Hi everyone! I’m so
excited to be at Two Chicks on Books today—first of all because Jaime is one
rad lady, and second of all because, well, what I’m sharing with you today has
me crazy excited.
What you’ll read below
is new Winterspell-related material, exclusive
to this stop on the blog tour! It’s a scene from the point-of-view of Nicholas,
the cursed prince of the story. I don’t want to say too much else because the
scene is pretty self-explanatory, but I will say this was tremendously fun for
me to write. It’s always a blast getting into the heads of non-narrating
characters, and seeing what the same story world looks like through their eyes.
I hope you enjoy
reading! And keep an eye out for this same scene when you read Winterspell—there, told from Clara’s
point-of-view.
*
From his prison in the
corner, Nicholas watched the door and waited.
He had just awoken from
one of his halfway-dreams. The magic imprisoning him never let him sleep fully;
instead he slept in fits, all of them polluted with dreams that felt
manufactured to torment him—and probably were.
Most of his dreams were
of long ago—that first moment, eighteen years past, when he had regained
consciousness in this place he now knew to be New York City, and realized he
would never move again.
He hadn’t been injured,
nor had he been dead, although he would soon begin to wish for the latter.
No, he had been encased. Trapped. Bound in a magic so
foul he could feel it writhing against him, as though his bindings were made of
thick serpents rather than metal and iron.
Understanding had come
swiftly, followed by fear, then despair, and then, when he heard that familiar
delicate laughter in his ear, rage.
He had then remembered
everything—the last night in Wahlkraft, the castle glittering with decorations
for the winter festival. Blood spattering the walls. His parents’ cries.
Escaping through the
brutal night, Drosselmeyer at his side. Doors. The smell of singed magic in the
air. Hulking shapes. A woman wearing a helmet like a crown.
Pain. Encroaching,
smothering pain. A vise gripping him. Laughter winding into his ears and nose,
down his throat, seizing his heart.
And then . . . waking up
here, Drosselmeyer hovering over him.
“Your Highness?” the old
man had croaked, and at the sound of his voice, something inside Nicholas had
snapped.
He screamed. He pounded
on the walls of his new prison. He tore at his arms to free himself of bindings
he could not manage to find.
At least, he had tried
to scream.
He tried for hours,
days, until his throat ached from silent screams and his head pounded with the
strain of trying to force his way past the magic that bound him.
He had been vaguely
aware of things happening around him—Drosselmeyer struggling to move him; a
road full of motion, beasts, and people; a softer presence, a familiar voice.
Eventually, lamplit dimness—they had made their way indoors, into a space that
slowly became crowded with shelves of toys, a wall of clocks, perches of
sleeping birds.
Time had passed. Hours?
Months? It had been a haze to Nicholas, punctuated by hated appearances from
Drosselmeyer, trying in vain to free him.
And then . . . she came.
A child, at first. Tiny,
perhaps two years old. A bundle of lace-trimmed blankets and soft red hair in
her mother’s arms.
Later, four years old,
noticing him for the first time. Eyes widening, she had tiptoed near to touch
his spiked metal hand.
At first, he felt
nothing at the press of her tiny gloved fingers; the magic imprisoning him was
too complete. He had in fact begun to forget what it felt like to be touched at
all.
But then she came, and
something about her curious eyes and careful touch made him want to remember.
Years passed. She began
to visit more regularly, helping the old man craft his toys. At first she was
shy; her gaze flitted often to the corner, but she seldom came close.
As she grew older,
however, things began to change.
Sometimes, when
Drosselmeyer left the room, she would creep over to the corner, place her hands
on Nicholas’s rough metal arm, and whisper to him of how things were getting
worse at home. Sometimes she would say hello, and nothing more. Other times she
would simply watch him, eyes narrowed and searching, as if trying to understand
him.
Once, those eyes had inspected
the markings covering his chest, as they so often did, and then, hesitantly, she
had begun tracing those same lines with her bare fingers.
The look of intense
concentration on her face had made Nicholas hold his breath. He had strained to
feel something, anything, a faint
hint of warmth where her fingers were touching him. His focus had been so
complete that he had forgotten everything else—his anger, his unraveling
thoughts, the ever-present hint of cruel laughter that buzzed in his mind like
an insect.
In that moment, he had
known only Clara.
“Clara? I need your
assistance,” Drosselmeyer had called, bustling out of the back room with his arms
full of supplies. The connection broken, Clara had hurried away, and for the
rest of her visit, she had not looked back at Nicholas’s corner.
But those few stolen
moments had been enough for him—enough to sustain him, to keep him whole for at
least one more day.
Clara.
Her name became his
constant companion. He fell asleep thinking about her, and his dreams were not
so cruel with traces of her in his mind. He woke up thinking about her, and
waited impatiently each morning for the shop’s door to open.
