Before the Snow (7 page)

And yet when his jaw opened, she watched his lips as if whatever came out of them mattered. That whatever he said might determine something for her. It felt like something was caught in the balance. She reminded herself that she had made her choice. There were no more decisions.

But as the current jostled her into Lazar, she let herself rest against his chest for longer than she had to. And he didn't move—at least not right away. He looked down at her and murmured, “Are you okay?” Nepenthe didn't answer at first. She wasn't sure what she was. For the first time in a long time, she didn't know and she didn't like it. She felt anger rise up in response. As she leaned into the relative safety of the boat's edge, she wasn't sure if he was as affected by the moment as she was. She assumed he wasn't.

There was a gentleness and an edge to Lazar, which she recognized in herself, too. Nepenthe realized that she had never encountered attention like his. Lazar was smart, and funny, and somehow they lined up in a way that seemed to knock her off her feet and settle her all at once.

There was a certain amount of understanding there. But there was so much she didn't know, as well. There were intervening years he had lived as a prince and she had lived as a witch. They were not the same—far from it. But the second that she leaned into him, she felt the distance fall away.

They continued down the River in silence. But Nepenthe had never been good at silence.

“What were you thinking, running away with Ora?” the River Witch demanded.

“It was Ora's idea,” he defended. But then he qualified, “For a few hours, the world felt different. Things felt possible.”

“You're the Prince. The snow literally bends at your will. What more can you ask for?” Nepenthe said.

“Everything.” He looked down at the water. “For someone who has the power of a big chunk of the world at her fingertips, you live by so many conventions.”

“
I am not conventional. I am a witch. We are as free as nature itself.”

“Nature has laws, but we can break them. We are freer than nature,” he countered.

Nepenthe turned over his solecism in her mind. She had never thought of it that way.

18

The compass jumped to the left. They had entered a part of Algid that Nepenthe was not familiar with. They traveled for most of the day and into the next evening, talking and not talking until the trees on either side of the River were a charcoal color with trunks of gigantic circumference. The terrain on the riverbank looked rugged, with a strange gray soil encumbered by rocks. It was, in a word, uninviting. But Nepenthe tapped Lazar's shoulder and he steered them toward land and then docked without even a look of hesitation.

“It's getting dark,” the Prince said dubiously as he extended a hand to help Nepenthe off the boat.

His manners were automatic, and her lack of them after so many years with the witches made her infuse more meaning into every polite touch than was warranted.

Nepenthe took his hand and released it as quickly as she could when her feet landed on the rocky ground.

“Let's see how far we get. I doubt the Outlanders are going to sleep.”

But Nepenthe was better in the water than on land, and she lost her footing almost immediately as they made their way into the woods. Lazar's hand was on her waist, righting her before she could right herself. And she could not pull away this time without falling.

With his arm around her, it began to snow. Nepenthe finally slipped away from the Prince, grabbing a nearby branch for support.

“I'm better in the water,” she said, half excusing herself, half needing to say something to make whatever she was feeling in their every look and touch into what it was supposed to be. Something ordinary, instead of the opposite.

But Lazar did not rise to her small talk. He kept the silence, and when he stared back at her, she was almost certain that his expression said something that could not be said aloud.

“I should have brought something warmer to put on,” Nepenthe said, trying again.

Lazar shook his head suddenly, as if remembering something, remembering himself. And then he shrugged off his torn coat and offered it to her.

“Forgive me. I should have given it to you sooner.”

She protested at first, not because she wasn't cold. But because she wasn't sure if she could handle having something of his wrapped around her. Again. But Lazar insisted, draping the fabric around her for the second time in this turn of the clock.

Nepenthe inhaled deeply, grateful at least that the coat did not smell like him this time. Maybe it was the cold. But she was happy for that small blessing.

“We have to make the rest of our way on foot. You should know that the farther we get away from the River, the less power I have. We might have to rely on you.”

“There are robbers in these woods. The rumor is that they seduce and steal and sometimes make it so their tale is never told unless they want it to be . . .”

“And you believe that?” Nepenthe asked.

After they walked for what seemed like hours, Lazar wanted to stop.

“You can't seriously suggest that we spend the night here?” Nepenthe asked.

“Well, not here.” He focused on the snowy ground, and it began to move. Within minutes, he'd built a snow shack.

“You can have your own, or we could share this one,” he said.

She
hesitated. Lazar looked spent from the effort. His skin looked paler, his eyes weaker. But the idea of spending the night that close to him made Nepenthe almost want to put him through whatever it took to keep some distance between them.

He looked at his handiwork. The snow tent was translucent and kind of beautiful. She thought about making a fire in front of it, but worried the heat would melt the ice. They decided to do without.

Lazar raised his hand again to make another tent, but he was breathing heavily from the effort. “It's better if we share,” he said.

“Share?”

“We can cuddle for warmth.”

“Did you just say ‘cuddle'?”

Nepenthe laughed. It was such a sweet word coming from a prince who had not seemed sweet since he was just a little boy.

In the end, they shared the same tent under the dancing North Lights. It wasn't awkward. Rather, it felt like the most natural thing in the world. It was then that Nepenthe knew she was in trouble. It was a surprise somehow.

Lazar's arms wrapped around her. She let herself sink into him. It was more than warmth. It was the same kind of comfort she got from the water—only more so.

Nepenthe awoke in the middle of the night to a sound outside the tent. Lazar's arm was still around her. She moved it and shook him gently, but he was in a deep sleep.

She got to her feet and stepped outside into the snow. Something was moving toward her. Fast.

It was a creature made of ice and snow, and it was coming right at her.

“Lazar!” she yelled.

