ONE WORD FUELED Mather all the way from Winter to Ventralli.
When he and the Thaw reached the Feni, saw dozens of Cordellan ships freshly docked, soldiers disembarking to swarm Winter with reinforcements—go.
When they crept aboard the smallest ship, launched it out into the water in the dead of night and bobbed away from their newly enslaved kingdom—go.
When they sailed up the river, packed on that maddeningly small boat, nothing to do for days but pace the deck and stare at the passing scenery and plan, think, worry—go.
Go, move, fight—Mather’s whole body was an arrow pulled more and more taut against a string, ready, so ready.
None of the Thaw tried to talk to him about what had happened. No one mentioned Alysson’s death, or Cordell’s takeover, or Meira’s possible fate. They just patrolled the boat, quiet, obeying Mather’s sailing orders—which were rudimentary at best as he’d only been on a boat a handful of times in his life.
When Mather had started learning how to fight as a child, it had seemed more like an elaborate game played with wooden weapons and clunky armor. It wasn’t until his first kill, when he was eleven, that he realized the seriousness of it. He’d gone out on what should have been a simple reconnaissance mission with William and they’d run into a Spring patrol. Only three men, but while William dealt with the two who swarmed him, Mather drew his blade, instinct moving his muscles so that he didn’t even feel like he was the one fighting. A detached, hazy interaction that had ended with blood on his hands and a body at his feet.
That shock of realizing that the things William had been teaching him weren’t games, but tools to kill people, was one of the most jarring moments of his life. He’d always known what fighting would result in, of course—but he hadn’t understood it, felt it, until that moment.
And Mather knew that was what had happened to his Thaw.
They had real weapons now; they had seen the reason for their training erupt before their eyes. This wasn’t some game they were playing to pass the time. This was the difference between a free kingdom and slavery, happiness and misery, life and death.
This was the future of their kingdom. The seven of them, barely more than children, with only enough training to defeat soldiers if they had the benefit of surprise and numbers.
But Spring had been defeated by such a small number—though the refugees in Winter’s nomadic camp had been populated with seasoned fighters, not teenagers.
There was no room for doubt. No room for worry.
Go.
They reached Rintiero a few hours before sunset, the seven of them flying off the boat in a swirl of white hair and desperation. The docks were mostly silent, boats bobbing lazily in the current, sailors tidying up their wares for the evening.
“Where do we go now?” Phil asked as the rest of the Thaw stretched and gawked at the city before them, their faces mixes of relief at being on solid ground and awe at being so far from home.
But Mather didn’t have it in him to stop and let them wonder. He nodded at Phil’s question and stomped down the dock, grabbing the first person he came across—a sailor winding rope up his arm.
“The Winter queen,” Mather snapped. “Is she here? Has anything happened to her?”
The sailor yelped at Mather’s fingers clenched around his forearm. “I . . . um . . . what? Who—”
Mather shook him. “Is the Winter queen here?”
“Y-yes!”
She’s here. She’s alive? Don’t lose focus. GO.
Mather gripped the man tighter. “Is she at the palace? Where is it?”
The sailor nodded, trembling as his eyes shot over Mather’s shoulder. The Thaw must be behind him, and Mather realized how odd this must look, a group of Winterians appearing on a dock and surrounding a poor Ventrallan sailor who probably was thinking of nothing but a mug of ale and a warm bed.
Mather released the man’s arm, took a step back, hands lifting in surrender. It took all his strength to do so, his drive to go, go, FIGHT warring with his conviction not to unnecessarily terrify innocent people.
“I—I think so—” The sailor waved his hand toward the northwest. “The complex is that way—a forest, in the middle of the city—”
Mather clapped the man’s shoulder in an act of goodwill, but the motion made the sailor chirp and cover his head with his arms.
“Sorry. Thank you.” Mather took off at a sprint.
Everyone followed, Phil pushing forward to run alongside him. “He feared us.”
Mather spared a glance at him, some of his tension easing as his muscles, cramped after so long on the boat, stretched in the run. “Yes.”
Phil’s chest puffed out. “Never thought someone would feel intimidated by me.”
