Winter Glass by Lexa Hillyer

Author:Lexa Hillyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

16

Wren,

Formerly a Maiden of Sommeil,

Indentured to the Mad Queen Belcoeur

She cannot help the others until she helps herself. She cannot help them if she is dead. That is the mantra Wren repeats in her mind as she flies from the mountains and across dew-stung forests, ravaged by the cold winds and aware only that she cannot allow heartbreak to catch up to her.

She saw what Aurora has become, and though she didn’t understand it exactly, she sensed something terrible—something inhuman—had happened to her. It sickened and scared Wren beyond anything—even beyond the burning of Sommeil, her home, her world. In another life, she might have wanted Aurora to be her home, but in this life, she sees now, the barriers are greater than status, greater than shame, greater than the curse of a jealous faerie. A dark magic has come between them.

And it doesn’t matter anyway, because whether Aurora had succeeded with her sword or not, Wren was going to die. Wren is dying. She has been turning to stone, gradually but certainly. It began at her ankle and spread up along one calf. Then sprouted behind an ear, traveling downward toward her chest. Soon it will be evident where others can see it: on her face, and hands. And then in her heart and lungs, stopping their beat and breath.

That is the secret Aurora could not know. That Wren is cursed too. But Aurora undid her curse—she woke up. And Wren has tried so hard over these past weeks to salvage hope for herself too. Maybe there’s some way to undo it.

But she’s running out of time.

She was very little when her aunt first told her of the stone curse. Wren recalls sitting on the floor before a warm hearth, smoke curling up beside them as she learned the tale of the curse that had supposedly been passed down in her family from generation to generation, but had never been tested or proven. It seemed more like myth to her then—a mere bedtime story meant to reassure her of her rightful place in Sommeil. It was said that her great-great-great-aunt Oshannah was Queen Belcoeur’s favorite handmaiden; she went with her everywhere, and for a time, was even granted access in and out of Sommeil when the world was first created. Belcoeur doted on Oshannah, like a sister or daughter—a companion in her desperate loneliness—and soon, Oshannah longed for freedom. The weight of Belcoeur’s need was too much.

The queen relied on Oshannah for everything. And that was why she finally placed the faerie curse on her—not out of anger but out of love. The curse said that Wren’s great-great-great-aunt would never be able to leave her side—would never be able to leave Sommeil. That if Oshannah ever tried to fly away from the queen, ever tried to sever her blood from her home, she’d turn to stone.

It was a warning shared by all the women in her family since before Wren could remember—a caution never to question the sanctity or the bounds of Sommeil.

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