BLISSFUL, WONDROUS COLD floods my veins, filling me from top to bottom. I cry out, so grateful for the sensation that for one frigid moment everything else disappears.
A face comes into my line of sight. It’s not Angra, not Herod—Ceridwen.
She grabs my shoulders. “Meira,” she calls to me, her voice distant. “Calm down!”
Blood roars in my ears, and my lungs squeeze like they’re getting trampled beneath a herd of horses, deflating and barely refilling only to deflate again. The coldness retracts, my vision unable to process what I see. Ceridwen, yes, but also—snow?
Flakes of puffy white drift through the air between us.
We’re in Summer—it shouldn’t . . . it doesn’t . . .
Ceridwen crouches, her face stricken. “What did you do?”
Her question comes jagged and harsh, and I just sit there, my hands in the mushy snow that gathers on the roof, my body shuddering with coldness and horror.
Snow. In Juli.
I made it snow in another kingdom.
Conduit magic is linked to each land like it is to each ruler—it affects only its designated kingdom or people. I shouldn’t have been able to call snow in Summer, but here I sit in piles of it, watching the flakes evaporate in the relentless heat.
“I—” I start, lifting a handful. “I don’t—”
“My queen?”
I shove to my feet and fly up the incline of the roof. Garrigan lifts his hand to catch me if I fall, steady where he stands on the crates below. Sweat and dirt streak his face and he looks over his shoulder at the yard. The stable hands have left, nothing but their empty wine bottles remaining in the flickering torchlight.
“They’re . . . gone,” I pant. “They didn’t see? Did you see—”
I motion to the snow, but it already looks like nothing more than a puddle on the roof.
Garrigan levels a masked look at me. “If they did see anything, I think they’re drunk enough that it will be forgotten. But, my queen”—he pauses, exhales, and just when I think I might unravel if I have to explain it to him, he sighs—“are you all right?”
Thank you. “Yes,” I say before I even know the answer. Am I?
I rub at my chest, prodding the magic gently. No, I’m not all right.
Ceridwen narrows her eyes at Garrigan before glancing back toward the palace. “I’m happy to see you didn’t last long at my brother’s party,” she notes, and shifts to her feet, hands on her hips. “Though what, exactly, were you doing?”
Her eyes drop to the puddle at our feet, but she doesn’t say anything more about it. Her silence feels like a challenge, daring me to bring it up, or maybe just logging the information for later use against me. Whatever her reason, I am in no mood.
I roll my shoulders back. “I was following you. You seem like the only sane person in this kingdom, and I wanted to find out if anyone in Summer is worthy of Winter’s friendship.”
Ask me about my magic. I dare you.
Ceridwen barks, her glare heavy. “And why would you pursue me instead of my brother? He is the ruler of this kingdom, the one with the power.”
She spits the last word, still not addressing my magic, at least not outright. I recoil. I am so done with politics, with saying things without saying anything. I’m tired, and dried sweat makes my body stiff, and all I want is to run back to Winter and bury myself in a pile of snow.
But wishing for such things brought potentially disastrous results just moments ago, so I shove the wish away.
“I need help,” I start, voice weak. “And not from your brother. Even though you’re not the conduit-wielder, you still help your kingdom—”
I jerk to a halt.
She helps her people, though she isn’t a conduit-wielder. She helps them without magic.
That’s what I want, a wish I didn’t even know I fostered—to rule Winter without needing magic at all. To be queen, to be myself, without having to depend on the unpredictable, frighteningly powerful magic that camps in my chest.
We spent so long fighting to get Winter’s magic back that I never considered whether that would be best for our kingdom—but now that I have it, now that I’ve seen what it can do . . .
I’d rather we were enough as we are, just people, nothing more.
Ceridwen’s eyes fall to the locket around my throat. When they leap back up to me, my body hardens, preparing for an attack.
“Even though I’m not a conduit-wielder?” she echoes, her attention falling to the street beyond the wall. Annoyed recognition flickers over her and I follow her gaze.
The slave Ceridwen left with darts out of the shadows of an alley. He nods once, holds up three fingers, and vanishes, all so fast that I would have missed it if Ceridwen’s attention hadn’t landed on him.
I turn back to her and squeak in surprise. She’s close to me now, nose to nose, and glares with those endless brown eyes.
“Fine, Winter queen—you want to know what I do? That man is arranging to help a Yakimian family of three escape. But you’ve noticed the lovely souvenir Summer gives their property? The branded S? It means they can’t return to their home—Yakim would send them right back here. The rest of their lives will be spent in a refugee camp away from civilization, and we can only help so many a month before Simon gets suspicious. Even then, he suspects me, but I have to keep helping because I’m not a conduit-wielder.”