Mather cut down an alley, leading the Thaw northwest. “Could’ve been because we outnumbered him. Could’ve been because we surprised him. Or it could’ve been because he saw we were Winterians and expected retribution.”
Phil squinted at him. “Retribution? For what?”
For something Mather couldn’t bear to say out loud. For allowing our queen’s death on their soil. “He could’ve been lying about Meira.”
Phil swerved around a barrel in the middle of the cobblestone street as understanding washed over his pale skin. He didn’t say anything more, just pressed faster, Mather matching him.
They stopped once more to ask exact directions to the palace, which took them to a lush thicket of decorative forest. A few smaller roads wound out of the greenery with one large, ornate passage open at the front, but Mather pulled the Thaw away from the main entrance, opting for some sense of stealth. Who knew what waited for them behind that forest?
A path to the left seemed the most promising—narrow, for walking only, most likely a servant entrance. But as Mather angled toward it, Hollis caught his arm.
“My lord,” he whispered in a low growl, nodding to the right, where a slightly wider path darted out of the forest from farther behind the palace. Down that path moved a contingent of soldiers, dozens of them, all outfitted as if for war with weapons and armor and horses. Within the group rode a lone Ventrallan woman, her entire demeanor speaking of money and privilege.
The group rode out of the forest and into the city with the purposeful clip of a goal dangling just before their eyes.
Mather took a step forward, watching them vanish into the multicolored buildings.
“My lord?” Hollis questioned.
“What would a noblewoman need with a group of soldiers that large?” Mather wondered.
Trace grunted. “Nothing good.”
“Exactly,” Mather agreed, and pushed into the street, following the group. No one questioned why he chose to go after the soldiers rather than enter the palace, and honestly, the only excuse he could think of was that the knot in his gut compelled him on. So many men, led by a woman who, despite her Ventrallan mask, emanated an air of malice—nothing good could come from this at all.
And he knew Meira well enough to realize that she would most likely be wherever the bad things were happening.
They kept a few blocks between themselves and the soldiers as they moved deeper into Rintiero. Evening crept in, toying with their shadows to give them away. Mather pulled the Thaw back, dropping as far behind as he could without losing the contingent.
So when the confrontation finally happened, Mather and the Thaw only reached the square as the Summer king’s body fell, the conduit on his wrist proclaiming his station to all around.
“Damn it,” Mather cursed, yanking Phil into the shadows of the alley that had almost dumped them into the fray. The rest of the Thaw crowded behind them in the darkness.
The noblewoman, whose threatening speech gave herself away as the Ventrallan queen, turned to a Summerian girl, immobile with shock, her eyes on the king’s crooked neck. Mather didn’t hear whatever the queen said to her, blood pounding in his ears as he gaped at the body on the cobblestones.
The Ventrallan queen had snapped the Summerian king’s neck somehow. Without remorse, by the way she lorded it over the girl now.
Dread rushed up Mather’s body and he turned to stone, one arm still pinning Phil to the wall beside him.
If the Ventrallan queen had killed the Summerian king . . .
What had she done to Meira?
Mather’s eyes shot around the square, but no other bodies lay there. What about the palace? They needed to go back. Was this some kind of coup on the Ventrallan queen’s part, or was the king also involved? Did he have Meira—was he tormenting her the same way this queen tormented the Summerian girl?
The dread in Mather’s body caught fire, burned cold and hot all at once as he spun back up the alley. He couldn’t see anything, couldn’t hear anything, just the thumping of his heart pushing images into his mind of Meira’s body lying in these too-pretty streets—
“Mather!” Phil grabbed his arm, but no, there was nothing else in this city, nothing else in this world, just him and Meira and he would find her—
“Mather!” Phil snapped. “Look!”
Phil whirled him around just as a projectile caught his eye, something flat and circular cutting a line from the Ventrallan queen to a roof across the square. The queen roared outrage and grabbed her shoulder, glaring at the object.
Mather lurched forward.
It was a chakram.
He noted the building it came from and every tightly wound muscle sprang into action.
