CONFRONTING THE CORDELLAN soldiers must have been the final blow to William’s resolve, because ever since, Mather had been swamped with tasks. Menial, mundane tasks, when during the weeks prior, he hadn’t been missed. William gave him chores sent through other channels—Finn telling him that planks of wood needed sanding, Greer recruiting him to scrub dishes. Mather didn’t see William at all, and in not seeing him, he grew more infuriated.
Mather deserved to have William shout at him for the defiant thing he had done—not that he regretted it, but had they been back at their nomadic camp and Mather had stood against him, William would have made him learn firsthand the meaning of the word obedience. That was how he punished them—well, mostly Meira, in all honesty: by making sure they learned how each soldier needed to be perfect for a mission to be a success.
But in this new life, William did not reprimand him. He didn’t scold him or revisit what had happened—he just moved on from it, dismissing the event without a backward glance.
This was the final blow to Mather’s resolve too. The final bit of proof that he was exactly where Winter needed him to be: building a defense. Because with leaders like William avoiding everything, it wouldn’t take more than a handful of soldiers to tear down Winter.
And Winter already had far more than a handful of soldiers here.
Mather ducked down a narrow alley out of some lingering instinct to make his path scattered and chaotic so he couldn’t be followed. Not that it would be difficult to figure out where he had been going every night after he finished his list of chores—there were only so many inhabited streets. But he still took his time until he popped out two buildings down from the Thaw’s cottage and allowed himself a small sigh of relief.
His sigh bit off when he noted the figure slouched over the steps, shuffling around, metal clanking. A Cordellan soldier? Had someone finally found out about their secret trainings?
Readiness calmed Mather’s nerves, the still of attack. He launched forward, grabbed the person’s neck, and flung whoever it was out into the darkening street.
But he had felt long hair on the person’s neck. And not armor on the shoulders, but linen, and when the intruder hit the ground, there was a cry that sounded much too . . . feminine.
Though the sun had started to fall toward the horizon, enough light remained that when Mather’s eyes locked on the intruder’s face, he sprang forward and swooped her to her feet.
Snow, not a soldier at all—Alysson.
She blinked in a daze, her eyes catching his and crinkling in an unspoken question.
He grimaced. “I thought you—” he started, bit back the end of it. “I’m sorry.”
Alysson put one hand on his shoulder like she wasn’t steady until she touched him, made sure he was all right. “You thought I was a Cordellan?”
Mather frowned as the door to the cottage burst open. Phil stumbled out, everyone else behind him, but he didn’t get far before his foot caught on a bundle leaning against the top step. The bundle Alysson had been crouched over.
Phil stopped, one of their practice swords clutched in his fist. They must’ve heard Alysson’s cry of surprise during their self-led training, and as Mather looked up at them, all the blood in his body surged downward. Alysson was here, staring up at Phil and his wooden sword, and she would see just how much Mather had disobeyed William.
But Alysson didn’t seem the least bit aghast. In fact, she seemed amazed.
Her hand went slack on Mather’s shoulder. “You’ve gotten these results using splinters?”
Mather’s jaw swung open, shut, open again. “What?”
“Hey!”
Rattling, the dull thump of iron. Phil bent on the top step, rustling through the bundle. A thick blanket fell away, revealing weapons. Swords, daggers, a bow, and a fistful of arrows.
Everyone gazed at the weapons spilling in a deadly waterfall down the stairs. Mather especially, his hungry eyes calculating how many swords, how many knives. Seven swords. Eight daggers—four sets.
He turned back to Alysson, who now had her arms crossed as she watched the Thaw pick their way down the steps, maneuvering around the weapons as though disturbing them at all would cause them to vanish.
“Where did you get these?” Mather asked, his hands shaking as if he already knew her answer, already felt the repercussions wafting through him. “How did you know?”
Alysson turned a soft smile to him and opened it in an almost mocking laugh. “I spent sixteen years in a camp surrounded by fighting. You think I can’t recognize when a group of children, who should be just as scrawny as the rest of the malnourished Winterians, have the beginnings of muscle definition? When they should be unsteady and weak, but move down the street with, dare I say, grace?” She clucked her tongue. “I know I never picked up a sword myself, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t pay attention.”
Mather choked. “You knew? You know? Who else—and where did you get—”
Ice above, just finish a sentence.
But try as he might, Mather couldn’t get more than half-formed words to blubber out of his mouth. He knew the Thaw would eventually show physical signs of training, but he’d assumed everyone else would brush off the way his child warriors had begun to fill out their clothes more than they should as the effects of rebuilding cottages. But Alysson had noticed—Alysson, who had never done more than glance at a sword ring.