My pulse rises into my ears. “But would you use magic, if you could?”
Ceridwen squints at me and opens her mouth like she’s certain of her response, but she pauses, jaw hard. “Why are you asking me this?”
I should’ve expected that. “I’m just trying to figure out where you stand, Princess. If you’re someone . . .” Who holds the same ideals as myself; who believes in the same freedoms; who would support my intention to keep the magic chasm closed.
“If you’re someone I can trust,” I finish.
“How do I know you’re someone I can trust?”
“Fair point.” I cross my arms. “You don’t.”
Her wonder intensifies, but it’s more curious, less affronted. She glances back at the now-empty street below. On a long, slow exhale, she rubs the skin between her eyes.
“My brother uses his conduit to make it sunny on cloudy days,” she whispers.
I hold, letting her have the silence. She uses it to look at me, showing her true exhaustion in the way her shoulders dip forward.
“Which is . . . beautiful. I guess. But he also uses it to prevent any unwanted pregnancies in his brothels—unwanted by him, mind you, not necessarily unwanted by the slaves. He gets to pick and choose such things, and I used to think I’d kill for that kind of power. But . . . no.” She shrugs, brow pinched. “I wouldn’t change who I am. I’m trying so hard to clean up my brother’s magic that I wouldn’t want to be magic myself. Fighting fire with fire. Which, trust me, doesn’t work.”
Ceridwen blinks, breaking out of her admission with a swift lurch toward me. “And so help me, if any word of this gets to Simon—”
“No!” I cut in. “I won’t. I . . .”
She doesn’t want magic. Of course, she says that now, when she doesn’t think such a thing would even be possible. But I need to trust her. I need help in this.
Noam’s fear plays in my head. If someone familiar with the Order of the Lustrate hears us mention its name, it won’t be difficult to piece together that we found the magic chasm. Not that I care about Noam’s reason for keeping it hidden—I have my own reasons to want the rest of the world to stay ignorant.
My goal is more aligned with Noam’s vision than Theron’s.
I’ve reached a whole new level of political revulsion.
“I’m searching for something,” I start. “Something that could prevent . . .” The end of the world. “. . . Cordell from growing powerful beyond control. I think it may be here, in Summer.”
“Summer has never had dealings with Cordell. Nothing of theirs would be here.”
“No, not something belonging to them—something they’re searching for too. It’s imperative that I find it first.”
The expression on Ceridwen’s face is pure bewilderment. Eyes narrow, lips parted.
I groan and tap my fist against my forehead, eyes closed. “I don’t even know what I’m searching for, honestly.”
A key? The Order itself? Anything, really, but I have no idea where to start.
“That’s the reason you came here?” Ceridwen guesses. “Not to ally with Summer.”
I peer up at her. “I can’t say the same for Cordell, but I’d rather stand naked in a sandstorm than ally with your brother.”
She laughs. “I’d help you if I could, Winter queen.” Her eyes shift to the puddles at our feet, but she stays quiet.
Yes, she’s definitely holding my use of magic as something to keep me in check should I betray her. Neither of us is comfortable with the other yet—but this conversation is a start.
I’ll take whatever I can get.
Garrigan brushes my elbow. “We should get inside, my queen.”
That pulls my attention to how empty the yard is. Garrigan reads my questioning look.
“Henn stayed at the palace in case you returned. Conall went to search the east yard.”
“You shouldn’t have split up—” I start, but the reprimand flops lifeless at my feet. I’m the one who ran out on my own.
The look Garrigan gives me is cockeyed and exasperated.
“I know,” I sigh. I move to the edge of the roof and drop to the crate beside him. We ease to the dusty ground, and the echoes of the distant parties give me enough of a break to relive the night in clarifying details.
I have no idea what effect my departure had on Simon. I could have been killed or worse if Ceridwen and Garrigan hadn’t found me. And when I panicked and lost control of my magic, I’m lucky I only made it snow. But how did I do that? It’s impossible—or should be. Each Royal Conduit can affect only its respective kingdom.
I need answers desperately. I need to find the Order of the Lustrate.
The guilt in my gut feels all too similar to the guilt that overtook me when I led Angra’s men back to our camp in the Rania Plains. After Sir didn’t want to send me on that mission, after I assured him and everyone that I could do it, I failed anyway, and we had to abandon our home yet again.
Someone could have been hurt by my recklessness tonight. That’s what recklessness does—it hurts the people I care about.
