THE MAGIC COATS me in chill through a tangle of confusion that amplifies when a voice lights me up, a sun rising over night-drenched landscape.
“The magic must not be reached by someone of corrupt heart. No, their heart must be pure—no, good—no, no, none of those. The magic must be reached by someone of ready heart. They must be ready. And these tests—these tests will make them ready.”
“What tests? Ready for what?” I ask. But who am I asking? No one is talking—no one but me is here. This is just in my head, knowledge coming in my own voice from—the key?
I think I’m holding the key. Asleep, somewhere, I’m holding it, and it’s using my voice, droning on and on.
“And these tests—these tests will make them—”
The nothingness lifts, ripples away like curtains drawn back from a window until all around me is white: ivory-paneled walls trimmed in silver.
Winter. I’m in a study in the Jannuari Palace.
“I have to do this!”
Hannah stands in the center of the room, her body pivoted away from me as she talks at a man with his forehead pressed to the wall.
“You don’t understand,” she growls. “This is the only way to save them.”
Seeing her now makes me realize how much I’ve missed her. She doesn’t react to me, though—not when I say her name; not when I stand right in front of her, mouth agape.
“They need this, Duncan,” she says, and her voice breaks on a sob.
I turn, but the man stays facing away from us, his long, white hair brushing across his back as he buries his face in his hands. Duncan. My father.
“I asked the magic,” Hannah continues. “I begged it to tell me what to do. I don’t want to just save them from Angra—I want to save them from all the dangers of the world.” Her sobs abate, and she tugs her shoulders back, hardening. “I asked how to save Winter.”
I know this already. The magic told her that when a conduit breaks in defense of a kingdom, the ruler becomes the host for the magic. They become their own conduit, a limitless supply of magic for their people. That was why she arranged for Angra to break her locket—she wanted to save our people from him.
“I have to let him kill us,” she states, trying to convince herself as much as Duncan.
Kill us?
As I watch her, the rest of the story unfolds in my mind. One piece in particular jerks out in an uncomfortable lurch that rips the breath from my lungs.
How did I not see this before?
Hannah arranged for Angra to break her locket—but she also arranged for him to kill her. That was part of her deal with him—she promised him an end to the Dynam line, not knowing that she was pregnant, and that that meant killing her child too.
“When a conduit breaks in defense of a kingdom, the ruler of that kingdom becomes the conduit. And if the conduit were to break again—if that ruler were to die in defense of the kingdom as the last of that bloodline—the magic would seek out the next host linked to it—the citizens of its kingdom.” She stops, winded. “They’ll—you’ll—never want for anything. I have to do this, Duncan. He has to kill us so Winter can be saved.”
Us.
No—this is wrong. This is a trick—
“They must be ready. And these tests—these tests will make them ready.”
My voice again, taunting me. I tangle my fingers in my hair, shaking my head to keep the information from sinking into my mind. But it does, and everything unravels.
If what Hannah said is true, if I hadn’t been born—if Hannah had let Angra kill us both all those years ago—
Our ruined kingdom would be whole right now. Sir would have raised Mather as his son. Nessa and Garrigan and Conall would be filled with power, and Spring would have fallen, and the Decay would be a distant memory beneath all of Winter’s conduit magic.
That’s what the key wants me to see? How my very existence kept my people from safety?
“A ready heart,” the magic says in my voice. “These tests will make you ready.”
I bend forward and scream frustration, exhaustion, everything I have left. I don’t even scream words, just noise, how tired I am of fighting a war when I can barely see one step ahead, how tired I am of being the only one who even sees the war, of being the only one who wants to live without magic.
And now—what? I should just let it all kill me so my people become their own conduits? This can’t be it. This doesn’t even have anything to do with the magic chasm—and these tests are supposed to help me reach the magic chasm, aren’t they?
But the visions I saw when I touched Theron didn’t have anything to do with the magic chasm either. He didn’t see anything, though, and he touched the key—if he had seen something, I would’ve noticed him reacting. So why just me? Because of my own magic? Why would the Order have set up the keys to be conduits that only react with a conduit wielder? No one without magic can open the door? None of this makes sense.
“What is going on?” I shout. “Why do I need this? WHAT DO I DO?”
