THE CHILL WIND bit across Mather’s face, fighting the sweat that beaded along his brow. He stood only one story in the air, but the wind snaked between the other half-repaired cottages, causing snowflakes to stick to his exposed chest, ice and cold melting into exertion and heat. The gust teetered him forward on the skeleton of this cottage’s roof, and he used the movement to test the sturdiness of the boards he’d just finished nailing into place. They groaned but held.
“I’m not going to catch you.” Phil slanted an amused eye up to him, his fingers fast at work salvaging old nails from rotted planks of wood on the cottage’s floor.
“Your concern is moving, but I’m not going to fall,” Mather panted. To prove his point, he stood straight up, balancing on the joist that made the base for the triangle frame.
Phil snorted. “Show-off.”
Mather grinned, holding himself steady on the ridge board, the single long plank of wood that ran the full length of the roof, or what would eventually be the roof. From here, he could see the entirety of the square—a dozen other skeleton roofs and unfinished buildings crawling with Winterians performing the same tasks as he and Phil.
Mather’s attention pivoted to the northeastern part of the city. The Thaw’s cottage was still at least three sections away from being the focus of the repairs. They had another couple of months before they had to seriously consider moving elsewhere, or at the very least packing up their training gear until the builders passed them over.
They had been lucky so far. Lucky that few people went to the outskirts of Jannuari’s inhabited section; lucky that as long as Mather and the rest of the Thaw occasionally helped with the repairs, no one noticed them missing on other days; lucky it had only been little more than a couple of weeks since they’d started their secret training so they hadn’t yet needed real weapons beyond the few flimsy knives Mather had managed to steal.
A group of Cordellan soldiers circled the square, lapping the area as they had been doing all day. Mather glared at them, knowing his glare would go unnoticed but feeling better when he threw it. From the soldiers’ hips hung one sword and two daggers each, perfectly sharpened weapons that dangled unused and taunting. Even the wooden swords the Winterian army had used before Noam’s ban had been borrowed from Cordell. Would the Cordellans notice if a few of their swords went missing from their weapons tent? Probably.
Mather glowered as the soldiers marched toward this cottage, taking in the surrounding Winterians with a possessive air that felt like a dull blade running up Mather’s spine.
Thwack.
Mather dropped his eyes to the cottage next door, the one Hollis, Trace, and Feige had been assigned to. Their roof was nothing but half a dozen joists running parallel to the floor, leaving the entirety of the one-story cottage open for Mather to gaze down into.
And when he did, alarm spiraled through him so strongly that he wobbled on the roof until his fingers caught the ridge board again.
“Still not catching you,” Phil sang, analyzing a particularly stubborn nail.
But Mather ignored him. His eyes shot to the Cordellans, one building away.
Any sudden movement would only draw attention, which was the last thing they needed. Because Feige stood in a throwing stance, one arm wound back—and a knife in her hand. Another she had lodged into the wall on her last throw, the handle still vibrating from the force. Two of the pathetic blades Mather had stolen for their training, but only for their training in the Thaw’s cottage, safely tucked away from Cordellan eyes.
Mather hissed at Trace and Hollis, who were out behind the cottage, one holding a beam steady while the other sawed through it. But with hammers pounding and saws grinding into wood, his signal got lost in the air, swirling away as uselessly as the flakes that danced all around.
“Well, what do we have here?” one of the soldiers ducked into the cottage just as Feige released her final dagger. It sailed through the air, knocked off course by her jolt of surprise, and clattered into the wall before dropping to the floor.
Feige dove for it, snatching it up and whirling with it held before her. The cottage wasn’t more than ten paces from the front door, which the soldiers now blocked, to the back wall. Even Mather would have felt a spike of fear at that, but Feige’s face was downright petrified. Her ivory skin grayed to a deathly hue, her eyes unblinking, her small body bent into a defensive hunch, both trying to protect herself and readying for an attack.
Mather moved the moment the first soldier stepped closer to her. He propelled himself off his roof and leaped into the air, clearing the space between the cottages.
“A weapon, eh?” the soldier asked, his boots gliding across the floor in daring increments. “What are you doing with this?”
Mather landed on the cottage’s roof, momentum chasing him. He welcomed that momentum—because in the next second, Feige screamed.
This was the scream every Winterian wrestled into submission deep inside them, a scream that came from torture, from repeated and endless suffering. Mather felt it like a wolf’s howl, the noise catching at his insides and igniting. It spoke to him in a way he hated and feared and cowered from, both because he understood such fear and because he knew the things Feige had endured had been far worse than anything he had experienced.
She lunged, screaming still, and sliced the dagger through the soldier’s cheek. He howled, shock numbing him enough for Feige to swing again, the blade only battering against his sleeve this time. The soldier ducked Feige’s next swing and angled his body to tackle her.