I thought I’d learned that by now.
But as Ceridwen joins us on the ground, I alleviate my regret with the knowledge that I have aid, should I need it. Should I figure out what I’m even searching for.
I wipe away the sweat from my forehead and start across the yard, angling back toward the door. Something clinks against my boot, and when I glance down, one of the stable hands’ empty wine bottles glistens in the nearby torchlight.
I frown and bend down to it. Finn had a few bottles of Summerian wine back when I was younger. I might have convinced Mather to help me steal one at some point. Tipsiness blurred most of the details after that, but I do remember the bottle: the glass a translucent maroon hue; the label peeling in tattered strips; grime caked so thick I had to scrub off a layer to get at the cork.
“They better enjoy that buzz,” Finn had grunted at Sir once Mather and I were discovered, nearly comatose yet giggling uncontrollably. “They just drank fifty years of aged Summerian tawny port.”
To be fair, we didn’t drink all of it—we only managed a few sips before the taste became unbearable. And Sir had seemed more angered by the fact that Finn had the wine at all than by our drunkenness, as he proceeded to smash the bottle to bits and growl at Finn for buying goods from such a corrupt kingdom.
“They just drank fifty years . . .”
An idea surges to life in my head.
“How long do you age wine?” I ask Ceridwen.
She sees the bottle at my feet and dismisses it. I’d imagine thousands of them litter Summer. “Depends on the wine. Why?”
“What’s the oldest bottle in Summer?”
“We have a few bottles and casks kept as tokens of the first batches. Centuries old, at least by now. I didn’t take you for a wine enthusiast.”
Centuries old. So . . . old enough to have existed when the Order hid the keys?
I stand, hands beating against my thighs. How much should I tell her? “I think . . . they could help me.”
“I’d imagine so. Alcohol has been known to have its uses.”
I laugh sardonically. “Not to drink. Where are they?”
Ceridwen relents, waving a hand dismissively. “Follow me.”
I start after her but freeze. “Wait—they’re here? Not at a vineyard?”
“Of course they’re here.” Ceridwen glances back. “The best wine in the kingdom has been kept in my family’s private reserve for as long as Summer has been hot.”
I hadn’t expected it to be so simple, but Ceridwen starts walking again, and I follow dumbly.
She leads us back into the palace. We pause just long enough for Garrigan to run a message to Henn and Conall that I’m safe. Thankfully Ceridwen avoids the celebration, dipping us down a few dark halls and around the hubbub of the party to a stairwell that leads us deep beneath the palace. The air lifts degree by degree as we descend, each layer of coolness easing relief into my muscles. Maybe my Winterians and I can stay underground for the rest of our time in Summer—it’d certainly be far more enjoyable.
By the time the staircase deposits us into a wide space, my body buzzes with adrenaline, eyes snapping to every detail as if the Order of the Lustrate itself might be standing down here, waiting just for me. But darkness clings to the stones, so all I know is the reverberating echo of our footsteps hitting walls many paces off.
Ceridwen lifts a lantern and flicks it to life, the gold flames shooting light over a wine cellar.
Or a wine warehouse more like. Rows and rows of wooden shelves stretch in every direction, with more beyond the lantern’s reach. Every shelf holds bottles swathed in dust or casks stacked in neat rows. The pungent tang of oak swirls around the musky stench of time, confirming that this place has withstood generations of turmoil and war, struggle and hardship. A place untouched for decades—or hopefully centuries.
“Welcome to the Preben reserve,” Ceridwen says, her tone dry, and nods us on as she ducks down a row, her lantern’s light swaying off the dust-covered bottles. Garrigan and I follow in silence, every step dredging up dust.
Left, left, right, left—Ceridwen makes so many turns I know I won’t be able to find the way out on my own. This cellar has to stretch at least the whole width of the palace, if not more—maybe the whole area of the palace compound. The farther in we go, the thicker the layers of dust, the heavier the stench of age and mustiness on the air.
Finally Ceridwen stops and waves at a wooden rack that, to me, seems like every other wine-coated rack we’ve passed. The top few shelves hold bottles, neck out, while the bottom few hold small casks stored in horizontal rows.
“The oldest wine in existence,” Ceridwen announces, clearly unimpressed with her own kingdom’s possessions. “It’s a point of pride for every king to leave them aging here.”
I start to reach for one but stop, eyeing her over the flickering lantern light. For all my anticipation, I didn’t process the fact that these are important to someone. Not things I can open and sift through. But do I even need to open them? Maybe the outsides will have a marking.