When it did not admit
her, he spent the day stewing, and his dark thoughts left him afraid of
himself.
Would she visit today?
The wall of clocks
opposite his corner struck ten o’ clock. Eleven. Noon. He took great pleasure
in the idea of taking a mallet to the lot of them.
Then, four o’clock. Four
chimes, a hundred times over.
The door opened, its
tiny tarnished bell ringing, and in came a gust of icy wind—and her.
Clara.
Even trapped as he was,
ruined as he was, Nicholas could still recognize his racing heartbeat, his
flushed skin, the pull he felt toward
the young woman unwinding the scarf from her head and shaking snow from her
blue velvet coat. Somewhere within the twists of this cruel magic,
he—Nicholas—still existed.
He wasn’t sure he would
have been able to say that, after so many years, had it not been for her.
Without her visits, what was there to live for? The hope that Drosselmeyer
would successfully break the curse? There wasn’t much chance of that; each
attempt diminished him. It was almost enough to make Nicholas pity the old man.
Almost.
No, it was only Clara
that kept him alive. He had long been convinced of that.
He only wished he could
tell her as much. It was his greatest desire, to thank her.
To fold her into his
arms—his real, flesh-and-blood arms—and tell her that she was saving him. To remove
the pins from her hair, let it fall free, bury his face in those unruly red
curls and breathe deep.
To love her as she
deserved to be loved.
Darkness fell, shaking
him free of his thoughts. Drosselmeyer had doused the lamps, and Nicholas
searched the shadows for Clara. How long had he been daydreaming?
“. . . You must move as
though through water.”
Drosselmeyer’s voice.
Ah. They were practicing. It was the one thing about the old man that Nicholas
did not hate—that he taught Clara how to defend herself, how to sneak silently
out of impossible situations, how to move through darkness with the certainty
of a warrior. She would need such tools, if she were to survive this city.
And if, someday, she
were to—
But he couldn’t think
about that. It was a possibility too dangerously full of hope.
“The room is yours to
know, to possess,” Drosselmeyer went on. “The energy within you subsumes its
energy. You are the room. You are the shadows. Try it.”
Nicholas found her
darkened form moving slowly through the room’s chaos. Occasionally Drosselmeyer
encouraged her; other times, he attacked her, forcing her to stay prepared as
she moved through the shadows. Once, she knocked into a table and cursed. Once,
she hit Drosselmeyer so hard Nicholas could have sworn he heard tears in the
old man’s voice.
Nicholas smiled as much
as his prison allowed him to. He loved when Clara cursed, or laughed, or sang
to herself as she practiced lock picking. He especially loved when she bested
the old man during one of their spars.
These were the moments
when the fear that had overtaken her life faded away, and she was most truly
herself.
Long minutes passed. The
wall of clocks ticked on.
And then, as if in one
of his fevered dreams, she was there.
Her foot must have
caught on his large, spiked one. She stumbled, fell—and then, slowly, took hold
of his arms and pulled herself up.
She could have moved
away immediately, but she didn’t.
Instead she slid up his
metal body, her hands moving up his arms and settling on the broad, hard planes
of his chest.
Once, Nicholas had not
been able to feel her touch. But years of yearning for it had made him so
attuned to her that he now felt everything—the fabric of her thin chemise
snagging on the rough plates of metal that made up his outer shell. The soft
puffs of air against his chest as her breath started to come more quickly.
The warmth of her, pressed so intimately against him.
Even though he knew it wouldn’t
be possible, he tried to move toward her. This wasn’t nearly close enough, and
he felt like growling with frustration. He needed to pull her into his body,
thread his fingers through her hair.
He needed to kiss every
one of the freckles dotting her cheeks, and then kiss her neck, her mouth. He
needed to kiss her until all she knew was his lips on her skin.
He needed to tell her .
. . so many things. The words would no doubt crowd and catch in his throat, but
he would try.
Clara. Clara . . .
He burned with the
effort to say her name, but the magic choked him. Its grip tightened, punishing
him.
The delicate laughter in
his mind turned louder, mocking.
Little prince,
little prince, it hissed, you’re not strong enough. You never were.
But Clara was there,
curling against him, and so the laughter was unimportant, and faded. Clara
sighed, cupped his face, tenderly caressed the lines of his iron jaw.
He would say her name.
He would, magic or no. He would tell
her what she meant to him.
Clara. Clara. You have saved me.
The swipe of a match.
The hiss of flame.
“That’s enough,” the old
man growled, from across the room.
Clara stepped away,
flushed, and Drosselmeyer was standing there in the fresh lamplight looking
murderously at him, as if he knew—but
Nicholas didn’t care.
He could still feel the
warmth of her against him. He could still sense her gentle hands on his body,
touching him as if weren’t a statue, but a young man once more—and that would
be enough to keep his dreams kind.
It would be enough to
keep him alive and himself, even if only for another day.
