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No matter what they do, Cordelia and the other survivors of the Anderson can't keep winter drafts from blowing through the old farmhouse. It's always chilly; even with the heating system running at maximum, most of the rooms refuse to reach a comfortable temperature. Doc and Dunwich have to keep a real fire going in the hearth in the living room to make it tolerable, but the warmth doesn't reach Cordelia's bedroom down the hall.
She generally stays there regardless. Better to shut herself in here and study war than to have to face them. All these people who left the comfort of their lives on New Constantinople just to stand with her, who lost friends, family, loved ones in the explosion, who are injured and weary and afraid, and all because of her own foolishness. All because she betrayed her twin sister.
Besides, if she truly wants to make it right for them and every other soul in the galaxy, she can't afford to let them distract her from her tasks.
(To say nothing of the distraction of how her breath seems to freeze in her chest when she watches the flames, the way she can't help but flinch when she hears them pop. Genuine fire was rare on New Constantinople; her first real experience of it was the building coming down around her at the wedding. Smoke in her lungs, heat scorching her hair and dress, the skin of her neck and shoulder left rippled and deformed. She'll have to overcome the weakness eventually; if she wishes to fight this war she must be able to face something as simple as fire. But not yet).
She buries herself in as many blankets as she can find, keeps the curtains shut against the cold, and does her best to ignore the chill as she works.
It's just another insult that this region of Winthrop enters its bitter winter in May. Just another problem for the universe to throw at her.
There isn't much work she can do with her entire leg encased in a cast and bandages all around her face, neck, and shoulder. She can hardly train herself out of the pathetic, delicate weakness Snow was content to allow her body. She can't teach herself to shoot, can't begin recruiting soldiers or stockpiling weapons.
But in truth, their fledgling rebellion isn't ready for that. Cordelia has to plan first. And that, she can do from her bed. It's deeply unsatisfying work to review their dwindling funds from what Lorenzo could pull from Snow's bank accounts before they fled, or to study the cortex pages Dunwich gives her on the first basics of warfare, or to craft plans for messaging and information sharing. It all feels useless, compared to the work she wants to be doing. It's uncomfortably familiar, too close to what Snow did as Junior Speaker of Parliament. But she can grudgingly understand the value of it. She applies herself to it as well as she's able.
When Lorenzo comes looking for her, it's evening, and she's finished all the tasks she set herself for the day. She's now working at teaching herself to write differently than Snow did. It's a small thing, perhaps, but the more risks of recognition she can eliminate, the better. If she is to become Cordelia White, she can't afford to be sloppy about the details.
Snow's handwriting was gentle, looping, trained into perfect beauty by years of tutors. Cordelia drills herself into something sharper, tenser, more decisive. The sort of penmanship a revolutionary general ought to have. She's filled pages and pages of paper (real paper made of wood pulp, not a digital paper tablet like back home) with her practice, and she intends to continue until her hand forgets it ever wrote differently.
Lorenzo looks over the sheets of paper scattered across the bed and floor, a slight furrow forming between his thick brows. "Sn—" At a sharp look from Cordelia, he corrects himself. "Cordelia. What's all this?"
"Penmanship," she says primly, then winces. The tone is too noble, too Constantine, and that's to say nothing of the accent. "I can hardly let a careless signature draw a connection between myself and Snow Prince."
His face flickers, but he quickly hides whatever he's thinking. "Is this what you've been doing in here all day? I think I'd go mad if I spent so long writing the alphabet." He's trying to make it sound like a joke, and he's failing.
Cordelia presses her lips together, ignoring the pain the expression still sends through her face, the way the right side doesn't quite move the way it should. "You've heard Dunwich and Tuco. We need to be exceedingly cautious not to be found. And for the record, I've also investigated what we can accomplish with our current budget and studied my notes from Dunwich."
Lorenzo sighs. "I don't mean that… I only wish you would rest a bit more. This obsession isn't good for you."