Mather gripped the nearest joist and swung into the cottage. The raw wood bit into his palms but he pushed on, locking his legs into a battering ram that he slammed into the second soldier. The man flew to the ground, the air knocked out of him enough that he rolled helplessly as Mather dropped and turned to the other soldier, who flew up from his intended tackle.
“What do you think you’re doing?” the man bellowed, but Mather grabbed his collar and hurled him out onto the street just after Trace and Hollis darted inside.
Mather turned, skidding to a stop when he saw Feige curled into a ball in the corner, holding one of her daggers straight out. She still screamed that awful, sickening scream as though she had lost control of it. Maybe she had never had control of it to begin with.
When Hollis reached her, he knelt an arm’s length from her and glanced back at Trace with the broken expression of a man who had expected a battle but gotten a war.
One soldier still rolled around on the floor in front of Mather, coughing to recover the breath he had lost. Mather grabbed his arm and dragged him out as the other soldier gained his footing in the yard, sword drawn, face livid.
“King Noam banned all weapons except those held by his army,” the soldier barked.
Inside, Hollis’s gentle murmurings were now interspersed with Feige’s screams. Mather deposited the second soldier at the feet of the first and dug the heels of his boots into the snow in front of the cottage.
“She had a kitchen knife,” he growled. “Nothing more.”
They had drawn quite the crowd by now. All surrounding Winterians turned, pausing with nails in fists or hammers raised midswing.
“Besides,” Mather continued, “if you touch her, I’ll gut you.”
“We will,” Phil added, coming to stand beside him with Trace. Movement from just off to his right, and Kiefer and Eli ran forward as Feige’s screams continued. They planted themselves alongside Mather, a single, united front.
“Mather!”
The pride swelling in Mather fogged his mind. His attention flicked to William, who shoved through the crowd alongside Greer. Alysson followed, pulling away from where she had been passing out water to the workers. All three stopped between him and the Cordellan soldiers.
“Stop,” William hissed, and had they still been in their nomadic camp, the order would have worked.
But now, Mather staggered forward, all his anger and adrenaline fading to disbelief. “You’re ordering me to stop? What about them?” He jabbed a finger at the Cordellans, who watched the dispute unfold with unadulterated rage.
“Don’t make a scene,” William growled, and swung to face the men. “I apologize for the misunderstanding. We will rectify the situation and comply with all of King Noam’s orders.”
The words made Mather snarl. “You can’t be—”
But Greer stepped in as Mather launched forward. “Stand down,” he snapped.
Mather tugged at Greer’s grip. The old man held tight, eyes set and dark. “Didn’t you hear her screams? They did that to her!”
Feige had quieted by now, whether from Hollis’s comforting or because the fear had snuffed itself out.
One of the soldiers seemed to come to the conclusion that winning this fight didn’t deserve his energy, because he waved William off. “We won’t be so kind next time, General.”
William dropped his head in a bow. “Thank you.”
The soldier clicked his lips in disgust before turning away, pushing into the crowd. His comrade followed, both of them throwing victorious sneers back at Mather. They had won something. A different battle, one that left Mather gaping as William turned to him.
Before he could get a word in, William heaved him out of Greer’s grasp and bent his head to hiss in Mather’s ear. “The Cordellans are our only allies until the queen gains others. If she can’t, if Cordell is all we have, we cannot antagonize them.”
“They would have hurt Feige,” Mather spat back. “They would have—”
“You don’t know that.”
“I didn’t want to find out! Would you have let them make her scream more?”
Behind William, the Winterians departed back to their tasks, chased off by orders from Greer. Only Alysson remained, her eyes flicking from them to the cottage where she smiled, the same comfort Mather had seen so often before. A smile that let him know he would be okay, because how could anyone look at him like that if his life was destined for misery?
Feige stood in front of the cottage now, her hands wringing against her stomach in quick, tight jabs. She didn’t have her daggers anymore, and she stared at the snow packed along the road with eyes that weren’t seeing. Mather took a step forward, but Hollis, hovering just behind her but not touching her, shook his head sharply.
“Feige?” Mather tried.
She flinched. Tears welled in her eyes.
“I didn’t want to be defenseless again” was all she whispered.
Mather’s heart cracked.
Hollis led Feige away. The rest of the Thaw lingered still, watching, hesitating, trying not to seem like they were still waiting for someone to break.
Mather had a sinking feeling he would be that someone.
“What if we never have other options?” Mather swung to William. “What if Meira comes back and our most powerful ally is still Cordell? What if Noam opens that damn magic chasm and becomes even more powerful? What then?”
William’s jaw hardened. “We will not be in that position.”
