Winterspell (42 page)

She sidled close, stroking Anise's cheeks. “Now that I am here, beside you—”

Anise mumbled an affirmative, half-awake.

“There is the matter of my father.”

The queen's eyes narrowed. “Your what?”

Had she ruined it? She forced a smile and tapped Anise's nose. “You're drunk.”

After a moment Anise burst into giggles. “Do you know, I think I am!”

“Now that I'm with you, do you think . . . Could you return him home? Could I at least
see
him? I'm sure he's frightened, my queen, and would be glad to see me one last time.”

“Oh, don't worry about your stupid old father.” Anise waved an
unsteady hand. “He's fine. Drugged but fine. We'll go there together.” Her words were beginning to run together. “I need to show you the capital anyway.”

The capital.
Where Nicholas would be headed—if he was still alive.

Anise planted a passionate kiss on her mouth. “
Our
capital. It will be, Clara.”

“My queen, you thrill me with such talk.” Not a lie, not even close. Clara was rapturous with new hope as she collapsed with Anise into the cushions, stroking her arm as the queen's eyes drifted shut. She waited for ten minutes, counting through the seconds as the party raged downstairs. When Anise showed no signs of waking, Clara hurried across the mezzanine to the winding black stairs they'd come up. At the bottom stood a faery sentry.

“I need to fetch some things from my queen's chambers.” Clara emphasized the word “chambers,” smiling suggestively. “Oh, and she doesn't want to be disturbed. I left her in . . . I suppose you could call it a
divested
state.”

The soldier's eyes widened slightly, and Clara hurried past, laughing. She hoped it did not sound too frantic. Anxiety was making her giddy. Anise could awake at any moment, and the crowded party slowed Clara's progress. She kept being swept up into dances, spun between alternating partners, flirted with and fought over by courtiers newly eager to win her favor. It was a glamorous hell, teeming with faeries and humans in chains.

Clara humored them as much as she could, turning distractedly through dance after dance. If she made too quick an exit, it would be noticed. Borschalk, wherever he was, would notice. She tried to search for him without being seen, but he was nowhere to be found. Borschalk, Clara knew, would not be fooled.

At last she managed to slip out through the ballroom's main doors, demurring her way through a smoky foyer full of faeries in various states of debauchery. The scent of sugar stung Clara's tongue. If she did
not get outside soon, the smoke and her own fear would smother her.

There—the exit. She hurried toward it, no longer trying for stealth, but someone grabbed her arm before she could reach it. Another fawning courtier?

Clara turned, frantic. “Please, the queen is waiting for me—”

The faery holding her hand was heavily cloaked, with a dark headdress that fell to his waist and a heavy mask that blocked everything but his eyes and his mouth—a familiar mouth, and eyes not blue but dark. When he pulled her into his body, Clara let him, remembering at the last moment to look flattered. The feathers of his headdress whispered against her sides, and she caught a faint scent, a familiar spice.

“Nicholas?” she breathed.

“This is quite a party. You can see the lights for miles.”

She could have punched him right in his stupid masked face. She could have unleashed the power that now stirred within her, so traitorously, unhelpfully happy.

Instead she pulled him closer. “Have you lost your senses? You're not tall enough to be a faery, and your eyes are
dark
, for God's sake—”

“It's a fair disguise, though, isn't it? For such short notice?”

“Nicholas,
Nicholas
—”

He bowed his head over hers, breathing in the scent of her hair. He shook against her, overcome. “I saw you dancing. Clara, I thought I'd lost you.”

Clara put her arms around his neck, sliding into an intimate embrace. Faeries passing in and out the doors were pausing to watch them, jealous of the faery with his hands on the queen's new pet. She tried to laugh coquettishly. She wanted to cry, or scream.

“Lost me.” Her voice was harsh. Good.
Good.
She clung to that sound. “Maybe that's what I wanted. Maybe I don't want you here.”

He was still. “I deserve that.”

“You deserve much worse.” She pulled away, and he caught her fast.