“Follow me,” he said, and shoved back into the alley, sprinting around buildings, cutting up side streets, making a haphazard path around the square toward the building from where the chakram had come. Adrenaline numbed everything but the barest, most instinctual thoughts—Soldiers were climbing up the building, gaining on her, but only five, easily dispatched; were those swords clashing? The queen must have turned on the rest of the Summerians—
A shadow flashed over him, drawing his attention to the sky. A few more shadows followed, soldiers in pursuit, and Mather jerked to a stop.
“Trace, get to the next roof—you’ll be our ranged fighter. Everyone else, go up the south side of the building—quiet, though. Surprise is all we have.”
They dove into action, and just as Mather leapt for a window ledge on the building, something dropped off the roof and clattered to the road.
Meira’s chakram.
He plopped back onto the cobblestones, swept it up, and scurried up the building with renewed force. She was up there—she was alive.
Frigid ice above, he hadn’t realized how horrified he’d been until he felt the relief those words brought: like fresh air chasing away the rankness of a battlefield, like the cooling respite of herbs healing a wound.
Mather’s grip on the chakram made his desperate climb awkward, but a beat after his Thaw made it to the roof, he swung up himself.
Their surprise had worked—the four soldiers at the opposite end of the roof went down without more than a few startled yelps. One man remained, bellowing fury with his back to Mather.
The soldier lifted a sword above his head and ran forward. Mather slid out his own blade and dove, impaling the man through the back and yanking his sword free. The soldier collapsed, rolling to the side, revealing—
Meira.
She crouched, her arms up defensively. Her eyes shot from the soldier’s body to Mather, her brows furrowed, and he knew if he was having trouble catching up, she had to have been completely stunned.
Mather remembered their last interaction, the conversation that he regretted more than he could express. And while he had reconciled himself to loving her, she had told Mather she didn’t want him and had spent the past weeks with Theron. Nothing had changed for her—so although every nerve in Mather’s body ached to dive forward and scoop her into his arms, he stayed back, poised, ready, hers.
“Are you all right?” he asked, because he had to say something, had to break free of this moment before it consumed him whole.
She blinked, her confusion flowing off her face in a rush that left her gasping, trapped somewhere between screaming and crying. And before Mather could explain or ask anything more, she launched forward and knotted herself around his neck.
“You’re here,” she panted. “How are you here?”
The weapons clattered from his hands as he wrapped his arms around her, pressing her more firmly to his body. Ice above, he’d forgotten how she felt against him—she was so small yet so strong, all but choking him with her grip. He clung to her, drowning in the way she hugged him, how she buried her face in his shoulder, her lungs filling on raspy inhales.
Meira was alive. She was alive and safe, even if Alysson was not.
Mather leaned his forehead against Meira’s temple, exhaling long, inhaling even longer.
“You’re okay,” he said, or asked, just needing to feel the words in the air between them.
Meira nodded, holding against him the same way he held his forehead to her. Breathing, resting, using each other like nourishment in a famine.
“Are you?” She pulled back but didn’t unwind from him, so close to him, so close to him. “How did you—why are you here?”
The question sobered her and she spun out of his arms, gaping at the Thaw who had hung blissfully quiet behind them. Phil met Mather’s eyes, a sly smile stretching his mouth. A waggled brow joined Phil’s smirk when Meira took Mather’s hand, held it absently like she needed some touch to keep her steady.
Mather didn’t care to return Phil’s teasing with anything but a smile of his own. He could breathe now, breathe where he hadn’t in days, and the sensation made everything sharp and beautiful for a moment that he knew would be all too fleeting.
“Who are you?” Meira asked the Thaw, her voice awed and dazed.
Mather stepped forward, weaving his fingers more firmly with hers. She analyzed each of the Thaw with quick, studious sweeps, and as she did, her shock hardened into something like determination. The dangerous expression her face had taken so often growing up, but now, it held a resolved twist, like she had gone from simply being stubborn and wild to channeling that energy into a goal.
And as she looked at the people before her, Mather knew what that goal was.
Winter.
“These are the Children of the Thaw,” he introduced. “And we have much to tell you, my queen.”