So who else knew?
She seemed to read the calculating horror on his face and put her hand on his cheek. “Of course William knows, but he’s not seeing a lot of things lately that he should.”
Mather shook his head, afraid he had misheard her. “You don’t agree with him?”
But even as he asked that question, understanding burst through him.
“He doesn’t know you brought these weapons.” His mind rang with the softest vibration of regret, and he realized that he wanted William to know. He wanted William to address this, to see what he had done, for William’s eyes to fill with the pride that Alysson’s held.
That last bit made Mather gape. “But why?”
Alysson squeezed his shoulder. “You need them. And you’re my son, as much as you struggle to accept that. You have always been and will always be my son. That’s how relationships work—when one person is blind, the other must see for them. When one person struggles, the other must remain strong.”
Mather touched her wrist, amazement coursing through him.
Here Alysson stood, this woman he had always taken advantage of as someone who had helped the Winterian resistance in their camp, not the frontlines. Honestly he had never viewed her as a guiding source of strength. That had always fallen on William.
But Mather had been wrong.
About a lot of things.
“You shouldn’t have to be the one to put us all back together,” he whispered. The Thaw filled up the abandoned street in front of the cottage, testing weapons, laughing at how much heavier a sword was compared to their thin lengths of wood. He didn’t want them to hear, didn’t want to break this moment blossoming between him and his mother.
His mother. Frigid snow above, he’d almost thought it without balking that time.
Alysson’s smile faded. “You need me more. William too. It’s the nature of his position. I learned long ago that I have to be the one he leans on while Winter leans on him. And”—she hesitated, her brow rising conspiratorially—“if you want, someday I know you can do the same for Meira.”
Mather reeled. Alysson knew about that area of his heart too. Had anything ever gotten past her?
She leaned closer to him. “You’ve fought for Winter so spectacularly. I am more proud than I have ever been to call you my son, and I will do all I can to help you as you help our kingdom. But don’t forget to fight for yourself as well—there is no shame in that.”
Mather closed his eyes, dropping his head in a bow—of surrender? Of agreement? Of gratitude? Everything. His body swam with remorse, but through that, he felt the tightest flash of joy—the Thaw had weapons now. Real weapons, and Alysson’s support.
But he couldn’t get the image of Meira out of his head, her face when he had left her bedroom the night of the ceremony. Her eyes wide and desperate, tears streaking in violent rivers down her cheeks. It had killed him to leave her—as it should have.
He never should have stepped out of that room. All the things he had wanted to do—run back to her, fight for her—were things he should have done.
He understood that now, understood through Alysson’s silent strength.
Sweet snow, he had known Alysson his whole life, and never once had he seen her break. The most he could remember were a few stray tears flying down her cheeks when other members of their group died. But that was it, all the pain she ever showed, and Mather’s other memories were of Alysson standing with her hand on William’s shoulder, or a silent, firm nod before someone went off on a mission. Quiet and steady, and Mather had never noticed, not once.
He’d been blind for far too long.
So when Mather opened his eyes, he intended to tell her. He intended to fall to his knees and beg forgiveness for being such an ungrateful son.
But the peaceful tone of the otherwise empty street was gone, replaced with a sensation he knew all too well: alertness. The Thaw held their new weapons with purpose, their bodies forming a U-shape toward an attacker across the street from their cottage. Everything blurred as Mather whipped toward the enemy, already reaching for the dagger he always kept in his boot.
Alysson saw his movement. He knew she did by the way her eyes followed him as he spun, arms out, dagger ready.
But she didn’t move, just wrinkled her brow, her mouth cracking open in a faint moan.
Mather couldn’t identify her expression. No, he refused to, pushed it from his mind even as it slammed persistently into his skull. He’d seen that look before—he knew that look—
His eyes dropped to her chest, to the growing blotch of scarlet that stained her blue dress red. The tip of a sword gleamed against her body like a morbid bauble on a necklace.
The enemy hadn’t been across the street. The enemy had crept up on them, close enough that Mather should have heard or seen or stopped them—
The blade ripped out through Alysson’s back and she pitched toward him, her eyes vanishing into her skull as she collapsed in his arms. Mather’s dagger tumbled from his hands, his heart surging numb shock through him as his fingers groped from Alysson’s head to her shoulders, searching for a sign of life, a sign of explanation—but he knew. He’d known the moment he saw the weapons she’d brought, but he’d hoped she hadn’t gone there, that she’d realized as he had what a suicidal thing it would be.
“She stole weapons,” a Cordellan soldier confirmed from where he had stood behind Alysson. He was the same one who had threatened Feige days ago and his blade, heavy with maroon blood, glinted in the twilight. “And thieves will not be tolerated in a Cordellan colony.”
