Before the Snow Page 5

  “Hurry up, we need to get ready for the ceremony.”

  16

  Ora never missed a moon ceremony or a ritual. Any chance to dress up and perform lit up her pretty face. But Ora was missing this one. Nepenthe loved them for a completely different reason. And now she needed their connection to erase the one she felt with Lazar.

  The Coven passed the cake. They drank from the chalice. They danced under the Lights, but in between Nepenthe felt herself missing a step. Her hand was shaky. Her words and steps lagged behind. It was as if the Prince was still with her in every movement, every bite, every word.

  When they finished the incantation, she saw him leaning against one of the Witch of the Woods’s trees. She thought for a second she had conjured him up. As the moon rose, she waited for him to fade away. But he was still there.

  He was real. She waited for the other witches to drift off to their own celebrations before making a beeline for Lazar.

  He was breaking the witches’ code. She assumed he had followed her here. That he had been watching them. Their rituals belonged to them. And to no one else. Not even a prince. Especially not a prince. No one came to the Hovel uninvited, and neither she nor Ora would ever ask him here.

  “What are you doing here?” Nepenthe demanded when she reached him. “The witches have killed people for less,” she warned, pulling him away behind a tree and hoping the bark wouldn’t tell the Witch of the Woods who was here and what was happening.

  “What are you doing here?” Nepenthe repeated.

  The Prince had found her for the second time that night. His hair was disheveled. His coat was torn.

  “What happened?”

  “After the ball, I told my father my intentions to marry Ora.”

  “Marry . . . ,” Nepenthe blurted. “And your father . . . he did this to you?” She recovered on the outside, but big heavy drops of rain began to fall.

  “He forbade it. He suggested that I keep Ora as mine . . . and that I marry someone else . . .”

  “So he did this to you?”

  “No, Ora and I . . . we decided. We didn’t need his permission.”

  Nepenthe was angry at Lazar for being here, but his posture told her that something was very, very wrong.

  “What happened?” she asked. As she spoke she looked away from him, up at the North Lights. Witches believed in them more than the moon. But what was she wishing for? That Ora had broken it off with him after standing up to the King? That the Prince was here to find Nepenthe? That this night had ended with them apart and he wanted to change that? She searched his face, looking for the answer there since she did not want to address the contents of her own heart.

  Lazar’s shoulders hunched. His usual confidence was missing. Nepenthe was taken back to the little boy he once was. And she felt her heart go out to him.

  Then there was Ora to consider. She was more than just any witch to Nepenthe. Somehow since Nepenthe had lost her parents, Ora had become a constant. She had become important to her. Not a part of Nepenthe like the water. But a fixed point on the shore that she had thought would always be there.

  He continued to try and explain himself. “We didn’t know it was a trap.”

  “You were going to elope.” The words cut Nepenthe as she said them, making them more real.

  “We could be punished, but we could not be undone.”

  The words sounded more like Ora than the Prince. It was her idea. Nepenthe was sure of it. But that didn’t change what had happened. He had chosen Ora not as a dalliance, but as his wife.

  “Did you—did you go through with the marriage?” Nepenthe said, water rising up in her, hating that she cared about the answer.

  “No. The priestess was an Outlander. They knocked me out and they took Ora. Your sister is gone. But I don’t think they will hurt her. It’s me they want. Or, rather, they want me to do something in exchange for Ora.”

  “Gone? NO!” Tears welled in Nepenthe’s eyes and her mind raced. First her parents. Now Ora. Nepenthe might be jealous, but Ora was still her sister, and there was something she could still do to save her.

  “They know I love her and would do anything to get her back.”

  “What do they want in return?” Nepenthe asked, keeping her voice even, knowing very well she would pay any price for Ora.

  “They said something that makes not a bit of sense. That’s where I got lost,” Lazar said, frowning with confusion.

  “What? Every detail matters.”