I’ll never forget the first blizzard in Winter. Days after we returned, the weather kicked up as if celebrating our return. Snowflakes cut through the air, clouds darkened the sky, the temperature plummeted even more. Every Winterian in Jannuari ran outside to greet the gale, absorbing the chill with stunned ecstasy.
Standing in the courtyard of the palace, arms to the sky, cold numbing all other senses and wind deadening all other noises, I closed my eyes. I had never, in all my life, felt so remarkably alone. But it was a perfect kind of alone, a delicate, dreamlike peace.
This feeling now, as I awaken, nearly drowning in my fear, blood roaring in my head—this is the exact opposite of that. Alone, but desolate and swirling deeper into oblivion.
I bolt upright, the canopy around my bed in the Yakimian palace jostling with the force.
“My queen?”
Nessa holds my hand in one of hers, the key lying on the quilt beside me, my fingers cramped from being pried open by her. I suck in air, lungs screaming like I held my breath for the entire dream. Or nightmare, more like, but I yank free of Nessa and scramble off the bed, eyes on the key, body shaking from head to toe.
“What happened—” I start to ask, but I know. I feel the knowledge all over, every muscle aching and drenched with it as I pace, my wrinkled gown swaying around my legs.
Nessa stands. “Henn said you collapsed in the library. Dendera fetched a doctor, but he couldn’t find anything wrong with you. You were so still, though, and I couldn’t believe it was nothing—nothing natural, anyway. So they all left, and I said I’d watch you, and I saw your fist all clenched up. It was that key—it did something to you. What is it? It has to do with the magic chasm—”
“Nessa,” I stop her in a biting rush.
Hannah planned for us to die—but couldn’t go through with it for me, for whatever reason.
I have no idea how to find the Order of the Lustrate. Not beyond these keys. There’s something more to them, something I don’t understand, and it terrifies me.
And if I tell Nessa any of this, it will give her even more fuel for nightmares. Theron already broke, and I can’t handle her hurting more too—
“I can’t tell you—”
“Why?” She ducks around the bed, closer to me, glaring, her cheeks red.
“Because this isn’t your fight.”
Her glare hardens. “Liar.”
That makes me start. Nessa, my Nessa, is mad at me.
“I know you’re hiding something,” she continues. “I’ve known since we got back to Winter. Everyone else was happy and you were miserable—we won the war, yet you looked like you did in the camp, scared and waiting for something to break. It’s the magic chasm, isn’t it? Something about it has you worried. Noam? Angra? What is it?”
I shake my head, either in response or because I cannot, will not, admit this to her.
“Stop keeping it from me! I grew up in misery. I don’t know why everyone thinks I’m so fragile. I can handle the truth!”
The door connecting my room to the one beside us opens. Dendera, Henn, Conall, and Garrigan run in and freeze at the sight of Nessa shouting at me.
“You shouldn’t have to,” I tell her. “This shouldn’t be your life. I’ll make it better.”
“That isn’t your responsibility!”
“I’m the queen—of course it is!”
“No, it isn’t.” Nessa jabs a finger at me, every muscle in her face tight. “It’s your job to make sure we have food and houses; it isn’t your job to make every one of us happy. I deserve to know what’s going on. You aren’t the only one who loves Winter and wants to protect it.”
“But I’m Winter’s conduit, Nessa.” My voice breaks. “I’m the only one who can—”
“Stop it!” Nessa waves her arm around the room at everyone gathered here. “You are not the only one. This is my kingdom just as much as it is yours. This is my war too!”
“This is my war too, Sir! You have to let me fight. I can help, I know I can!”
My own voice echoes back at me from Nessa, and I can’t do more than blink at her. All the dozens of times I yelled at Sir, the exact same words.
I clap my hands over my mouth, shock freezing me in place. Dendera and Henn realize it at the same moment I do and their concern melts into the sad, hard set of truth.
I did to Nessa exactly what Sir did to me for years. What he did to everyone. He tried to single-handedly accomplish the most insane tasks—raids to get the locket half, scouting new camps, meeting with potential allies. He was always alone, stoic and hard and removed from our lives until he desperately, unavoidably needed us. He tried to keep the weight of our failures on his own shoulders so we wouldn’t have to deal with the painful, wracking truth of what our lives were.
