Winterspell (57 page)

Clara pressed her fingers to the headset, bringing his voice closer. Her vision was hot with tears. “Yes. It's me. Hello, Nicholas.”

His name sat strangely on her tongue, although she had said it many times over the last two years, alone in the intimate safety of her bedroom. She found herself laughing. Her heart swelled, lifting her.

He let out a slow breath in her ear. “I've missed you, my Lady,” he said after a moment, and his voice was thick. She wondered what he would look like now, if his hands would feel the same, if his kisses would be as irresistible, and how beautiful it would be to learn to know him, finally, as two people who had done what they needed to do and survived to celebrate it.

“Come home to me,” he murmured, and it was like arms enfolding her. “I'm here.”

Clara closed her eyes, slipped the glove from her bandaged palm, and emptied the vial's contents onto her fingertips. Then she let it fall. The glass shattered on the cobblestone. Somewhere on the road, bells jingled merrily. She focused her senses, tasted winter on her tongue, and reached out into the cold. A sense of going home filled her, and she whispered: “Take me
home
.”

When the Door formed, she felt its light without opening her eyes. She smiled, took hold of it, and stepped through.

Also by Claire Legrand

The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls

The Year of Shadows

An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing Division

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author's imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright © 2014 by Claire Legrand

Jacket photo-illustration copyright © 2014 by Aaron Goodman

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Jacket Design by Lucy Ruth Cummins

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Jacket Photo-Illustration Copyright © 2014 by we Monsters

Sources of quotes at beginning of each section are from an edition of the Nutcracker fairy tale by E. T. A. Hoffman: Hoffman, E. T. A. (1984). Nutcracker. (Ralph Manheim, Trans.) New York, NY: Crown. (Original work published in 1816.)

The text for this book is set in Adobe Jenson Pro.

Map endpapers by Catherine Scully

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Legrand, Claire, 1986–

Winterspell / Claire Legrand.—First edition.

pages cm

Summary: To find her abducted father and keep her sister safe from the lecherous politicians of 1899 New York City, seventeen-year-old Clara must journey to the wintry kingdom of Cane, where Anise, queen of the faeries, has ousted the royal family in favor of her own totalitarian, anti-human regime.

ISBN 978-1-4424-6598-5 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-1-4424-6600-5 (eBook)

[1. Magic—Fiction. 2. Fairies—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.L521297Wi 2014

[Fic]—dc23

2013019385