  “They want a mirror. It’s a part of the prophecy. Or so they say. Father won’t tell me the whole of it. I am surprised that he believes in such things.”

  Lines from the oracle’s prophecy drifted back to Nepenthe, like a bedtime story the Witch of the Woods used to tell her.

  “We should tell the Coven. They’ll know what to do,” Nepenthe rationalized.

  “No! We can’t. The Outlanders said it has to be me. The Coven can’t help.” Lazar was starting to panic. She could see it in his eyes even before the tree behind her pricked her with frost.

  Nepenthe knew that she had to get Ora back. She had no idea where the Hinterlands were, but there was one way to find out. She turned with every intention of returning to the Hollow.

  But Lazar put an icy hand on her arm.

  “The Witch of the Woods knows every inch of Algid from the ground up,” Nepenthe said with a look that told him to let go.

  “We can’t involve the witches. I shouldn’t have even come to you. The Outlander said . . . he would kill her, Nepenthe. Please . . .”

  She relented with a heavy sigh. She did not know if his was the only way, or the path to disaster.

  “We can do a Locator Spell,” she said. “But I still need something of Ora’s in order for it to track her. I’ll sneak in and be right back. They're so busy with the Feast, they won’t notice—”

  Lazar stopped me again.

  “Will this do?” he said, rummaging in his pocket for his watch. He opened it and there was a lock of hair. Ora’s hair.

  It was something human girls did—not witches. Giving away a piece of yourself was like giving someone a weapon. A lock of hair could be used in a spell to find you or to hurt you. This was the kind of spell that Nepenthe’s mother had taught her was only to be used if there was no other option.

  At once, Nepenthe wanted to admonish Ora for breaking the witches’ code, but jealousy flooded through her. Unwanted, but there all the same. She was unable to flush it out, and she pressed on. Ora was missing. And Nepenthe loved her long before whatever it was she felt for Lazar.

  “Someday you will meet someone who might make you want to choose,” her mother had said over and over the years.

  Nepenthe had laughed at her mother then. She had half resented the idea of the choice. Because from where she was sitting, she didn’t see that there was much of one.

  “I should take you back to the King,” Nepenthe said finally, calculating the risk. If Ora was lost, she did not want to take Lazar along only to lose him, too.

  He looked up at her, resolute. “I would just follow you and probably freeze people in the process. Do you want that on your conscience?”

  “Who says I have one?” she said, trying to joke, but the words landed awkwardly, heavy with their lack of truth.

  “Ora wouldn’t be in this mess if it wasn’t for me. Please help me.”

  “I would be looking for Ora no matter what. I don’t need you to come with me.”

  “Why are you fighting me on this? I could help.”

  “You could hurt.”

  “I won’t use my Snow unless I have your permission. You have my word. But I need to come to the Hinterlands. Please, Nepenthe.”

  She wished she could say that it was his word that made her said yes. But it was the way he said her name.

  17

  Nepenthe took Lazar to her boat. She let him steer while she began the Locator Spell. She took a piece of ribbon out of her hair, leftover from the ball, and she b
roke two branches off a nearby tree.

  “Thank you, Witch of the Woods,” Nepenthe said.

  She tied the branches together, making a cross. Then she tied the piece of Ora’s hair to one end.

  “Knife?” Nepenthe asked.

  Lazar produced a small dagger from the sheath at his side; Nepenthe cut her hand with it and dipped the opposite side of the cross in her blood.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  Nepenthe knew that he had not seen this kind of magic since the ceremony that took his memories.

  “It’s a blood compass. It will find Ora for us.”

  Nepenthe put the tool on the ground, and it began to spin. It paused at north. She scooped it back up and put the compass on the shelf behind the wheel of the boat. It pointed upstream.

  The boat rocked and shifted Lazar into Nepenthe. She stared at his profile a second too long. She didn’t know if she was trying to memorize it or savor it. She did not want to think about him ever again.

  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.