Page 115 of Frost Like Night
An explanation. Please, let there be an explanation.
But the longer I stare at her, the longer I realize she might be right.
I’d assumed the conduit that links us in our bloodlinekept her connected to me. Or has it ever really been her?
I shake my head. “Stop it! You’re just trying to unsettle us.” I turn to Sir so Hannah is almost behind me. “We have to get through this test—it’s a test of heart.”
Sir still stares at her, his lips in a thin line. He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t react at all.
“You could have imagined me, Meira.” Hannah’s voice is just as soft as I remember, invoking feelings of awe that make me want to listen with rapt attention to her every word.
“I didn’t imagine you,” I say to her, though I stay facing Sir, while beside me Mather remains poised. “I didn’t even know you when you appeared to me. How could I have made up all those things you told me?”
“How can you be a conduit yourself?” Hannah counters. “How is anything in this labyrinth possible? When you touched the keys, you saw what you needed to see to get here. When you touched the plates in this labyrinth, they showed you pieces of the tests to help you pass them. Maybe the magic took what form it had to in order to help you during those early days as well. It created what you needed—a mother.”
I spin on her, fingernails biting into my palms. “I made my peace with you in Paisly. I saw what real parents are like—I saw what a true family can be. And I know now that whatever relationship I had with you waswrong. Everything you did was your own doing, and none of it is my burden.But I will fix your mistakes, Hannah.I am better than you.”
“I know,” she says, and she smiles again. “Your heart isn’t the one that needs peace.”
My mouth cocks open.
“Who—”
Hannah pivots to face Sir. “I gave her to you for protection. She was forced to seek help from the magic because you failed me.”
Sir.
Panic cracks through me and I take two reeling steps toward him, but he still won’t look away from Hannah.
“Sir, don’t listen to her! Look at me—”
“You failed me, General,” she says, and this time, the bite in her voice is unmistakable. “You failed Winter.”
“He did not fail Winter!” I whirl on her.
Mather appears beside me, his hand on my shoulder, trying to tug me away. “He has to pass this test.”
I step directly in front of Sir, talking only to him. “Hannah caused all of this.Shecaused this.”
Sir blinks. Movement that makes me sigh in relief, until he latches onto my face as if seeing me for the first time.
“I grew up with your mother. Did I ever tell you that?”
I freeze. Even Mather, still trying to coax me away, stops. We both recognize the melody in Sir’s voice, the tone he’s always taken when reciting history lessons.
“We were both children in Winter’s court. Much like you two grew up together.” He encompasses Mather with aglance. “I saw her awkwardness in youth. I saw her mistakes, her breakdowns, her faults—which made it harder than I expected to see her as a queen, once she was crowned.”
He looks past me, at Hannah. “I made the mistake of not treating her with the respect owed to her position. And when she grew more solemn and distant as the war intensified, I comforted her as a friend would help a friend, not as a soldier would help his queen. I should have been only her general, and I wasn’t. I should have guided Winter away from the path she was taking us down, and I didn’t.”
I grab Sir’s arms. “You didn’t know she had made a deal with Angra. You can’t expect to—”
His eyes drop back to me and he lifts his hands to my arms. He’s never touched me like this before—in a desperate way that feels all too much like he’s begging. Delirium beats in his eyes the more he talks, awakened by Hannah, by this labyrinth, by everything we’ve endured for the past few decades, and as I watch him, the terror that shoots through me is unlike any I’ve ever experienced.
I’m afraid for him.I’mafraid forSir.
“I swore to myself I wouldn’t make that mistake again,” he tells me, his fingers clamping around me. “I told myself I would see you as a queen, every moment of your life, so I would never lose focus. But I still failed.”
Tears. On Sir’s face.