“Clara, please,” he said desperately. “Don't go.”

She met his eyes, furious. “If you try to hold me against my will, I will kill you.”

“I know. I know you will.”

“Don't patronize me.”

“I'm not. I know full well what you're capable of.”

Dancers had spilled out into the foyer, music following them. Clara began to dance as well; she already stood out enough. Nicholas followed suit, his hands cupping her bare arms. She could have melted at the feel of him so near, overcome with sensation and memory. So unexpected, this reunion, and it clogged her throat with tears.

“Why shouldn't I kill you?”

He was quiet. Their hips circled, mimicking the others dancing around them. “I don't know.”

“You'd better give me a reason.”

“I have none.” He laughed, sounding lost, and it angered her. He had no right to vulnerability. “I only know one thing—that I'm sorry, Clara.”

She opened her mouth to protest, impatient.

“Please,” he said, “let me finish? Please.”

She turned in his arms, as the other dancers did, her back to his front. As he bent close to speak, his headdress fell around her, a cape of feathered black.

“When you disappeared,” he said, low, “I lost my mind. Entering that barn and finding you gone—”

“Yes, you were devastated, I'm sure, to find your soon-to-be slave gone missing.”

A pained sound at her ear. “That I could have ever thought such a thing—”

“And yet you did.” She turned, vicious, and led him through the dancing crowd to a curtained alcove damp with skin and sugar. Surely no one would dare follow her inside, so she ripped off his mask. A mistake. She had thought it would make him uncomfortable, not being
able to hide from her. Instead she was the one knocked off balance, gutted by the expression on his face. There was apology there, and a raw adoration, unbearably familiar. It left her feeling shattered, and hopeful, worst of all.

“I heard you talking to the others,” she said, fighting the urge to touch him. “You said you would force me to bind with you, force me to fight for you.”

“I did say that.”

“And now? Why should I forgive you?”

“I don't know why.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and it aged him. “I can't think of a single reason for you to trust me, Clara, or think me anything but a monster. But I know that when I discovered you'd gone, I lost my mind— No, not because I could no longer use you. Because I had lost
you
—your friendship, your intelligence. Sinndrie save me, your
nearness
.” He turned, stopped himself, turned back. It was important for her to see his face. Her heart twisted. Was he sincere, or simply that same clever pretender? She despaired at ever being able to trust him. “We split off into groups to search for you, and I abandoned mine. They weren't moving quickly enough. They didn't love— Clara, they know you, but not as I know you. You were with me all those years.” His eyes were bright, his voice rough. It was dear and overwhelming. “You were the one friend I had. You
are
the one friend I have. Drosselmeyer never bothered to speak to me, not beyond the necessary. I was a burden to him, but not to you. You spoke to me. I was your friend, and you were mine. And I repaid you by thinking I could manipulate you into serving me, and for that you
should
kill me. I deserve nothing more than that, and I don't say that to stir your pity. It's what I believe.”

Speaking was a feat. “Then why did you come here tonight?”

“To see you,” he said simply. A tired, strained smile. “I didn't know what you would say, but I had to find you. It was all I knew, these past few days—not responsibility or duty—only you. Your eyes. Your
voice.” He lifted a hesitant hand to her face. They were nearer now, hovering close, and he touched her as though he could not help himself. “Clara, it has always only been you, and I'm ashamed I was ever stupid enough to think otherwise. I don't dare to think you can believe me, but I had to say it. I'll leave you if you wish it. Say the word, and you need never see me again.”

She leaned into his touch, and he smelled of home. “How did you get here? They've been hunting you.”

“I know,” he said wryly. “It was endangering everyone until I left—Bo, Erik, the others. I assume they've kept on for Rieden.”

“And you did not go with them.”

“No. How could I?” He drew an unsteady breath, his eyes searching her face. “In that moment when I realized you were gone, everything changed. I recognized my selfishness and understood the truth.”

“Which is?”