My hesitation makes Ceridwen’s lip curl. She grabs a bottle and thrusts it into my hands, dust billowing off in a small cloud. “Do whatever you need with it. My brother has pride in a wine reserve, but caring for his people? I have just as much love for his priorities as he does for mine.”
I snake my fingers around the neck. “He doesn’t know where you stand?”
Ceridwen chuckles bitterly. “I’m pretty sure he knows, but he’s never sober long enough to do more than idly wonder why I’m such a grouch. So what are you searching for, exactly?”
The question cuts hard into the air, weighted with the favors she’s done for me.
I tip the bottle upside down, right side up, flipping and cleaning and searching every free space for . . . I don’t even know what. The Order of the Lustrate seal, maybe.
“I’d rather you weren’t involved in this until I have no other choice.” My eyes shoot up. “You have plenty of problems of your own, it seems.”
Ceridwen grunts in half-hearted acceptance.
I set down my bottle and pick another.
After twelve bottles, none of which give me more than a sneezing fit from the dust, I drop to my knees, facing the casks. Garrigan lingers behind me while Ceridwen gave up trying to help nine bottles ago and collapsed against the end of the wooden racks, head bowed against her chest, lantern resting on the floor beside her.
The first cask sloshes when I ease it out. There’s nothing unusual on it, no Lustrate seal or keys stuck to the rim. The next one is the same.
And the next.
And the next.
I slide out another, brush my fingers over the exterior, analyze the wood. My certainty all but snuffs out as I ease it back in and reach for the next. Maybe I was wrong—there are only a few more casks. It could be—
But this one sticks when I tug on it, clinging tight to the shelf. I pull again, but it holds.
Ceridwen curves forward, drawn by the way the shelf shakes with every fruitless yank. “Need help?”
“I don’t know,” I admit, fingers flying over whatever parts of the cask I can reach. I brush the bottom, a smooth line of something like wax that bends along the curve of the cask.
My forehead pinches. Someone fixed this cask to the shelf? Why? Is it that special to Summer?
Or is it that special to someone else?
Every cask bears a cork in the flat side, facing out. I tap my knuckles on the cask, listening for a heavy thud to tell me wine sits inside. But the sound is . . . hollow?
Only one way to find out for sure.
I swivel onto my knees, bracing myself on the cold stone floor, and wrap my fingers around the cork. Please, please, please . . .
Ceridwen flies to her feet and squeaks in protest as I fling my whole body back, using every spare muscle to wrench out the cork. She freezes, hands splayed, expecting the worst—
But nothing comes. The cork sits in my palm, the opening in the cask wide and clear.
My lungs depress beneath the yelp of shock I release.
It’s empty of wine. So what is inside it?
Ceridwen’s arms flop to her hips, brows pinched, but she says nothing as I near the cask again. The edges of the flat side are expertly crafted, unable to be pried off, so I stand, turn, and kick through it with my heel.
The wood splinters with a silence-shattering explosion, cracking into a few frayed chunks. I whirl back around and haul them off completely, littering the floor with shards of wood. The lantern flickers from just beside Ceridwen’s feet, casting light into the cask.
And deep inside, jutting up from the bottom, sits a lever.
Warning flares through me, biting sharply at the edges of my mind.
This is wrong, my instinct says. This is dangerous. Don’t pull it. . . .
I inhale, wrap my fingers around the lever, and yank back as hard as I can.
The lever sticks for a moment but relents when I throw my body into it. The wood groans and slams toward me, moving only a hand’s width, but enough that something deep beneath the stone floor grumbles and grates. Heat licks my boots, eats into my legs, crawling higher in a sudden eruption of warmth that makes my entire body throb with warning.
The floor cracks.
I whip to my right, where Ceridwen leans over me, confusion wrinkling her face.
“Move!” I cry as the grumbling in the floor and the waves of heat intensify, darting out to open in a chasm just beside me—right where Ceridwen is standing.
I fling myself at her, knocking her and the lantern back as the stone floor drops between the racks. A small opening, barely two arm lengths wide, but deep, and as Ceridwen trips onto the solid part of the floor, the lantern clanging along next to her, I plummet into the fall that would have swallowed her up.
“Meira!” she shouts as Garrigan bellows, “My queen!”
My fingers catch on the edge of the newly formed pit, taking all my weight as I slam to a halt against the side of the hole. Rock grates against my face, misshapen stones dig into my stomach, but otherwise, I’m unharmed. Shaken like a boulder down a landslide, but unharmed.
