Winterglass

In this dark fantasy retelling of the Snow Queen fairy tale, a deadly assassin must balance a tragic love triangle and her desires to free her city from the cruel clutches of the Winter Queen.

The city-state Sirapirat once knew only warmth and monsoon. When the Winter Queen conquered it, she remade the land in her image, turning Sirapirat into a country of snow and unending frost. But an empire is not her only goal. In secret, she seeks the fragments of a mirror whose power will grant her deepest desire.

At her right hand is General Lussadh, who bears a mirror shard in her heart, as loyal to winter as she is plagued by her past as a traitor to her country. Tasked with locating other glass-bearers, she finds one in Nuawa, an insurgent who’s forged herself into a weapon that will strike down the queen.

To earn her place in the queen’s army, Nuawa must enter a deadly tournament where the losers’ souls are given in service to winter. To free Sirapirat, she is prepared to make sacrifices: those she loves, herself, and the complicated bond slowly forming between her and Lussadh.

If the splinter of glass in Nuawa's heart doesn't destroy her first.

Excerpt

On the night of Nuawa’s execution, she saw the Winter Queen for the first time.

The wind was inert and the night ignited by frostworks, teeth of ice biting flowers into the sky. The soldiers had given her something and it made her world both heavy and light, her thoughts dragging behind her like a train. She was thinking not of the ghost-kiln before her—though even at six, she knew what it was and what it did—or even of her mother holding her hand. Instead, she was wondering how it was that the queen could walk so evenly and stride so fast in her armor. Frost and iron, the coronet more helm than crown, the sword at her hip as broad as Nuawa. It seemed impossible for a single person to move under so much weight, shoulder so much heft. She imagined then that the queen was iron and rime underneath too, dense strong bones inside the annihilating white of her skin.

A soldier lowered Nuawa into the ghost-kiln’s petal mouth. It clenched shut with a small hiss. Later she would try to recall whether the soldier flinched as they did this, whether it mattered to them that she was a child—small for her age—but she would not remember.

Inside the stomach-chamber the air was thick with the smell of dying, the odor of bodies that had already succumbed. Her giving-mother held Nuawa, pressing something sharp into her mouth, whispering that she would live. Nuawa made an obedient noise and swallowed, like a good daughter. It cut going down and filled her mouth with blood, sweet and staccato, though it didn’t hurt. Most of her seemed asleep, swaddled in a warm and distant place while here her bare feet turned numb. She lay against her mother’s breast and dreamed of a painted blue sky.

About the Author

Benjanun Sriduangkaew writes love letters to strange cities, beautiful bugs, and the future. Her work has appeared on Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Clarkesworld, Apex Magazine, and year's best collections. She has been shortlisted for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and her debut novella Scale-Bright has been nominated for the British SF Association Award.