A PIANO DISTURBS the silence, the player unleashing the melody from close by, steady notes that tinkle like raindrops beating on a window.
I know who it is without needing to see him, some deep-seated link tugging even tighter. Just as the instinct hits me, I’m swarmed with familiarity—finding a key with Ceridwen, only to be distracted from the find by Theron.
In Summer, I brushed it off as a coincidence that Theron was in the cellar. He went looking for me—he probably asked a servant, who directed him there.
But for him to be here, again, just after we found the key . . . did he follow me? Why would he have followed me without revealing himself earlier, involving himself in the search?
My body quakes with another tremor of unease. No—I won’t distrust him that much. Theron is still my friend, he’s still him, and he wouldn’t do anything like that.
But he has already, my instincts whisper. Twice, now—in Winter, when he told Noam about the chasm, and here, when he gave the goods from the Klaryn mines to Giselle.
I curl my fingers around the tapestry. Is this key a conduit too? Probably—both my reaction to the barrier in the magic chasm and the first key hang all too memorably in my mind. But I only had visions when I touched the key and Theron—so if I don’t touch the key, I should be safe.
I open one of the pockets on my dress and slide the key in via the tapestry. The iron thumps against my thigh, but the fabric of my gown keeps it from touching my skin.
“Guard this,” I tell Ceridwen, and thrust the tapestry at her. “Please.”
She hesitates, her eyes narrowing.
“Only if you explain what’s going on. All of it,” she demands.
I pause. She waits.
“I will,” I relent, and even I don’t know if I’m lying. “Soon. I promise.”
Ceridwen considers, one beat, two. Finally she rolls her eyes, takes the tapestry, and closes the hidden compartment. “Fine. Deal with your Rhythm prince.”
I start that she knows who the pianist is too, but she doesn’t say anything more. Ceridwen leaves the books strewn about as she and Lekan duck out of the row, heading back for the main door.
Absently, I clutch the locket at my throat, the empty conduit giving me some sort of relief. Which is completely absurd—I’m stuffed with magic, and yet a small piece of useless metal comforts me?
I leave the row, letting the music pull me between the shelves. One last turn and a small opening reveals a few chairs with a piano against the wall. Theron leans over it, his fingers brushing the keys to make the music swell abruptly, cut off, and plunge down again. Each note . . . aches. Slow and palpitating, filling the empty air with melancholy, so even before he says anything, I feel broken.
He doesn’t glance up as he plays, his head plunging side to side, lips tight in concentration. But I know he sees me enter the area—his shoulders jerk sharply, one note faltering under his fluttering hands.
He stops playing, the song ending on a crash of keys. “I went to your room to make sure you had returned all right, but Dendera said you left.” He cuts his eyes to me, so fast I almost miss it. “You were gone. Again.”
“I needed to be alone for a little while. I won’t apologize for that,” I say, and I only flinch a little at the hardness of my voice. “You’re the one who should apologize to me. You had no right to give Giselle goods from the Klaryns.”
“That was why we brought those goods.” Theron pushes off the bench. “We had to give her some of our mines—she’s a Rhythm. She never would have—”
“Stop.” My chest lurches with cold, and this time I welcome it, opening my body to the way every nerve fills with flakes of snow and shards of ice. I know my voice reflects the sensation. “They’re Winter’s mines. There is no our.”
Theron lunges forward, cutting me off. Hands to my shoulders, yanking me to him; lips on mine, but not in a gentle, loving kiss—a hard, desperate kiss, his fingers stiff, his mouth unyielding, his body a formidable mountain with me trapped at the top, hopelessly lost in the clouds and wind and light.
“There is still an us,” he tells me. “There will always be an us.”
I heave back from him. “No,” I state, voice hard. “There will always be a separation.”
Theron’s arms hang open in front of him, and he pants, yanking his hands up to rip through his hair.
“You need to stop doing this,” he growls.
“Doing what?” Because I have no idea which part he’s talking about. The lying? The choosing Winter over his own goals?
One of those I refuse to stop doing.
He groans to the ceiling. “Pushing me away. How do you expect—”
I throw my hand up. “Wait—you’re upset because I won’t open up to you?”
He nods, and fresh anger pools into the myriad of emotions in my stomach.
“I don’t open up to you? I’ve tried, Theron. I told you how I feel about the magic chasm; I told you how I feel about your father. But you push away all the bad and ignore everything but your own hope. You do not get to be angry with me. I have to hold myself together because no one else is capable of handling the truth.”
“You have to open up to someone,” Theron continues. “I understand why you can’t in front of your people, but you need someone. And I thought . . .” His words trail off as his tenseness eases, hesitates, waiting on the words that will follow. “I thought you would . . .”
Something changes in his eyes. Like an idea occurred to him, a shocking, ghastly idea that causes him to pitch up straight, snarling.
“Mather,” he growls. “It’s him, isn’t it?”
“Mather?” I stagger, his name a gust of wind that lashes a chill across my body.
“All this time,” Theron snarls, “I knew you loved him, but I thought you’d moved on—”
“I do love—I mean, I did love him once, but I—”
“—and I thought things would be better now. Everything is better now! We have the magic chasm and your kingdom is free and we can be us—”
“I can’t do this anymore!”
I stop. Theron stops. We both gape at each other in the agonizing silence.