I hated him for it. We all did. I’d see Dendera exchange glances with Alysson or Finn snarl to Sir’s retreating back, and I knew everyone felt, on some level, the same maddening urge to shake Sir into realizing that we already knew the dangers of our lives. If anything, his hesitancy to let us help dragged out the worst of it.
And I did the exact same thing. I tried to force a specific life on Nessa.
A guttural, scraping noise fills the bedroom, and Dendera’s eyebrows rise at me. It’s me—I’m laughing. I brace my hands over my mouth but I can’t stop it, insane giggles bubbling up my throat and erupting into my palms until I’m doubled over, unable to breathe through the absurd twist that I’ve become Sir.
I collapse on the floor, my stomach cramping. Everyone in the room just stares, which only makes me laugh harder.
Nessa kneels beside me, her anger fading to a slight tint of red on her neck. “Meira?”
I lower my hands, laughter fading under the sudden trembling of my pulse. “You called me Meira.”
She sighs, but her smile blinds me again, the kind that sends chill deep into my soul. “You’ve always been Meira,” she says like it’s the simplest thing in the world.
I shake my head as Dendera joins us, kneeling next to me on the floor.
“I tried not to be,” I say, the words coming before I can consider a response.
Dendera takes my hand, her face blank, waiting. “Why?”
Her question, or maybe the dream, or maybe just months of being consumed with fear, breaks me, and it all pours out, every reason I cling so tightly to Queen Meira.
“When I got the locket half and led Angra’s men straight to camp. When I fought marrying into Cordell even though it would’ve solved so much. When I barged into Noam’s office and risked destroying our one alliance. Even in the Abril camp, when I brought down the ramps, I could’ve killed my own people. Everything I did, every selfish act, was impetuous and risky and I hurt everyone.” Tears stream down my cheeks, hot, branding tears. “I was queen, all along, every moment of my life, and I could have helped everyone—but I didn’t. I was so selfish. I could have done more, I could have—”
Saved everyone. I could have saved everyone in Winter, if Hannah had let Angra kill us both. But she didn’t—she sent me away. She couldn’t go through with it. She was weak, or maybe strong—I don’t know what, but she didn’t do it, and I’m just like her. I’m weak and scared and I try so hard, but it’s never enough.
No part of who I am is enough, so I tried to be someone else.
Dendera silences me with a hand on my cheek. “You listen to me, Meira Dynam. Yes, you have made mistakes, but I have watched you succumb to this role over the past few months, and that, I believe, is the biggest mistake you have made. The biggest mistake we all made. We’ve all been afraid, and Meira, you look at me. You saved us. You, this beautiful, wild girl before me—you saved us. So be you again, and whoever that is will be exactly what we need.”
You saved us.
Her words dangle before me, tempting, alluring. I haven’t thought that . . . ever. I’ve never let myself bask in the good I did, only the good I could have done.
But . . . I saved us. I saved us.
I inhale, and this time, I feel it. This time, it rushes through me, life-giving and fresh and cool, filling me up with Dendera’s and Nessa’s certainty.
Dendera stands and moves to the trunk against the wall. Endless bolts of fabric sit within, some half-made articles of clothing, and she scrambles through it. When she pulls her hand out, the air I managed leaves my body in a gust that sends me scrambling to my feet.
My chakram in its holster, the great circular blade glinting sharp and polished, the handle worn smooth through the middle.
“My queen,” Dendera says as she passes it to me, bowing over the weapon.
I ease my fingers around the chakram, my hand curving into place naturally, every muscle unwinding in a ripple of peace. I never should have been without it. This is me, whoever I am when I hold my chakram. Both the thoughtful, careful queen I’ve forced myself to be and the wild, passionate girl who pushed her kingdom to teeter on the edge of defeat—but also snatched it back from that edge.
A warrior queen.
I can be both. I will be both. I’m tired of fighting myself—I have far too many enemies, far too many obstacles, to spend so much energy wrestling myself into submission. I have far too few friends to alienate those closest to me. I need to start trusting them. And if they break . . .
We’ll just have to pick up the pieces together.
I lower my chakram to my side and turn to Nessa. “All right, I’ll explain everything. But first—” I exhale. “There’s someone else who needs to hear the truth too.”