Trassel backed away, snarling.
“No!” Nina screamed. She hurled a bone shard at the girl, striking her shoulder. The rifle shot went wide. “Run!” Nina yelled at Trassel in Fjerdan. The wolf snapped his jaws as if in argument. “Djel commenden!” Nina shouted. Drüskelle words. Trassel huffed once, then turned and loped into the storm, giving her a last betrayed look as if he couldn’t believe she’d ask him to abandon a fight.
“What are you doing?” the tall girl demanded, yanking the bone dart from her shoulder and tossing it into the snow.
Nina howled her rage. Matthias’ wolf, his troublemaker, his Trassel had somehow found his way to her, and this blundering podge had driven him off. She seized the girl’s leg and yanked her from the saddle.
“Hey!” The girl tried to shove Nina away, clearly surprised by her strength. But Nina had been trained as a soldier. She might not be built like a Fjerdan warrior, but she was plenty strong.
“You scared him away!”
“That was a wolf,” the girl shouted back in her face. “You know that, right? He already bit you once. Just because he follows some of your commands—”
“He didn’t bite me, you ass. It was the other wolf!”
“The other … are you out of your mind? And how do you know drüskelle commands anyway?”
Nina found hot tears running down her cheeks. She might never see Trassel again. What if Matthias had sent him to her? Called him here to help her? “You had no right!”
“I didn’t mean to—”
“It doesn’t matter what you meant!” Nina stalked toward her. “Careless, foolish, thoughtless.” She didn’t know if she was talking to this girl or herself anymore, and she didn’t care. It was all too much.
She shoved the other girl hard, swept her leg behind her ankle.
“Stop it!” snarled the girl as she toppled.
But Nina could not stop. She wanted to get hit. She wanted to hit back. She grabbed the girl by her collar.
Nina grunted as sudden pain seized her chest. It felt like a fist around her heart. The girl had her hands up, something between terror and exultation in her copper eyes. Nina felt her body grow heavy; her vision blurred. She knew this feeling from her training as a Corporalnik. The other girl was slowing Nina’s heartbeat.
“Grisha,” Nina gasped.
“I didn’t … I don’t.”
Nina pushed her own power against the other girl’s, felt her living, vibrant force waver. With the last bit of her strength, Nina flicked her fingers and a bone shard flew from its sheath at her thigh. It struck the girl in the side, not hard—it bounced into the snow. But it was enough to break her concentration.
Nina stumbled backward, trying to regain her breath, fingers pressed to her sternum. She hadn’t had Heartrender power used against her for years. She’d forgotten just how frightening it could be.
“You’re Grisha,” she said.
The girl leapt to her feet, knife drawn. “I’m not.”
Interesting, thought Nina. She has power but she can’t control it. She trusts the blade more.
Nina held up her palms to make peace. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
Now the girl showed no sign of hesitation. Her body was loose, relaxed, as if she felt more herself with steel in her hand. “You sure seemed like you wanted to hurt me a second ago.”
“Well, I did, but I’ve come to my senses.”
“I was trying to save your life! Why do you care about a wolf anyway? You’re worse than the drüskelle.”
Now, that was something Nina had never expected to hear. “That wolf saved me from an attack. I don’t know why. But I didn’t want you to hurt him.” This girl was Grisha, and Nina had almost killed her. “I … overreacted.”
The tall girl shoved her knife back in its sheath. “Overreacting is throwing a tantrum when someone eats the last sweet roll.” She pointed an accusatory finger at Nina. “You were out for blood.”
“To be fair, I’ve considered killing over the last sweet roll.”
“Where’s your coat?”
“I think I took it off,” Nina said, searching for an explanation for why she would tear off her coat that didn’t involve disclosing her bone armor. “I guess I was going snow-mad.”
“Is that a thing?”
Nina found the coat, already almost buried in wet white flakes. “Absolutely. At least in my village.”
The other girl rubbed her muscled thigh. “And what did you hit me with?”
“A dart.”
“You threw a dart at me?” she said incredulously. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It worked, didn’t it?” A dart made of human bone, but some details were best avoided, and it was time to go on the offensive. Nina shrugged into her damp coat. “You put the guards to sleep at the convent. That’s how you sneak out.”
All the girl’s confidence dissolved, fear dousing her fire like a rogue wave. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”
“But you could have. That’s actually very delicate work. You could land someone in a coma.”
The girl stilled as the wind howled around them. “How would you know?”
But Nina hadn’t spoken without thinking. Grisha power was as good as a death sentence or worse in this country.
“My sister was Grisha,” Nina lied.
“What … what happened to her?”
“That’s not a story for the middle of a storm.”
The girl clenched her fists. Saints, she was tall—but built like a dancer, a long coil of wiry muscle.
“You can’t tell anyone what I am,” she said. “They’ll kill me.”
“I’m not going to hurt you, and I’m not going to help anyone hurt you.” The girl’s face was wary. The wind rose, keening. “But none of that will matter if we both die out here.”
The tall girl looked at Nina as if she really had gone snow-mad. “Don’t be silly.”
“You’re saying you can find your way through this?”
“No,” she said, patting her horse’s flank. “But Helmut can. There’s a hunting lodge not far from here.” Again, she hesitated, and Nina could guess at the thoughts in her head.
“You’re thinking of leaving me to the mercy of the snow,” said Nina. The girl’s eyes slid away guiltily. So she had a merciless streak. Somehow it made Nina like her more. “I might not survive. But I might. And then you can be sure I’ll tell the first person I meet about the Grisha Heartrender living in secret among the Women of the Well.”
“I’m not Grisha.”
“You do a remarkable imitation.”
The girl ran a gloved hand through her horse’s mane. “Can you ride?”
“If I have to.”
“It’s that or go to sleep in the snow.”
“I can ride.”
The girl vaulted into the saddle in a single smooth movement. She offered Nina a hand, and Nina let herself be pulled onto the horse’s back.
“You don’t like to skip meals, do you?” said the girl with a grunt.
“Not if I can help it.”
Nina settled her hands around the girl’s waist, and soon they were moving through the growing drifts.
“You can be whipped for using those commands, you know,” said the girl. “Djel commenden. That’s considered blasphemy if a drüskelle isn’t speaking.”
“I’ll say extra prayers tonight.”