“We’re already in that position! You did this to us once before, in Bithai. Angra had sent his army after us, and Noam had agreed to sell me, and you just stood there, because even though we had come so far, all you saw left to do was give up. We’ve come so far, so many times, but that seems to have only made you even more fearful. What are you afraid will happen? We’ve already lost everything, and we survived. We can survive without Cordell! We can fight them!”
“Just because we could fight Cordell doesn’t mean we should. There are other options—paths that do not risk our people’s lives.” William shot forward, exhaustion vanishing in one last burst of certainty. “We did lose everything, and it took decades to get it back. We will not risk it again. We have it now; we will embrace it. Our kingdom, our lives, our families.”
Mather’s jaw dropped open. The way William said the word families like it was just another task, easily accomplished, made Mather look behind him, to Phil, Trace, Kiefer, and Eli. Ahead, William and Alysson waited. A definitive division.
“We were all each other had for sixteen years,” Mather started, turning back to William. “All of us. Finn and Greer and Henn, Dendera, everyone who died too. And I never once felt like we wanted to be together. But we didn’t want to be together—we didn’t want to set up a permanent family somewhere else, because it might’ve made it impossible to get our real families back. But—we’re supposed to be a family now? Just that easy?”
Alysson pushed closer. “Mather, we all loved one another—”
“I know we did,” he cut her off, anger making his voice snap, and he wasn’t sure he knew what he wanted out of this. No, he knew what he wanted, he could feel the question hovering on his lips, burning his mouth, filling him up, and bleeding him out all at once.
William just stared at him, didn’t respond, didn’t react, and Mather straightened, sucking in breaths and trying to calm his nerves. He couldn’t though, couldn’t stop what he had started, and the question burst out of him in a roar of need.
“Why do I feel more connected to six orphans than I ever have to my own parents?”
Alysson shook her head, not entirely understanding him, but hurting all the same. William just gaped, confusion making his muscles hard. Mather didn’t want to hear their answers, didn’t want to know, so he spun around, aiming to fling himself after Hollis and Feige.
William grabbed his arm. “Son, don’t turn away from me—”
“I am not your son!” The words tore out of Mather so painfully that blood should have pooled in his mouth. “I want to be—you have no idea how much I want to be. But I’m not, William, and I don’t know why. Tell me why I never felt, still don’t feel, like I’m anything more than a Winterian soldier to you.”
William’s jaw tightened, his eyes glazed. “You are a Winterian soldier,” he muttered. His voice shook ever so slightly, like he couldn’t hold it in, like maybe, just maybe, this broke him too. “We are all first and foremost Winterians. We need to accept our lives as they are now. You are our son. Winter needs Cordell. That’s it.”
Mather backed up, shaking his head, shaking it and shaking it because this was the split between him and William. This was the line, the mark, the place where their difference of opinion could rift a kingdom and get everyone killed.
“You’re wrong,” Mather said. “Our lives aren’t that simple. We won our freedom, but we’re still in danger, and nothing will ever be normal.”
The rest of the Thaw closed in behind Mather as he stalked away.
That night, Phil beat him at sparring.
Mather wanted to pretend it wasn’t because of the tension from earlier. But even Kiefer lacked his usual cynicism, and trained with a new sense of purpose.
So when Mather stepped left and Phil swerved right, Phil’s mock sword sailing into Mather’s chest, everyone in the cottage hurried over to smack excited hands on Phil’s back. Everyone except Hollis and Feige, who stayed where they had been all evening—Feige on her stool, shards of wood flying around her like a blizzard, and Hollis on the floor next to her.
Mather took a step toward Feige. He didn’t dare get closer—even a small movement in her direction made her wince, though her eyes remained fixed on her whittling.
“Feige,” Mather tried. The boys behind him quieted and he held his hands out to her, a well of need springing in him. Need for Phil’s victory to be felt by all of them. “Feige, don’t be ashamed.”
Hollis glowered up at him. “Haven’t you done enough?” he growled so low that Mather almost didn’t hear him. “She wouldn’t have had the knife if not for all of this.”
Mather dropped to his knees. “I know she wouldn’t have had the knife if not for this, and she wouldn’t have broken down today if not for what I’ve done to you. But she would have broken down eventually. Somewhere, somehow, something would have triggered her—just like something might eventually be too much for all of you. Horrible things have happened to us, are still happening to us, will happen every day for the rest of our lives, probably. What defines us is not our ability to never let them break us—what defines us is not letting them own us. We are the Thaw, and we will not be defeated by memories or evil men.”
Feige’s clear blue eyes lifted to his and she weighed his words one at a time. “We are the Thaw.” She nodded decisively. “And we will not be defeated.”
Beside her, Hollis exhaled, and when Mather looked at him, there was no blame on his face. Exhaustion, yes. But the start of what could be seen as . . . acceptance.
“We will not be defeated,” Mather repeated, and he meant it.