Of all the Winterians rescued from the Spring work camps, only six hundred had lived in Jannuari. Two hundred had come from western Winter, seven hundred from the center forests, and a mere one hundred and fifty from the southern Klaryn foothills. Of those who had formerly lived in Winter’s capital, little more than three-fourths of them had chosen to repopulate Jannuari. The rest couldn’t bear the sight of their war-shattered homes and had dispersed three months ago into the now-untamed wilds of a new and unknown Winter.
Sweet ice above, Mather couldn’t believe so much time had passed. How had it been three months since they’d returned to Jannuari? Three months since the battle in Abril where he had broken Angra’s conduit and the Spring king had died. Three months of freedom.
And less than a month since William and Meira and a contingent of others had departed for the southern mines. In hours—moments, heartbeats—they would return, along with Noam coming back from one of his too-short breaks to Bithai. The Cordellan king would amble back into Winter’s capital like the stuffed-up, overconfident ass he was, and swipe what riches the Winterians had been able to extract.
The rattle of armor jerked Mather’s attention to the door of the barn. A pair of Cordellan soldiers sauntered past on their patrol through Jannuari’s inhabited quarter, mocking grins spreading over their faces as they eyed the scene within.
Mather’s grip on his practice sword tightened. But he found he couldn’t hate the borrowed soldiers for laughing—what the Winterians were doing was laughable, training people so soon after years of imprisonment, expecting everything to instantly heal and fall into place. Most Winterians had only recently begun looking like people again instead of starved slaves. Making them fight when their eyes spoke of terror and memories still raw . . .
Mather turned to Henn. “This is too soon.”
Henn leaned forward from where he propped against the wall, observing the training in William’s stead. “We’ve only been at it for a few weeks.” He nodded Mather along. “Spar.”
An order. Mather growled, the sound bubbling in his throat. Orders were all he had now. Orders from William, orders from Henn. Orders from his queen.
A jostling near the door tugged at Mather’s awareness again, but it wasn’t Cordellan armor. Boots, the rustle of fabric, and a voice Mather knew by heart.
“We’ve returned.”
William.
No one seemed to notice the way Mather darkened at William’s arrival, an event that should have made him fake a smile, at the very least.
Henn launched away from the wall, closing the space between him and William like a man intoxicated. “You’re all back?”
Mather saw the unspoken questions ripple across Henn’s face—Is Dendera safe? Is she well?—because similar questions filled him.
If you’ve returned, William, it means Meira is back too—is she safe? Is she well?
Does she miss me at all?
Blotches of red covered William’s cheeks, telling of the cold winds that had chased their party all the way from the mines. He smiled at Henn, dusting snow from his sleeves. It scratched at Mather wrong whenever William looked like that. After sixteen years of William being stoic and hard and unrelenting, happiness looked awkward on him.
“Yes,” William started, one eyebrow rising. After a pause, he waved at the door behind him. “Dismissed. Go to Dendera. She’s just as eager to see you.”
Henn slapped William on the shoulder and darted outside. Which left Mather as the sole person to report on the trainees’ progress, and when William turned to him, Mather found his mouth had dried more violently than the Rania Plains at noon.
“Report,” William coaxed, taking in the Winterians standing behind them.
What did he have to report? The most notable thing the Winterian trainees had done since they had begun was to eat a full breakfast and keep it all down.
“They’re not physically ready for this,” Mather stated, his voice level.
William’s smile didn’t flutter. “They will be. Training will help.”
“They need to heal first.” Mather angled his shoulders forward, all-too aware of how the subjects of their argument stood behind them, watching, listening. “They need to work through what happened. They need to understand what happened—”
Mather cut his words short. William’s veil fluttered, a crack that showed whenever Mather pushed too far. Like when William had tried to explain his reasoning for keeping Mather’s parentage a secret as a “necessary sacrifice for Winter,” and instead of accepting that explanation, Mather had demanded why. Because it made sense, yet it didn’t make sense, and while Mather had wept on the floor of the ruined cottage the Loren family had claimed, William had simply stood, told him it was in the past, and left.
But all William said now was, “No, they need this. They need to get into a routine.”
Which felt exactly like: It’s in the past, Mather. Look only to the future.
Mather panted. He couldn’t breathe, damn it . . .
He shouted a warning cry and dove at Philip. The boy launched backward with a shocked yelp and caught a few of Mather’s rapid blows before he tripped on a lump of straw and smacked onto the floor in an explosion of dust.
Mather wrapped both hands around the hilt of his sword. In one solid push of movement he leapt into the air, dropped down, straddled the boy, and slammed the wooden sword into a crack in the floorboard a finger’s width from Philip’s head.