Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(22)

Isbe’s admonishing, joking voice comes to her now. Go after her, then.

She does.

But evening has given way to night. The woods are thick with tangled branches, and though the pine needles above seem to soften the rain, the air is damp and heavy. Her heartbeat stutters. She can’t find her way.

“Wren?” Her voice thins in the fog, and she wonders if anyone can hear it. Every time Wren leaves her side, she remembers just how precious her voice is.

Perhaps it isn’t fair that she associates Wren now with the incredible feeling of having her voice and sense of touch back—the freedom and elation of it—but it’s the truth. And because of that, there are things she longs to tell Wren, things she has never told anyone. How sometimes the chance brush of Wren’s fingers along her arm sends a thrill through her that shocks her—different, and perhaps better, than how she felt when Heath touched her. How sometimes she senses a sadness in Wren’s eyes that makes her own heart ache and thump. How she wants to be let in, wants more than just her trust. She wants to be heard. To be touched.

To be understood.

Maybe, even, to be loved.

Somewhere along the way, she has stopped wanting Heath’s love with the same fierceness she’d once felt. Could it be she’s started wanting Wren’s instead? The idea of it is uncanny, unexpected, effortless. And unlike anything she’s ever read in one of her storybooks.

“Wren?” she calls out again, breaking into a run.

Aurora searches deeper into the woods than she meant to go. She is lost; she can see that now. It is too late, too dark, too cold, and she is too alone. Leaves hiss in the wind. The earth, sodden and spongy, seems to want to swallow her. Seems to throb, as though it’s alive. In fact, she could swear the ground beneath her has a heartbeat of its own, a quiet, rhythmic boom. She can’t really feel it, of course, and yet she can sense it, perhaps even hear it.

She stops running and takes a breath, trying to gather her focus. A line of white mist snakes before her like a path, and the ground beneath it hums and pulses. Either she’s hallucinating, or there is something beneath the mist, something forming it, she realizes. Is the earth warmer there? She bends down on her hands and knees, trying to feel the strange heartbeat of the moss and dirt. She doesn’t understand it.

But she follows it.

Soon she has made her way to an impassible stretch of vertical rock. At its base is a pile of mossy stones and boulders, and between these, a thick steam emanates from the cracks. Fixated, curious, Aurora throws her weight into one of the stones, trying to push it aside. Though she’s not strong enough to roll it out of the way, she manages to nudge it slightly, and she gasps. A faint gleam of light comes through the crack, and a tiny burst of heat hisses out. There is a hole—a path to someplace else. Something underground.

She puts her face to the stones, peering between them, then jolts back again. Movement. Shadows and light. She presses her face to the crack again, and now she can definitely see movement, and in fact can hear a banging, puffing sound. The heartbeat she’d heard before, but it had been muffled by the undergrowth.

Now she’s surer than ever that something is going on beneath the ground. And these stones are blocking an entrance.

Terrified, she turns around, attempting to find her way back to the camp.

And that’s when she remembers.

It’s something she’d read long ago in her faerie histories, but hadn’t thought much about at the time, as it was mostly rumor—a theory about how Malfleur was able to miraculously transform the once practically barren territories into a fertile place for crops. Underground furnaces. She wonders now if that theory is true. These might need to be lit and traversed for maintenance.

And then another thing occurs to her: if there are heat tunnels throughout the kingdom, creating pathways of steam to warm the soil, perhaps some of them are connected. And perhaps they are not only connected to one another, but connected to the castle—because surely the castle and its grounds would be heated.

Aurora suddenly knows exactly how Malfleur has been getting around the territories without ever appearing to leave Blackthorn.

The underground tunnels.

And if there’s an alternate way out of the castle . . . then there’s also a way in.





10


Isabelle


“Together”—Isabelle tilts her chin up, letting her voice rise on the wind—“we are . . .”

The waiting crowd collectively inhales as she lifts the war hammer over her head, then slams it down before her. There’s a dull, thudding echo.

She lifts the velvet sack from the platform in front of her and pulls out the glass slipper—perfectly intact.

“Unbreakable.”

She holds up the shoe.

The spring wind rushes around her, fluttering her cloak.

Gasps. Murmurs. A wild cheer rippling outward.

A smile pulls across Isbe’s face; triumph fills her chest. She is standing on a stage, but even without it she feels taller than ever, visible in a way she hasn’t felt before—like a beacon. She never knew what that word meant . . . “beacon.” And now she has become one.

Based on the volume of the crowd’s cheers today, she guesses they’ll have a hearty list of names to add to their growing ranks, and she’s relieved. Already, in just two short weeks, Isbe has registered nearly a full battalion’s worth of soldiers for the Delucian army, with just her speeches. But it hasn’t been easy.