Frost Winterborne's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Frost carried the silent music box to the one room he had never entered. His mother's study stood sealed behind a heavy wooden door. He broke the latch and stepped inside. Dust coated every shelf. He set the box on her desk and turned the crank again. Nothing played. The voice was gone. Somewhere in that dead machine hid the clue to where she had fled, and he could not reach it. He searched the shelves for hours. Behind a row of ledgers, he found a small book bound in soft blue cloth. Its pages held lullabies in his mother's hand. He knew the first tune. She had sung it while cranking the box. Frost hummed the notes and stared at the silent lid. The song and the box were made to match. But he could not read the message hidden between them. He needed someone who read hidden things. He rode to the town library and found the woman who kept it. Priya Nath sat hunched over a ledger, ink staining her fingers, glasses shoved up into her hair. Her cardigan swallowed her hands. She looked up and sighed. "Whatever it is, I'm not the one who can help you." "You're the only one who can," Frost said. He set the lullaby book and the frozen box on her desk. She pushed them back an inch. "People always say that." But her eyes stopped on the notes. She pulled a heavy volume from a low shelf, its cover worn from years of court hearings. "Old court scribes hid records inside song," she said. "Each note stood for a letter. I hated learning it." She opened the codebook and pressed her stained finger to a chart. Frost read the lullaby aloud, note by note. Priya matched each one to a letter and wrote it down. Her handwriting grew fast and sure. Slowly a word formed. Then a place. "The convent past the eastern ridge," she said. "Where the snowkiss trees bloom in winter. That's where she went." Frost's chest tightened. He knew those trees. His mother had planted them. "She's alive," he said. "Someone was, when she wrote this." Priya closed the book and slid all three items toward him. "Take these. I don't want them in my building." Frost gathered the box, the lullaby book, and the borrowed codebook. He had the answer he came for. His mother was hiding past the eastern ridge, among the trees she grew. But the trees bloomed only in deep winter, and the ridge froze over by nightfall. If he did not cross before the storms sealed the pass, the way would close until spring. He had one day to reach the woman who cursed his heart. He thanked Priya and walked out into the cold. The chase had a direction now. It also had a clock.