“I hate the faeries. I may always hate them for what they have done. I don't know how I will ever stop hating them, or how to rebuild my kingdom, or reclaim it, or make it into what I know it should be—a safe home, fair and just, for all races. I don't know who I am. I've forgotten, or maybe I never knew. I know
nothing
, Clara”—and here he took her face in his hands, his expression urgent—“except that I'm sorry, and that I will do anything to help you. I know nothing now but you.”

When she drew breath to speak, it hurt. “How can I trust you again?”

He was silent; he did not have an answer.

Behind him the curtains flew open. A pair of giggling faeries stumbled inside, already half-unclothed, goblets of punch in hand—but they froze when they saw Clara and Nicholas. A terrible moment, suspended there like the clarity before a fall.

Then they shouted a curse in the faery language and hurried back out the way they had come, shouting above the music, raising the alarm. Clara could imagine what they were saying:
The human prince is here—with
her,
the queen's faithless pet!

There had been no time to judge him trustworthy or not, no time to say what needed to be said, and now the choice had been made for her. They shared a look, and she grabbed his hand in frustration.

They ran.

* * *

The deserted palace-city, its inhabitants away at their revels, was like a nightmare from which all the devils had gone—empty black roads, eerie black towers. The palace windows glowed a dim blue, and the watchtowers along the wall flared green. Everything teemed with tiny skittering shadows, though Clara did not know if they were Anise's mechaniks shaping new walls or derived from Clara's own simmering fear. A tiny flash of blue made her whirl around, searching for kambots; a rush of dark sound kept her running forward.

“The western wall,” she gasped. Behind them the music kept on, but shouts and footsteps indicated a fierce pursuit. “It fell last night. Anise was . . . emotional.”

“That's how I snuck in.” Nicholas turned a corner, sliding on the cold metal cobblestones, slick with oil. “I suppose such a lavish party was more important than rebuilding the wall.”

“It's not as though there is anything to defend against here.”

“Only princes with questionable sense,” he agreed lightly as they hurried down a winding black stair to a lower level of the city. She did not appreciate his poor attempt at humor. Was it insane to leave? She would freeze in the wild in her slip of a gown, and Anise had said she would take her to her father. But even though the queen had spoken of remaking the world, tonight had shown Clara otherwise. There was no guarantee Anise would keep her promises if Clara stayed, and even if she did, Clara would then be condemned to a life of games and lies, of dangerous pretend.

Tonight marked the end of her sixteenth day in Cane; four, then, would have passed at home.

Choice, again, as hateful as ever. Besides, she thought, glancing sidelong at Nicholas as they climbed over the rubble at the ruined wall, approaching torches and spears glowing blue behind them, she could not stand idly by and let them hurt him. Not yet. Not until she had passed her own judgment on him.

Dawn was not far off. Up on the crenellated wall, bathed in the watchtower's pale green light, a faery clothed in nothing but a feathered top hat and gloves asked for a volunteer. Laughing soldiers tossed him a screaming human, his terror drowned out by the peals of a great brass horn. The party, it seemed, was not entirely confined to the ballrooms.

Nicholas's face was grim as the soldiers above screamed with laughter. Clara stepped down after him, shaking, and then they were on the other side of the ruined wall, at the edge of the tundra in the shadow of the Summer Palace. The steel towers of Anise's trains loomed like ghostly giants. In the murky clouds overhead storm lights and train lights blended in a tangle of electricity.

There was no time to be intimidated by such an expanse, however, not when the soldiers behind them were nearer every second. Blue streaks scorched the air. Clara made to run, but Nicholas caught her arm, a strange look on his face—as if he
knew
.

“You do want to leave, don't you, Clara?”

She didn't want to be dishonest, not after days of manipulations and pretending. How bracing, to tell the truth. “Part of me does.” It was all she would say, for now, with Anise's kisses still burning on her skin.

Then the palace behind them exploded with light.

* * *

Along the outer wall and on the sides of every tower, and above the great tents where the party drums still sounded, a hundred chromocasts switched on.