The River Witch put up a wall of water from a nearby pond. The creature slammed against it and broke apart. She breathed a heavy sigh of relief. But just as she started to relax, the ice and snow bits gathered together again.

“Lazar, wake up now.”

It would not take long for that thing to realize that her waterfall was something it could walk right through. As the creature charged again, she finally heard Lazar stir.

“What is it, Nepenthe—” he said with a yawn.

The second he spoke, the creature dropped back into the snow, as if it had melted.

A thought hit her.
Had the Prince created the creature in his sleep?

“What is it? Why did you wake me up?”

“Tell me something. Were you just dreaming?”

“I was until you woke me.”

“What did you dream about?”

He smiled sheepishly. “The same thing I always dream about. It's this thing made out of snow. Like a wolf. Only bigger.”

“I think your dream came to life.”

“That's impossible. Isn't it?”

“It's not. I saw it with my own two eyes. Come with me. I was waiting for you to get stronger before we tried this. But I think it's time.”

She led Lazar to the pond. “Watch.”

Nepenthe
concentrated on the surface of the water, and a figure rose up from the deep. It looked just like her. Then it dropped back into the water.

“In time you should be able to do the same with snow. Actually, it looks like you already are doing it subconsciously. Try it.”

Lazar shook his head. “Maybe later. We have to get Ora back.”

Ora. Had I almost forgotten her?
Nepenthe wondered. She turned away from the pond, and he put a hand on her arm.

“I want to see you,” he said suddenly, his blue eyes more intense than she'd ever seen them. He looked at the water. “I want to see the real you.”

“You can't demand something like that. I do not bow to you. I am not here as your servant.”

“I wonder how things would be different if I had met you without Ora,” the Prince said.

You did
, Nepenthe thought. But she didn't say it.

“You mean, if you'd met me when the beautiful sun wasn't shining? I dare say, I look better in the relative kindness of Ora's shadow.”

Lazar opened his mouth to protest.

“I didn't think that princes apologized. I wouldn't want you to do something that is not in your nature,” Nepenthe echoed his words from their “meeting” in the study.

He laughed, at ease again. Nepenthe wondered why she had let him off the hook. Perhaps she still held some regard or pity for the little boy she'd walked out of the Throne Room and into the light.

“I know I am not much to look at,” she said matter-of-factly. She turned away from him.

But Lazar's words stopped her.

“I remember you. That's why I want to see you. I want to see you because . . . I remember.”

“What do you mean, you remember?”

“‘You may be able to freeze me for a while, but you can't kill me.' You said that to me once.”

“I wanted to tell you. I thought you deserved to know. But the way the magic works . . . if I were to break the spell and the binding . . . there would be a curse.”

Nepenthe searched his face for a reaction.

He knew. He remembered. And he had kept it from her.

Lazar was putting away his pain—packing it away—but his ice was like her water. There was no storing it, no bottling it, up. It had to come out.

There was an explosion of snow in the distance. And then another. Almost like fireworks.

“My father was ashamed of me, afraid of me, all those years. I was dying for him to look at me with pride. But it isn't pride . . .”

“I'm sorry, Lazar.”

“I'm sorry you didn't tell me. If I had known, things would be different for us . . . ,” he said gently.

He wanted to see her—the real her—and despite the fact that they were on the road looking for the girl who he was supposed to elope with, Nepenthe knew Lazar's request had nothing to do with him being a king in the making and everything to do with him being a man.

She had shown him her true self before when they were small.

But this felt different. This was different.

Back
then, she had shown him her inner River to prove a point. She had shown him to get him out of the room with the people he had frozen into human ice sculptures. The ones he had made and could not bring himself to leave.

But now they were not children. And now he wanted her to reveal herself to him. If she did it, Nepenthe would not be proving a point. It would be her sharing herself. Something that she had never done with anyone outside her family and the Coven.

She closed her eyes and felt her skin disappear under a steady stream of water. She felt her arms fade into streams and then return into tentacles. The River Witch opened her eyes and watched her tentacles stretch toward the sky. Their shadows played across the ground and finally across Lazar's face.

“Is this really what you want to see?”

Nepenthe showed him what the water—what she—could do. It felt personal, intimate. And when he stepped into the water, she felt a little part of herself retract.

What will he think when he sees all of me?
she worried.
The gills, the tentacles.

She twisted away, but the Prince turned her back to face him.

“I am so glad you showed me . . .” His eyes softened and widened.

No one had ever looked at her like that.

“Don't mock me . . . I am not like Ora,” Nepenthe said.

“You are magnificent. Power has a beauty all its own,” he said simply.

Her heart swelled. She had never wanted or sought such a compliment. But when he said the words, she knew he meant them.

Lazar reached out and touched her face. She was aware that he could freeze the pond. She was aware that he was as powerful as her.

“You are just as beautiful as Ora…maybe more,” he added.

Nepenthe took a step back, and the current parted for her. She had forgotten about Ora. She had forgotten about the witches. All there was was Lazar and Nepenthe. Standing inches apart in the water.

“Nepenthe,” he said urgently.

She stepped back again.

He was trying to call her to him. He had forgotten about Ora, too. He had forgotten about Snow.

He stepped forward toward the River Witch. This time, she didn't move away.

What would happen if he touched her? If he kissed her? If she was honest with herself, she wanted to know. Being a witch was not being a saint. But being a sister meant a fair amount of respect and honor. Was she trading that now for love?

She knew Ora had castles in the sky. She'd been dreaming of being a princess all her life. Nepenthe saw Lazar and wanted him, but there was no destiny or future with him. There was him and the water and her desire to close the distance between them. There was no future; there was no past. There was only this.