closed and decided. Decided, from the look of it, that I am just as much a danger as the Spring soldiers moving around our cage.

It’s morning.

I jump up, back scraping along the rough wall. Will Angra send for me? Will he let Herod torture me into submission, until everything about the past sixteen years comes tumbling out of my mouth? My chest fills with lead-hot pressure, pinching off air.

“I’m Meira,” I manage around a tongue that feels more sand than anything, my eyes darting between Nessa and the door, waiting for soldiers to burst inside and drag me out.

“If they were going to take you so soon, they never would have brought you here to begin with,” Garrigan offers. He holds some of Conall’s distrust, but his face softens, offering me the smallest bit of kindness.

“How can you know that?” Conall snaps, watching the door.

“The same way I do,” Nessa declares proudly, taking my hand. “She’s here for a reason.”

Conall turns a glare to me, like I’m the one who made her say that. I don’t have the strength to pull away from her hand, though, needing her small bit of comfort, and I just stare at him until he swings his gaze back to the door.

“Where did you come from?” Nessa asks, the question popping out of her mouth like she’s been holding it in since I got here. “Winter? No, of course not—they say no one lives there anymore. One of the other Seasons?”

“I was in Cordell before I came here,” I say. Conall’s glare makes me feel guilty for talking to her, like any word I say will only strengthen her slowly growing hope. Nessa still looks at me with a hint of caution, but the brightness in her eyes is . . . beautiful. It’s hard not to want to make her happy, and just that word lights up her whole face.

“Cordell,” she echoes, and releases my hand to face Garrigan. “That’s a Rhythm, right?”

Garrigan’s mouth twitches in a smile, cracking his face like he doesn’t do it often. “Our Nessa’s going to be a world traveler one day,” he says, and I can’t miss the pride that swells in him. Pride in his little sister, in her ability to still dream beyond these bars.

“Or a seamstress,” she amends, her face flushing red. Whatever blip of happiness she managed to hold on to vanishes, and she looks at me with a sad shrug. “Like our mother.”

“Quiet,” Conall growls, a bite of warning as keys rattle in our door.

I pin my body to the back wall. No matter how Nessa and Garrigan tried to reassure me, or how uncaring I was last night at the thought of Angra coming for me, dread still churns in my stomach, a flicker of survival that’s impossible to snuff out entirely. They can’t take me. Not until I figure out . . . something. Some way to escape a long, slow death at Angra’s hands, a way to help the others around me escape the same fate.

The door swings open. Conall and Garrigan march into the sun and Nessa grabs my arm. “Don’t worry,” she whispers, and guides me forward. “It’ll be all right. It’ll be—”