Ceridwen grabs my wrists. “Are you okay? Hang on—”
But I don’t move into her assistance. This pit opened up when I pulled the lever, which means it’s related to the key or the Order. Or it’s just a mean Summerian trick hidden in a vat of their wine.
Nerves flaring, I cast a glance over my shoulder. Below me, about two heights down, light flickers up from the bottom of the pit in the form of a fire ring. Did the lever activate this too? Why?
The rest of the sides of the pit are rock, jagged and cut quickly, leaving large chunks poking out. Nothing else is unusual, no other flames or markings, and I drop my eyes back to the fire ring.
There, in the center of the flames, something glints in the light.
“Wait,” I call up to Ceridwen and now Garrigan, who both have bent to their knees to help pull me out. They hold, and in their brief spurt of pausing, I release the rock wall. The unexpected tug of my weight makes them lose their grip on me and I drop, collapsing in a burst of grimy dust at the edge of the fire ring.
“My queen!” Garrigan’s voice twists with panic and he shuffles toward Ceridwen. “Do you have a rope? A ladder? Something?”
Ceridwen grunts. “Sorry, Summer doesn’t have a lot of climbing gear in our wine cellar.”
“Then get some!”
“Calm down, Winterian, she’s fine!” But Ceridwen’s voice fades as she talks—she must be moving toward a storage area, or back up to get what Garrigan demands.
“Hold on, my queen,” he calls down to me.
“I’m okay.” I take a tentative step toward the middle of the fire ring. I didn’t exactly expect the floor to drop out the first time, and I’m not about to be caught unaware again. But the jagged stone floor holds, the fire adding light and waves of heat that cause more sweat to bead down my face as I bend toward the object in the middle of the ring.
It’s a key. Old and iron, as long as my hand, with latticework swirling at its top to encase a seal—a beam of light hitting a mountaintop. The Order’s symbol.
I drop back, disbelief draining any emotions from my body.
I actually found it.
“Look out!” Ceridwen’s voice precedes the smack of a rope on the stone floor just next to me.
A chain snakes out from the key’s latticework. I grab the chain, shove the key into my pocket, and scramble for the rope, breath trapped against the possibility of any more surprises. But nothing happens again, like the key wanted me to take it, like the pit was waiting for someone to pull that lever and reveal all its secrets.
And maybe it was.
By the time I reach the cellar’s floor, Garrigan is positively gray with worry. He takes my elbow and guides me to my feet, his mouth opening in another question of any injuries—
When a rumbling reverberates beneath our feet.
I spin. The pit is gone.
Ceridwen bites her lips together and pushes a muffled scream into them, pointing at the stones, then at me, then at the wine cask. “What—was—that?”
“I . . .” Snow above, how am I going to explain this? I fish the key out of my pocket and let it sway before me on the chain. “I found what I needed. If that helps.”
Ceridwen shakes her head and presses her fists to her temples. “Which is?”
“A key,” I say, and she makes a No, really? grunt of obviousness. “A key to something . . . terrible. And old. And—” I stop, my fingers still clasped around the chain.
Hope sucks my breath away, a whirlwind that spirals through my lungs. I did it. I found the key—I found the clue the Order left for us.
I actually did it.
And this is proof, even more than the door, that the Order exists.
But . . .
Uncertainty gnaws at me, my ever-present worry growing in a new direction, and I look at the magically covered pit again. No heat anymore, like it never existed. Only the lever in the wine cask sits as a hint of the pit’s existence.
Why was any of this in Summer at all? That still doesn’t make sense, why the Order even put one of the keys in this kingdom. Why not Autumn or Winter or Spring? Why in Summer, in Juli, in the palace’s wine cellar?
I look at the racks again. The age of this area, the dust on the bottles, the reverence Summerians—well, other than Ceridwen—apparently show to this wine, means it would have endured time. This has been one of the symbols of Summer for centuries—wine.
The Order put this key in a place significant to Summer so it would be guaranteed to survive over the course of history. That at least explains part of the reason—why the cellar, not why Summer.
Will the other keys be in similar places?
“Meira,” Ceridwen barks, and I jerk to her. Her shock is gone, covered by the same look she gave me when I made it snow moments ago. Logging my weaknesses for future use, analyzing me and trying to figure out a way to make this beneficial to Summer. It should feel like Noam’s treatment of me, but she sighs, rubs her eyes, and shakes her head.
“You’re involved with something dangerous, aren’t you?” she asks.
I start to respond, but through the weighty silence of the cellar, a scream shoots out.
My head snaps toward it.
I know that voice.
“Theron.”