A scream. A bright, piercing croak of noise, and Phil burst out of the ranks of the Thaw, sword blazing overhead. Mather shouted as the Cordellan soldier pivoted toward Phil, shouted because he couldn’t fathom losing someone else, not now—
The soldier’s blade swung up, the end poised at Phil’s neck. Phil stopped a beat before he would’ve been pierced through, his chest rising in a desperate gulp of air.
Mather didn’t have long to be grateful, though. The Cordellan sneered at him as shouts went up, as the clanking of armor ricocheted down the street and cries of victory echoed through the city. A horn blew, long and loud, a pulsing tear of noise that signaled—
. . . a Cordellan colony.
Noam. He’d officially taken Winter.
No, the only thing this horn would signal would be the end of Cordellan occupation in Winter. This ended now, tonight.
Arms tugged at Mather, voices shouted through his sudden, deadly fog.
“We have to run!”
“There are too many here—get up!”
Mather growled, pushing away whoever tried to grab him. Everyone was an enemy, everyone would die for this because Alysson’s blood coated his hands and her body lay motionless where he arranged her on the ground. He scrambled to get his dagger again, his sight marred with murderous red as the Cordellan soldier ran away from him, the coward, to regroup with more soldiers who appeared at the far end of the street. Cowards, every Cordellan was a coward, and Mather would kill them all.
A face came into focus. “There are too many,” Hollis pleaded. “You taught us that. You taught us to assess situations, to fall back if necessary. We have to run now.”
Awareness sparked through him. At least a dozen Cordellans spanned the street to their north, blocking off any retreat into the abandoned parts of Jannuari. The soldiers marched in steady, taunting steps toward them—they were being corralled into the center of the city. From the shouts and cries of alarm ringing through the rest of Jannuari, Mather guessed the same thing now blocked every street out of the inhabited areas. An unbreakable circle of Cordellans finally preying on the Winterians.
Mather sheathed his dagger, swept his mother’s body into his arms, and ran. The Thaw fell in behind him, all of them equipped with weapons they didn’t entirely know how to use. But they gripped the swords with such lethal determination that Mather pitied any Cordellans who tried to stop them. But stop them from what? Where would they go?
The palace. William was there.
But Meira. Noam had irrevocably turned on Winter—had he opened the magic chasm? Had Meira failed him somehow? Was he here in Jannuari, or had he sought her out?
Was she still alive?
Mather bit back thoughts that threatened to cripple him under the body he carried. No, he couldn’t think yet. Meira had to be alive.
And nothing in Primoria could protect Noam if she wasn’t.
The palace’s front steps flew under Mather’s feet and he jammed his shoulder into the door, sending it banging into the wall. The lateness of the evening meant the main halls were empty, all workers returned to the cottages outside or to rooms deep in the palace. Seven pairs of feet thundered across the ballroom, up the marble staircase, down empty halls of ivory and silver that wrapped them in the encroaching shadows of night. The hazy grayness gave everything a dreamlike feel, encouraging the idea that this was wrong, wrong, and Mather could fix it. . . .
They sprinted down the long walk to William’s office, the cold air of the balcony snapping around them. The door stood ajar and Mather stumbled to a halt paces from it, his arms cramping from how tightly he gripped his mother’s body.
She’s dead, William. Cordell killed her because you wouldn’t listen to me, because you let them stay here, because I didn’t try hard enough to protect Winter.
She’s dead because we’re both weak, William. Because I am your son in every way.
But none of those words came out as he walked into William’s office, because William stood with his back to the door, facing Brennan, who held a sword pointed at him.
“. . . for too long,” Brennan was saying. “But my master no longer has need for this kingdom’s freedom, and he has at last instructed me to take control of what rightfully belongs to Cordell. Congratulations—you are the first Season Kingdom to become a Cordellan colony, with Autumn soon to follow. I’m sure you’ll see it as an honor.”
A growl bubbled in William’s throat. “I’ve heard men talk about their king as you do. ‘My master.’ That is not Cordell. You don’t serve Noam, do you?”
Brennan clucked his tongue. “Noam has his uses, but we all choose a rising sun over a setting one.”
A rising sun? My master? Who did Brennan mean? The only men Mather had ever heard talk about their king like that were men who served Angra.
But Brennan had said, What rightfully belongs to Cordell . . .
It didn’t matter—all that mattered was the weight in Mather’s arms, the body still warm against his.
“William.”
Mather’s own voice shocked him by how worn it sounded. It scratched against his throat like dry air on a hot day, and when it did William looked over his shoulder, for a moment ignoring Brennan and his still-poised blade.