Theron exhales. “Do what anymore?” But he doesn’t let me answer. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you—you don’t have to keep holding back. I’m here for you, and I—”
He talks so fast, and despite the comfort his words try to form, his shoulders droop and everything about his posture says he’s talking merely to keep me from countering him.
“No, Theron,” I whisper, and his jaw bobbles open, his words falling flat. “I can’t . . . be with you. Not like this. I think I could, someday, if Noam requires our marriage; if it’s in Winter’s best interest. But I can’t be with you now. Not when we’re divided by so much.” I dig the heels of my hands into my eyes as a warm wave of tears puddles against my lids. “I think I’ve known for a while, but you were hurting, and I couldn’t add to that. I’ve caused you enough pain. But now I’ve only caused you more.”
I lower my hands, sight blurred so I only see the hazy outline of a boy before me. “I don’t know how to fix you. I don’t even know how to fix myself. You may think everything’s better, but it’s not, Theron. I can’t go along with what you want. I don’t want the magic chasm opened—and I will do everything I can to keep it shut. We aren’t united on this journey.” My heart scratches at my throat, choking me, but not the ache of regret—the choking of words that needed to be said long ago. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have lied to you, but I didn’t want . . .”
I scrub my fingers over my eyes until he comes into focus, and when he does, a part of me shrinks. He watches me, his face hurt and distant and hard, and the combination drives nails into my gut.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” I finish.
“That’s the only reason you’d love me?” Theron spits. “If my father ordered you to?”
“That’s all you took from what I said?” I wheeze, but as soon as I do, his face collapses. The wrong thing to say, and he angles forward, body coiled.
“I took that you were using me. I thought you of all people understood what it’s like to be used so violently that you wonder if there are any pieces of you left. But you’re just like my father.” He gasps. “You’re just like—”
“I am nothing like Noam,” I snap. “Because I’m sorry, Theron. I’m sorry I lied to you. I’m sorry for everything, but I don’t know anything anymore, and everything I do is my instinctual reaction to what I think will keep Winter safe. Has your father ever once apologized for the things he’s done? No. So don’t you dare compare me to him. I am not Noam.”
Piece by piece, Theron’s anger breaks, revealing the boy beneath. The trembling shadows we all harbor within our all-too-fragile shells, terrified someone will one day see.
After another long second of neither of us knowing what to do or say that could make anything better, he slides back a step.
“The treaty,” he whispers. “If Giselle agrees to sign it, will you? It is what’s best for your kingdom.”
“Yes,” I say before he can go on. The treaty doesn’t matter, honestly—if that will appease him, I’ll sign it. But I hold, waiting for him to ask how I’ll proceed on the next issue, the biggest one, the goal that makes him touch his pocket absently.
He still has the key I found in Summer. He doesn’t know I found the one here yet.
I fight to keep from touching my own pocket, but I can feel the heavy weight of the key on my thigh. What will happen when he searches on his own and doesn’t find it? Will we still press on for Ventralli?
“Can we at least agree to share what information we find?” Theron adds, his voice quiet.
“Information?”
He tips his head. “Information regarding the pursuits that might bring you to this library.”
I swallow. He’s never used that tone with me, an empty, formal timbre that plants clear expectations between two people—politics and propriety, nothing more.
My body hums with the magic still swirling through me. It isn’t fed by anger now—it’s fed by grief, bright and hot and expected, like now that I’ve outright admitted what Theron and I are, my body unwinds in resignation.
No more lying. He knows what I want with regard to the magic; I know what he wants.
So I don’t tell him I have the key. At least, not directly.
“We should continue to Ventralli,” I manage. “As soon as the treaty is signed.”
Theron’s brows launch skyward, understanding written in shocked lines over his face. When I don’t elaborate, he snorts in incredulity and runs a hand through his hair, pausing with his eyes on the floor, his shoulders stiff.
“You’ll see,” he starts, “when the chasm is opened, that everything I’ve done has been to keep you safe.”
I didn’t think it possible to hurt more than I do, but an ache thuds in me, pounding where my heart should be.
“I don’t need to be safe. I need Winter to be safe.”
Theron drops his hand and looks at me. “You’re more than that kingdom.”
He’s trying so hard to be sweet, to be the Theron I fell for in Bithai. But sweetness isn’t all I want anymore. I want . . . Winter. I want someone who thinks of protecting Winter first and me second. Not the other way around.
“No,” I say. “I’m really not.”
Theron gapes at me, but snaps away his shock with a curt shake of his head.
He turns and marches toward the door without another word.
I watch him go, waiting for my grief to rear so high it paralyzes me, waiting to crack into pieces and fall apart. And at one point in my life, I think I would have. But knowing what he wants with the magic chasm, I feel more certain than I have in a long time.
There is very little that I would choose over keeping Winter safe.
And Theron isn’t one of those things.
I reach into my pocket as the door shuts behind him. My fingers close around the key, a resolved, firm grip. I have one of the keys. I have a way to—
The old metal grinds against my skin, and I know as soon as I touch it that I was wrong. Whatever magic these keys possess—it isn’t simple; I don’t have it figured out.
Numbness launches up my arm, spreads across my chest, sends me toppling to the floor. I can’t do more than reel as I tumble, too annoyed at myself for touching the key to be scared.
“My queen!” Henn’s face darts into view. His lips move, saying something to me, but the magic is swift, a mad rush of sizzling nothingness that yanks a shadow over my eyes.