The Apple Throne by Tessa Gratton Page A

around for those cheap runes he bought. A tiny laugh pops out of me: Amon’s destiny is working in my favor.
    Amon says, “
Wait
,” but I’m already throwing open the door, tumbling onto the side of the snowy mountain with the velvet bag clutched to my chest. My head spins—what does this mean, what
could
this mean—as I crush through frosted undergrowth, down the slope toward the creek. Cold air cuts at the back of my throat and my breath puffs out before my nose, but my eyes feel wild. I turn, and there—there!—enough space to dance.
    I fall to my knees in the icy leaves and brush them aside as quickly as possible. I scramble, shoving the cold detritus, until I have a two-meter circle clear enough for spinning. Astrid Glyn, teen prophet, could seeth without tools, without herbs and tinctures and poison corrberries. If the need was great enough. If fate was with her.
    I shuck out of my coat and toss it away.
    Amon’s boots roar their way here, but he stops at the edge of my seething circle. I close my eyes and breathe. I imagine the spinning, fast darkness surrounding me, the wild magic, red strands of destiny reaching away.
    The world is waiting. Wind creaks the branches overhead, shaking loose the dry top layer of snow, and the babble of water is a subtle note. Amon breathes long and low. My heart and my breath form up.
    I lift a foot. I put it down. I sway. Wind cuts cold on my cheeks. I feel it seep into the bones of my hands. My nose goes numb. I turn again and again. Dizziness fingers my stomach, my head swims. I haven’t eaten in so long. I’ve barely slept. I’m so close, so close to the fall.
    I feel it first in my belly: a thin, sickly thread of cold. Cold like outer space, like the distance between stars. I grab at my chest, fingers digging as though I could rip through my dress, through my skin, and into the weave of fate.
    The thread is so weak, so tired. But I saw her eyes in my dream.
I dreamed.
    With a layer of my skirt, I make a pouch and dump the runes out into it. They are so plain and cheap. Mine were hand-carved, made one at a time myself, out of rock and bone, antler and heartwood, and that one crystal
god
rune. It might still exist, buried under two years of fire debris.
    These in my skirt all look alike, silver paint filled messily into the carved runes. They’re real marble, though, mottled and milky. And—oh my—there are two
fate
runes. The
joy
rune is missing. A poor sign.
    “Astrid,” Amon says.
    I shake my head and sway again with my eyes closed. The dark behind my eyes is streaked with red. Lines spiraling together, crossing and bending, flailing out again into the blackness.
    Clutching my skirt-basket in one hand, I touch my other over my heart. I whisper Freya’s name. She already sees me—those were her eyes—and already must know I’ve abandoned the orchard. If I can’t have corrberries, if I can’t have my seething kit, at least I can pray.
    “Freya,” I say softly and then louder, “Oh Feather-Flying Goddess, show me Soren Bearstar. Let me see him. I call on you, Freya, goddess of fate, weaver of worlds, to give this gift, this fragment to your devoted daughter.”
    The words echo in the wintery forest. It is strange praying to her now, having held her hand.
    I spin slowly, again and again, and toss runes high into the air. One hits the earth, then another and another. “Soren,” I whisper.
You’re part of my world
, he said.
You affect my destiny
. I can find
him
. I can seeth him, if anything.
    “Soren.” A scattering tap-tap-tap as more runes hit. I grab another handful and scatter them in an arc as I turn.
    I spin faster, toes skidding, off-balance.
    The seething pulses. It shrieks through my blood. Oh, I missed it! The wild burn of it!
    I fling out my arms. “
Soren Bearstar
.”
    It’s there, a hot hot magma heart, flaring out through my back, down my arms.
    My head falls back.
    My back arches.
    Black.
    Blacker.
    There is no sound but a roar, a