William’s eyes barely glanced at Mather before they dipped to Alysson’s body. Whatever emotion William had been feeling sank back into his face, the muscles relaxing, his brow drooping.
Mather had seen William react to death before, to their soldiers who stumbled into camp only to die hours later. He had been stoic in their passing, showing his pain through small gestures—putting a hand on their forehead, bowing over their corpse.
But this was how death truly felt, the way William gazed at Alysson’s body as if he could force some of his own life into her through sheer need. Like he couldn’t grasp the image of her, one of those fleeting blips of dreams before dawn. Like he had already planned her murderer’s death, from the first blade drawn to the last moan from the soldier, a quiet, tortured plea.
Mather dropped to his knees, Alysson’s body sliding out of his arms as William turned on Brennan. A knife appeared, the blade pressed between William’s fingers. He ducked, grabbed Brennan’s hand where he held the hilt of his sword, and twisted until Brennan screamed from the pain of his fingers dislocating. As Brennan moved to retaliate, as Mather felt the Thaw behind him draw a collective breath, William swiped his hand against Brennan’s throat.
Brennan staggered back, slammed into the bookcase, his eyes fixed on the ceiling. He grabbed at the gash in his neck, and William watched him, standing over the Cordellan captain as the man slid to the floor, blood pulsing between Brennan’s fingers on gagging spasms.
When he slumped against the wall, Mather shuddered with a single thought.
He died too quickly. He should have suffered—ice above, I wanted him to suffer.
William crouched over Alysson’s body, Brennan’s blood painting his hand red. Mather couldn’t deduce anything from William’s face—he’d see more staring at a wall. Meira had said that about Mather too, a few times. She’d thought it a conscious decision, but it wasn’t, it was just him as much as it was William now, and Mather wanted to grab William’s shoulders and shake him until real emotion tumbled out.
“You’ll leave,” William said. Mather blinked at him, the words not processing as William scooped Alysson’s body into his arms and stood. “The queen will probably be in Ventralli by the time you reach it—head to the Feni River. You’ll travel faster by ship—get aboard whatever you can. Do anything you have to, Mather. Anything.”
Mather leaped up as William laid Alysson’s body on his desk. Her head bobbled to the side, white hair cascading over her cheek, some of the strands clumped in tangles of blood and dirt. Her eyes sat open, staring unseeing at the study crowded with the Children of the Thaw.
How long ago had Mather stood in this same spot and called his mother a coward? She hadn’t said a damn thing to stop him. Mather clenched his fists, trying frantically to remember everything she had said to him. He should’ve written it all down, should’ve branded it on his skin. Should’ve, should’ve, should’ve.
“I’m sorry,” Mather moaned. That broke him. Not seeing his mother murdered, not the still-sounding horns of Cordell outside, signaling the ensuing takeover.
William spun away and grabbed Mather’s arms, fingers digging like vises into his muscle. “You cannot afford to be weak. You will go to our queen and make sure she is safe.” William shook him as Mather moaned, damn it, he was still so weak. “Do you understand me?”
Mather shoved out of William’s hands. No, this man did not get to pretend he was the strong one. They both knew who was the strong one, and she was dead.
He wanted to say all that to William. Damn it, his mother had just died, and he wanted William to be a parent now, to pull him into his arms and assure him that they would get through this together.
But they wouldn’t. This was who they were, had always been, and would continue to be.
So Mather turned his sobs into a snarl. “You aren’t allowed to break either. If I sense weakness—” Could he do this? Could he threaten William? “I’ll kill you. I swear, William—you already let this takeover happen. You don’t get another chance. I won’t let Winter fall again.”
William turned away without a response, and Mather pushed out of the study. The twang of a blade being drawn filled the air behind him—William arming himself.
The Thaw followed Mather silently, and he exhaled thanks that they didn’t try to talk to him. This horrified them too, he knew—their freedom had been so short-lived. But Mather pressed on, weaving into the dark streets, avoiding soldiers as chaos unfolded. Here Cordellans had to fight to subdue Winterians—there Winterians raised their hands in surrender. Here Cordellans barked threats—there Winterians fell to their knees and shouted compliance.
It made Mather sick, how many of them bowed without a fight. But he couldn’t stop an entire army with only seven warriors. Their small number made sneaking out of Jannuari easier, but that was all they could do. They needed Meira.
He needed Meira.
“You’ve fought for Winter so spectacularly, and I am more proud than I have ever been to call you my son. But don’t forget to fight for yourself as well—there is no shame in that.”
Mather might not have remembered everything Alysson had said to him, but he remembered the last thing. He pulled those words like armor around him along with the promise he had made William—he would not let Winter fall again.