He was right. No shimmery silver skalt had braved the uphill climb.
She chewed her lip. In light of her mother’s capricious journal, it was hard to pin down an exact itinerary. When she closed her eyes, she conjured the non-magical maps she’d spent her childhood poring over. By her estimation, they would be hiking through the Twisted Forest for several days, maybe a full week. They had to climb the mountain and descend the other side to reach the Salted Sea, which connected Glas Ddir with Fojo Kara??o. Until then, the river would provide freshwater aplenty, but they needed food.
“You’re the Huntress,” he said. “Why don’t you hunt us some game?”
“I don’t hunt animals.”
“Humans are animals.”
“Gwyrach aren’t human,” she said.
“You look human to me.” His smile faded. “How did you heal me, Mia?”
“I don’t feel like giving you a primer in magic.”
“You don’t know how, do you?”
She could feel the flush creeping across her cheeks and neck; yet another example, she thought, of how your own flesh could betray you. Her words slammed through her. Gwyrach aren’t human.
Did she really believe that? If so, then the blood shunting through her—the breath hissing through her trachea—the aortic valves contracting to keep her alive—were inhuman valves, inhuman breath, inhuman blood.
What made a creature human? Her brain? Her heart? Or was it some unknowable sum of unknowable parts?
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
“How do you know? If you accidentally brush against me, I might drop dead.”
“Is that why you told your parents I was dangerous?”
She’d revealed herself. He stared at her, unblinking. “What else did you hear when you were eavesdropping in my chambers?”
“That your parents mistrusted my father. And I was leverage. Your blackmail bride.”
He reddened. “That wasn’t my fault. I knew my father intended our marriage to be an intimidation tactic—and I was right. But I’d assumed it was the people of Glas Ddir he wished to intimidate, when in fact it was your father.”
He picked up a stick and jabbed it into the ground. “They promised him they would keep you safe and unharmed . . . as long as he fulfilled his quota.”
“His quota of Gwyrach.”
“Yes.” Quin stared hard at his stick. “For my father’s Hall of Hands.”
“And if my father did not comply?”
Quin’s silence spoke volumes. Shelves. Libraries.
So her father hadn’t lied to her: he really was trying to protect her. They had forced his hand. If Griffin refused the marriage, the king would have killed her.
Or worse.
She swallowed hard.
“But you didn’t know I had magic. Even I didn’t know. Why did you think I was dangerous, Quin?”
Mia’s blood skulked through her veins. The prince turned away.
“Because,” he said, his voice low and cold, “you are.”
Chapter 22
Thawing
AS THE NIGHT WORE on, the air grew colder, and for once Mia didn’t think the ice prince was to blame. A northern wind nipped at her nose and fingertips.
She heard a crack of twigs and whirled around.
“Quin?”
They hadn’t spoken for hours, but his voice was soft. “I’m here.”
“I thought I heard something.” She sniffed the air but smelled only damp, loamy earth.
“Probably just the sound of my empty stomach. I’m going to forage for purslane.”
“Purslane is an excellent plan.”
She had no idea what purslane was, but she wasn’t about to admit it.
Quin began rummaging around the forest floor, plucking handfuls of green, until finally he dropped a clump of fleshy leaves into her lap. “Surprisingly nutritious, for a weed.”
“It’s edible?”
“Yes, Mia. I’m not trying to poison you.”
The purslane tasted like paper, but she wasn’t complaining. While she discreetly picked the fibrous strings from her teeth, she stared up at the trees.
From her mother’s sketches, Mia had failed to grasp how sensual swyn were: their supple, graceful curves; the long limbs intertwining, interlocking. The moon shone against the creamy white bark like candlelight on naked skin.
“What are you thinking about?” Quin asked.
Embarrassed, she looked away. “That we should make camp.” She had been thinking nothing of the sort. “If we stretch the gown between trees . . .”
And thus began her embarrassing attempt at shelter making. First she tried tucking the wedding dress between plaits of swyn, but there wasn’t enough fabric left, thanks to Quin’s fishing efforts. So she resolved to build a lean-to. She made a simple frame by driving two forked sticks into the ground and lashing them together with what was left of the gown and train. But she needed a stronger pole or at very least more robust branches: every time she tried to brace it, a chilly gust of wind collapsed the whole mishmash.
Quin watched her in silence, munching his purslane.
“Don’t feel like you have to help,” she said.
“Oh, I won’t.” He spat out a piece of bark. “I did see a cave a ways back.”
Mia could have pummeled him.
“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “We don’t need covering. We’ll sleep out in the open. The sky is perfectly clear.”
No sooner had she said it than a crack of thunder pealed overhead. The first drops of rain misted the tops of the swyn.
Quin folded his arms and leaned back into the tree, infuriatingly smug.
“You were saying?”
Mia shivered at the mouth of the cave. Rain fell in rivulets from the ledge above, reminding her of pale ribbons streaming off silk, or her sister’s silver tears.
She hugged her legs to her chest, chin resting on her kneecaps, and let herself be soothed by the susurrating rain. She had wrapped herself in the tattered remains of the wedding dress: not very insulating.
Mia was busy knitting together her own rules of magic—real magic, not the faulty information populating her books. Her wildly fluctuating body temperatures were clearly a symptom, as were the sudden pains that split her head apart like fractured glass. She had been taught that a Gwyrach manipulated her victim’s body, controlling his bones and blood, breath and flesh. But she had come to suspect the true physiological transaction was far more complicated. What her books had failed to mention was that the Gwyrach’s own body was also affected.
Mia’s body was a sensitive instrument fine-tuned to the people around her. The headaches had lessened significantly after leaving the castle, supporting her theory that they only occurred when she was suffering from a kind of sensory overload: dozens of bodies with their own delicate chemistries jostling against hers. Healing felt like being wrenched and drained. Watching someone die was emptiness.
And then there were the sensations she’d felt when enthralling Quin: honeyed heat, supple limbs, flesh like melted chocolate.
If her body were calibrated to the bodies of those around her, it made sense that her internal temperature would mirror theirs. Magician and non-magician were yoked together by this strange alchemy. Specific emotions registered at specific climates.
Enthrallment felt warm. That made sense: desire was hot.
She stole another glance at Quin.
Hatred, apparently, was cold.
He was curled into the back wall of the cave. Mia had the impression he would fold himself up like a pair of trousers if it meant keeping her at a distance. Earlier, when she’d leaned a little too close, he’d spun away, the air around them crackling into black frost.
It hurt more than she cared to admit. She’d caught herself enjoying Quin’s dry wit, and she could feel her own dislike thawing. She had mistakenly believed his was thawing, too.
She couldn’t get warm or comfortable on the rocky cave floor. The rain rasped through the Twisted Forest, drumming lightly on the swyn, as Mia’s teeth began to chatter.
Quin stirred behind her. Something soft and heavy swept past her cheek. She caught a glimpse of green and then felt a weight, her body cocooned in thick, warm fabric.
The prince had dropped his bridegroom jacket over her shoulders.