Chapter Five
The Spinal Steppe Mountain in the northeast of the Kingdom of Alrick is no place for a florist. I traipse up a slope, thoroughly underdressed in a few measly layers of cotton, clutching a cloak under my chin with wind-burnt fingers.
A short while ago, the rocky path gathered dustings of snow, and now, with only the wool around my shoulders for protection, I’m faced with an endless expanse of white. A steep climb toward a clouded summit.
It occasionally snows in the citadel in winter, but it’s a light coating, the barest kiss of ice on the cobbled streets.
This, I am unprepared for. This is a deep bitter bite under my skin, a cold that claws into my bones and makes my joints struggle to function.
With a wolven howl of wind around my stinging ears, I drag my feet forward, heaving my sodden slip-on shoes through inches of snow, and pray to the gods I’m still on the right path.
If the gods even exist in this bleak, infinite nothing.
The book the queen gave me said that Odyssa flowers only grow here on the Spinal Steppe, on the edge of a precipice not too far up the mountainside.
Great, I’d thought. No problem. I like walking, I like nature, it shouldn’t take that long.
From the citadel to the mountain, I can hop on the back of a traveling cart for an hour or so, and from there, I just follow the road up until I reach the cliff. Simple.
Then snow started falling faster than I could anticipate—far faster than any ordinary blizzard—and the path before me disappeared, like the flower is being protected by the mountain itself, sending snow and wind and storms to keep people away.
Now icy rocks grow from the ground like the goosebumps on my skin, and somewhere to my left, an ashy abyss waits, a drop so severe that it descends abruptly into darkness.
I should turn around. I should go home and come back more prepared. Maybe with thicker clothes. Or a firelit torch. A hot drink. Something to thaw the shivers in my veins.
But I can’t. I know the flower is near. I can feel it. There’s a certain nip in the air, an energy that shivers from the sky—something louder than the wind, stronger than the chill. It’s the blue hour, the in-between. Magic.
A shuffle nearby freezes me in place. From the stillness, a white hare bounces over the snow with the lightest of leaps.
It pauses, resting on its hind legs, and sniffs the air, twitching an ear.
As fast as it appeared, it scampers away, blending into the snow like the water bleeding into my socks.
I hoist a foot up and try to follow its tracks.
If there are small animals here then it should mean I’m not in danger of meeting any bears, or worse.
White rabbits are animals blessed by the gods.
It should mean that there’s food and water nearby, a cave, a burrow, something. Anything—
A hidden rock trips me up and I’m sent sprawling into the quilt of snow. Powdery ice seeps into my chest like a cold poison. My cloak, now heavy and useless, weighs down my shoulders, as does the flower basket strapped to my back.
A sob cracks my dry throat.
I’m going to die here.
I’m going to freeze and die and be forgotten and be buried in a blizzard until a bear comes and has me for dinner.
Or—
My head shoots up, the wet ends of my hair stuck to my cheeks. Something just called to me. Nudged me. Roused my magic like all flowers do.
I listen intently, lying flat and still.
What is that?
My eyes focus. Right before me, on a canvas of cloudy gray sky, twin flowers sway on the very edge of a precipice that pokes out like an arrowhead.
I whimper in relief. The deep blue stems of two Odyssa flowers twist around each other, softening out to a pastel blue that gives way to blooming heads of white petals.
Unlike the showy, pointed petals of the Feiyan, both Odyssa are soft and round, balls of inward curls that protect a gleaming cerulean center—exactly like Card’s eyes, sharply aware and persistent.
Resilient. As I must be to collect them and get off this godsforsaken mountain.
I crawl my way to the flowers, biting my lip to resist the cutting cold.
I don’t know how strong this precipice is…
. If I remember from the times the lake behind the castle froze over, I should balance my weight, move slowly and steadily.
My clothes are a water-logged burden, but I manage it.
Splayed out on my front, I grasp the bottom of the Odyssa stems. And they smile.
For a brief moment, I get the barest waft of warmth, the faintest memory of a deep navy sky and deathly silence as the sun sleeps under the horizon.
Just as I read in the book the queen gave me, this flower lives in the seam between day and night like the stitches separating light and dark.
It’s volatile and elusive, hiding out here in the mountains, in the quiet, in the snow, not bright like the sun, or beautiful like the moon, but a vivid, fleeting moment in between. And I found it.
