Winter Glass (Spindle Fire #2)(59)

He came to her cage. “Did you write this?” he said. It was perhaps the first question he had ever asked the girl. She seemed to see him, to know him, and this knowing was suddenly like a blade tearing through all of his heavy armor, shredding through the fabric of his existence. He shook, rooted to the floor, and in that moment of weakness, she lunged toward the bars, one of her thin, pale arms flying between them like a flash of lightning, and she had his cape in her grip before he knew what had happened.

Vulture was big, and strong. A trained fighter. And so too was that other person, that stableboy he had once been. But the man who didn’t know what he was, the man caught between the two, was just that: caught.

She pulled him close, yanking hard at the chain around his neck and easily ripping the key from the metal with a little sizzle that suggested she’d used both strength and magic.

She was so fast, and he was too confused. He tried to stop her, but she easily moved to the cage door and unlocked it from the inside, freeing herself. As he moved to prevent her escape, she tackled him, sending him sprawling on his back on the floor.

His vision cleared. She was straddling him, her small but wiry, powerful hands around his neck.

He could fight her off. He started to, but froze again, realizing the quandary he was in: he could not kill the queen’s pet, or he himself would be killed. But her magic had reached its heights, and she was desperate—he sensed he would not escape alive if he let her live. Which would it be? Die without a fight, or die a slave?

He didn’t have to choose. He felt her cool hands release their pressure from his neck and slide up, slowly . . . up toward his ears . . . and then, in a startling blur, she had yanked Vulture’s mask off his head.

He lay there on his back, helpless, exposed as though in a glare of blinding light.

He rolled to his side and heaved, a tangle of his red, unkempt hair falling down around his eyes.

She let him recover for a moment, and he swiped the back of his mouth, rubbed his eyes, squinted, turned back to her.

There it was again, that look of profound knowing. Her eyes said, I see you. Her eyes said, Gilbert. Her eyes said, We must hurry.

And so they did. Numbly but with urgency, he led her through the tunnels of Blackthorn, secured them two steeds, and through the starlit night they flew down the side of Mount Briar, and he . . . Vulture . . . Gilbert . . . whoever he was, had the strangest impression that they were the only two people alive at that moment in all the world, the first two people to ever exist, and they were forming the world beneath them as their chargers’ hooves met the earth—coloring it in and giving it shape as the sun, eventually, began to rise.

Now, as they race across gray mornings, the domed cupolas of the Delucian palace rising up through the mist to greet them, more and more memories begin to flood him. The tasseled pillows. The trellis outside the window.

Isabelle, her hair in a tangled knot behind her head, laughing, twisting her mouth up in frustration, reaching out to touch his shoulders, his face. . . .

And that’s how it starts. It’s not Gilbert, the former stableboy, who comes back to him first, but Isbe. It is only through remembering her that he begins to remember himself.





PART


V


NO HEART CAN BE BRAVER





26


Aurora


“Women and children, into the keep!” Maximilien’s shout swirls up into the wind and disappears into the chaos of the inner bailey.

Aurora has not seen the castle this alive since before the sleeping sickness killed off so many. Carts of food and supplies crisscross the green, mothers hold screaming babies to their chests, and boys are separated from their families, conscripted to fight. Aurora watches as one boy who can be no more than eleven or twelve reaches up to accept a set of armor twice his size from a grizzled old soldier who could be his grandfather.

Aurora has known that LaMorte and Deluce have been at war for some time, but she hasn’t really seen it, hasn’t been forced to understand it in literal terms. She has never actually witnessed a battle in all her life, despite having read about the great romantic heroes who’ve fought in them. Now, the anticipation in the air is palpable, even to one who cannot feel.

A tremor of guilt rattles her chest as she moves through the crowd, looking for Prince William. He had told her to stay in her tower room, but he needs to let her fight. She can’t sit idly by—especially not when the imminence of battle is most likely her fault. Since separating herself from Blackthorn, she has tried to shake off the cloak of magic Malfleur gave her, but it is not gone entirely. She senses she may never be entirely free of it.

If she has power she never had before, she must use it.

And this isn’t just an attack. This is vengeance. Shortly after she and Gilbert fled Blackthorn, Malfleur’s forces began to march, trailing them like a dark tide. Now Aurora has brought the danger back to Deluce’s palace, and everyone must prepare for siege.

Someone grabs her arm. She swings around, hoping to come face-to-face with Isbe, who has been missing from the palace for some time. According to William, she has gone north to try and secure support from the Ice King. But it’s not her sister. It’s one of the soldiers, his thick beard crusted with spit and sweat.

“Inta the keep for ya. You ’eard the general!”

Aurora cries out—or tries to, silently. She yanks her arm out of the man’s grip and runs, shoving into several other people.