"I spent the first quarter century of my life doing practically nothing." Her shoulders are tense, and she has to bite out the words. Even as she speaks, she feels wretched for being so cold to him. But gentleness is what brought them both here. She doesn't have a choice but to practice the opposite. Snow would be soft, apologetic; General White must be hard and confident. "I'm overdue a bit of work."
His warm brown eyes are soft as he looks at her. It's the same gentle look he's been so good at giving her all her life, and she hates it. She isn't a little girl in need of comfort because no one takes her seriously (and why would they have?). She isn't a noblewoman who has to be coddled. Not anymore. "Well, you've been at it all day. Why don't you come take a walk with me? It snowed outside."
She thinks of hauling her useless body up, of clunking down the hallway, past the others staring pityingly at her, and then down the creaky porch steps into the cold. "No, thank you." She looks back down where she left off with her lowercase Q. Her neck twinges with the effort— she's had to twist it all day to focus her remaining eye on her tasks.
"It would do you good. Not to mention give us a chance to talk."
"Talk about what?" she asks, not taking her eye from the paper. "Are you still hoping I don't mean to fight back?"
He hopes this is simply a grief-stricken phase; she knows that. Though it's been six weeks, he hopes that she doesn't mean what she said when she woke and that she'll come to her senses and settle for living quietly in exile. That she'll simply let King Cole get away with what he did.
"That isn't what I meant, Cordelia." He steps closer until he's right at the bedside, within her field of vision even if she looks down. Gesturing with open hands, he says, "I don't want to argue with you. But I've barely seen you except when I check on your wounds. I'll support you in whatever you choose to do; I'll follow you wherever you go. But please, at least give me the courtesy of not ignoring me while I do."
Her chest twists at the pain in his voice, Snow's better nature flooding her with guilt. She will never be able to articulate what she owes Lorenzo. It was him who facilitated the escape from Zantine while Snow was delirious with pain and useless with grief and betrayal. It was him who called medics when they crashed here and then secured their help with everyone's injuries while heading off enough questions to keep them hidden. It's been him, the past weeks, who's managed the others as they all recover.
It's been him she can trust above any other living soul with her broken pieces, whenever she can no longer hold herself together and she breaks down weeping with rage and horror and the aching, gnawing pain of everything that's happened.
Cordelia says nothing, but looks up at him and reaches for his hand. With her other hand, she shifts her things to begin the laborious process of standing up.
Lorenzo helps her bundle up in warmer clothes, and stays at her side as she slowly makes her way down the hall. It's still disorienting to walk with her field of vision cut in half, and with her crutches she can't exactly keep one hand on the wall to keep track of where it is. It's an awful process to get to the door, and her cheeks burn with humiliation. Lorenzo is kind enough to say nothing.
The air outside is cold enough to bite, making her breath steam in front of her and her fingers and ears and nose ache almost instantly. And somehow, between the time she last looked out the window and now, everything has been covered in a shimmering layer of white. It didn't snow on New Constantinople except at the poles; the climate has been too warm for that for centuries. Winter brought heavy rain and temperatures cool enough to require a jacket. This is something else entirely. It's… Cordelia has to admit that it is beautiful.
"Do you remember your parents bringing you to Dronningen one winter?" Lorenzo asks softly. "You must have been three or four."
Cordelia's chest jolts painfully, and she shoots Lorenzo a warning look. Theodora and Charles Prince are not her parents. If she wishes to set the galaxy right, she has to sever every part of herself that thinks of them that way. Besides, she only has the vaguest recollection of the trip— mostly of sitting in a hall with ceilings of soaring wood, drinking warm cider with an equally tiny Rose. "I don't recall."
Lorenzo's eyes are fixed on the distant tree line. "You were so excited to see firsthand what you'd been named for. Your nanny had shown you videos of children playing in snow. You were enchanted by it." He chuckles. "Seeing you and Rose throwing it at each other, being surprised when it seeped through your mittens, was rather entertaining. I think your parents have photos somewhere."