I wiggle my basket off my back and use the tip of my trowel to make minuscule jabs at the icy dirt, slowly, carefully digging out the two Odyssa with at least some of their roots intact so I can pot them later.
After a quick enchantment to give them sustenance for the journey home, I delicately place them inside my basket where they’re cushioned and safe.
Next, to find some safety for myself. The wind bashes the air, almost angry to see its flower friends gone, but I’m able to roll onto my shoulder and tug my basket securely on.
The mountain behind me groans.
There’s a crack.
A creak.
“Oh, g—”
Where there once was rock beneath me, a torrent of snow slides like a waterfall, sweeping me in its current and pulling me down over the edge of the cliff and into the emptiness beyond.
My scream is a splinter in my throat as I fall, tumbling through the shower of snow with nothing to grasp, nothing to keep my stomach from convulsing.
I crash into a sloping pile of snow, pain spiking in my shoulder, and barrel down farther, rolling with thunder in my ears.
My descent slows, and I have barely a second to register my surroundings and fling my arms to my face.
A rock juts out of the ground just ahead and I’m hurtling toward it, fast. I tuck my knees up just as my right ankle collides with the raw edge of stone and forces out another shriek.
Finally at a halt, I curl inward on the snow, gripping my hands around my ankle and shuddering for breath.
Gods. Fuck. Ouch. The throbbing in my ankle tells me it’s probably broken, and there’s an awful twinge in my left shoulder.
I’m so stupid. Why didn’t I ask anyone for help? Why didn’t I make Card come with me?
I know why. Because I would’ve felt guilty about taking up so much of his time.
He’s got his wedding planning, language learning, important matters.
Anyone who I’d have brought here would have told me I’m mad.
They’d have called it a heedless quest. They…
they just wouldn’t have understood. They don’t have to walk through life constantly proving themselves like I do.
With a sniff, I shuffle up to sitting and press my fingers against my left shoulder. Under the wet cloak, the muscles are tender and aching, but I can rotate it. Slightly. Just a little. So it’s not dislocated. But my ankle…
Taking stock, I flip open my basket lid to check if the flowers survived the fall—thank the gods they look unharmed—then cast my eyes around to find myself on a slope that stretches toward a grove of pine that cascades down the mountainside.
With the cliff at my back and frozen clothes, I’m stuck.
Stranded. Panic creeps in like the chill.
What can I do? Could I crawl my way to the pine?
Would there be any healing flowers in the cluster of trees?
Or any birds? Could I somehow get a message back home or—?
Gods, I don’t know. I can’t think. My ankle spasms and I can’t breathe and there’s no relief or comfort or savior or warmth or miracle, there’s no one coming, no one—
“Hello?” a voice calls from within the pine.
I weep.
It comes again. “Is someone there?”
“Hello! Over here!” I cry, and hastily wipe my face to see clearer.
A girl jogs out from the line of trees, her brown hair in a long braid down her back, bow in hand and countless satchels and pouches attached to her thick outdoor clothing—much more suitable than what I’m wearing.
She spots me and sprints over the snow with ease, tossing her bow aside as she kneels next to me.
“What on earth are you doing out here?” she asks me, rooting in her leather side satchel.
I’m so stunned by her arrival that I can’t answer. The girl raises her caramel-colored eyes to mine and presses a glass vial of amber liquid into my numb hands.
“Drink this,” she orders. “You’re frozen stiff.”
Fighting the rattle in my bones, I lift the drink to my dry lips and tip it down my throat. Like the clouds parting, warmth seeps into my veins and the shivers retreat. I swallow every last drop desperately, and when the remedy has reached the tips of my toes, I exhale and find my words.
“T-Thank you,” I stutter, then lick my lips to get my mouth working again. “Gods, thank you. I thought—I— Thank you.”
The girl sits back in the snow with one knee raised, as comfortable in these conditions as a deer.
She doesn’t look too much older than me, but there’s an edge to her posture like she’s ready to flee at any second, and from the dagger at her hip and the arrows strapped to her back, she doesn’t look like anyone I know from the citadel.
She’s familiar with these mountains. Thank the gods.
“What are you doing out here?” she asks again as I pass back the empty vial.
“I was looking for a flower on the mountainside and I fell.”
“In those clothes? Are you crazy?”