Somehow, not remembering that is a faint relief. Less of a dead woman to carry. Less of her to try and claw out of the grave Cordelia has made her. Even now Snow howls in her chest at the memory of Rose. Cordelia forces her back and thinks of what General White would say.
"I can hardly go find those, seeing as Snow is legally dead. If I came looking for a photo drive, they'd call on King Cole in an instant to finish the job he started." Her voice comes out brittle. She knows it to be true, though it's her own fault they could prove it to her.
It was Snow's fault. Snow was just as untrustworthy as Theodora and Charles. Just as stupidly trusting. She bears that responsibility for Rose being betrayed, and for her own death at King Cole's hands.
A scream begins trying to claw out of her throat. She swallows it down and gestures stiffly out. "Regardless. You wished to show me this. Let's do so."
Lorenzo offers her a sympathetic look and offers his arm to help her down the porch steps. "Take care. There's ice."
The snow crunches under her feet as she steps into it, leaving the first footprints other than Lorenzo's. Aside from the noises the two of them make, everything is strangely quiet, as if the gray sky is holding its breath. If it was slow going in the hallway, it's even worse out here, where she has to mind where she places her crutches to avoid them slipping. After a few steps, she also discovers that the snow itself is much, much colder than she expected. The shock of it seeping into her shoe and the sock over her cast proves that.
"All the Empire's gods, is it always that cold?" she asks.
Lorenzo's lips twitch in faint amusement, but he keeps his composure. "It is frozen water, dear."
She steps closer to the porch, where she can brace her crutch against the house and use her hand to gather some of the snow stuck there. Whenever she pictured snow before, she always thought of how it looks. The fluffy whiteness of it, the way it sparkled in the photos. When she used to ask her parents why she was named for it, they told her about those things, about the beauty of it, the tranquility.
And she knew it was cold, but she couldn't even conceive of something like this. It's so cold it stings her fingers, so cold it burns. She has to drop it, shake off her hand to dislodge what sticks to her, and hold her fingers against the warm skin of her unbandaged cheek before the chill even begins to fade. She can't imagine how she ever would have endured playing in the stuff.
It's certainly beautiful. It also suffocates the entire landscape, burying everything under its weight. She can only imagine what it's like out in the woods or the fields, away from the small barrier of the farmhouse walls. What a sharp, cruel thing to be unable to escape for months out of the year. What a deceptive danger. What an oppressive force being sold as gentleness.
She finds herself chuckling bitterly. It's terribly fitting. That is what Snow Prince was named for. That is all her name ever truly represented.
Cordelia is gladder than ever to be leaving it behind.
What good is softness, when that biting chill is what it masks?
"Cordelia?" Lorenzo asks. He reaches for her gingerly, as if afraid she's cracking apart.
"I'm fine, Lorenzo." She means it. "Better than fine. Thank you for showing me this."
Lorenzo studies her, still clearly concerned. But at her new lightness, he relaxes, just a bit. "You're very welcome." He turns his hand, now offering it to help her get herself back up on her crutches. "Shall we walk a little further?"
She takes it, bracing against him as she sets herself to rights. "Yes. Just a bit."
They don't make it far— the chill seeps into both of them quickly, forcing them to turn back. But when they return, she feels invigorated. Sharper, stronger, as if the icy air cleared a haze from her. She lets herself linger with Lorenzo just long enough to share a cup of tea, to wait until they both stop shivering, before returning to her work.
Before she picks up her pen again, she opens the curtains, just a crack, to look out over the landscape. According to Doc, it will be like this for months yet. The snow shouldn't melt until September; the ground likely won't thaw for even longer. By then, she'll be ready to begin far more than paperwork.
For now, she closes the curtains again. If she wishes to be prepared, there's much to teach herself in the meantime.