Maeve hears Lucent calling for her, but not until she reaches the entrance of her tent does Lucent finally catch up. Maeve turns around to face her former companion. In front of her tent, the queen’s personal guards place their hands on their swords’ hilts, their eyes following Lucent’s movements.
Maeve hesitates at the sight of Lucent’s grave eyes. They had ended their relationship a year ago, right along the white cliffs of Kenettra. She should let it be; after all, Lucent had told her then that she would not agree to Maeve’s wishes. I cannot be your mistress, she said. So why does Lucent look so desperate to speak to her now?
“Yes?” Maeve says coolly. The girl looks ill, and the sight of her wan skin and aching limbs twists Maeve’s heart.
Lucent hesitates, suddenly unsure of what to say. She runs a hand through her reddish-blond curls, then gives Maeve a hurried bow. “Are you well?” she finally asks, her voice faltering.
“Are you?” Maeve asks in return. “You look terrible, Lucent. Raffaele mentioned in his last letter that you were . . . suffering.”
Lucent shakes her head, as if her own health were not important. “I heard what happened,” she replies. “Tristan. Your brother.” She bows her head again, and the silence drags on.
Tristan. This was why Lucent is here. The weakness of her voice cracks Maeve’s resolve, and she finds herself softening toward Lucent in spite of herself. How she has missed Lucent’s presence, how quickly they had been separated again after the last battle against Adelina. She turns her head and nods once at her guards. With a clatter of armor, they step away and leave the two alone.
“He was never meant to stay this long,” Maeve replies after a while. She shakes away the image of her brother’s dead eyes, the mindless nature of his attack. It wasn’t him, of course. “He was already in the Underworld.”
Lucent winces and looks away.
“You still blame yourself,” Maeve continues, gentler now. “Even after all this time.”
Lucent says nothing, but Maeve knows what must be going through her head. It is the memory of the day Tristan had died, when the three of them had decided to go hunting together in the winter woods.
Tristan had shied away from the lake. He’d always been afraid of the water.
Maeve closes her eyes, and for an instant, she relives it again—Lucent, gangly and laughing, dragging Tristan forward through the brush to see the deer she had tracked for them; Tristan, staring at the deer that had made it halfway across the frozen lake; Maeve, kneeling into a silent crouch, lifting her bow to her line of sight. They had been too far away from the creature. One of us will have to get closer, Maeve had suggested. And Lucent had goaded and encouraged Tristan.
You should go.
They’d played on the ice often, never with incident. So, finally, Tristan grabbed his bow and arrow and crawled out onto the frozen lake on his elbows and stomach. They toyed with death a thousand times, but that day would have a different outcome. There was a hairline crack in the ice at a fateful spot. Perhaps the deer’s hooves were the cause, perhaps the weight of the creature made the ice unstable, or perhaps the winter was not cold enough, had not frozen the lake solidly. Perhaps it was the thousand times they’d cheated death, all returning for them.
They heard the crack of the ice an instant before Tristan fell through. It’d been just enough time for him to look back at them as he plunged into the water below their feet.
“It was my fault,” Maeve tells her. She reaches up, about to lift Lucent’s chin, then stops herself. Instead, she gives Lucent a sad smile. “I brought him back.” She looks down. “I cannot reach the Underworld any longer. The touch of it has leaked into the mortal world, its harsh presence like ice on my heart. My power will kill me, if I choose to use it again. Perhaps,” she adds in a low voice, “part of all this is my punishment for defying the goddess of Death.”
Lucent studies her for a long moment. Has it really been so long since they were young? Maeve wonders whether this will be the final journey they take together, whether Raffaele’s predictions will all come to pass, that they will enter the mountain paths and never return.
At last, Lucent bows. “If we must all go,” she says, eyes turned down, “then I’m honored to go with you, Your Majesty.” Then she turns to leave.
Maeve reaches out and grabs Lucent’s arm. “Stay,” she says.
Lucent freezes. Her eyes widen at the queen. Maeve can feel the heat rising to her cheeks, but she doesn’t look away. “Please,” she adds, quieter. “Just this time. Just this once.”
For a moment, it seems Lucent might turn away. The two remain fixed in place, neither willing to move first.
Then Lucent takes a step toward the queen. “Just this once,” she echoes.
All my wealth, power, territories, military might . . . none of it matters now. She has gone, and with her shall I go.
—Final letter of King Delamore to his general
Adelina Amouteru
Gray clouds blanket the skies the next morning, clear warnings of snow, stretching as far as the horizon. As Maeve leads two riders out ahead to check our path, I sit with Magiano, chewing on strips of dried meat and hard bread. Around a nearby fire, Raffaele sits with his cloak gathered tightly about him, talking in low voices with Lucent. Teren sits alone, ignoring us all.
Magiano is in a dark mood, no doubt brought on by the cold and gloom. Without his joy, I find myself fending off the whispers in my head more than ever, struggling to stay sane. You will lose yourselves in the snow and wilds, they are saying. You will never return. Beside me, Violetta lies unconscious, shivering uncontrollably, under a pile of furs and blankets. Hard as it is to see her like this, I am glad that she is shivering. It tells me that she is still alive. I reach out and rest my hand on the furs.
“At this rate,” Magiano mutters, pulling me out of the depths of my thoughts, “we won’t see blue sky again until we leave this place.” He turns his eyes to the sky and utters a loud, mournful sigh. “What I wouldn’t give for a little Merroutas warmth and gaiety.”
Maeve and her riders return as we are finishing our breakfast. “The paths are covered with ice,” she says as we load our packs onto our horses. She catches Lucent’s eyes for a moment, and something unspoken passes between them. “But they are otherwise clear. The snow breakers have already been through.” I notice the queen touch Lucent’s boot briefly before heading to her own mount. There is a new closeness between them.
Nearby, Magiano and Raffaele help me secure Violetta on a stretcher behind two of Maeve’s horses. She stirs restlessly as we go, murmuring something that I can’t understand. Her markings look darker now, almost black, as if Moritas were slowly claiming her body for the Underworld. I grit my teeth at the sight.
Magiano watches me as I stand beside Violetta’s stretcher. “She’ll make it,” he says, placing a hand on my arm, but I can hear the doubt in his voice.
As we near the paths that lead into the first mountains, the narrowness of the valleys starts to funnel the wind, so it bites our cheeks and cuts through every gap in our clothing. I tie my hood down tight over my head and try to pull my cloak higher to cover the lower half of my face. Even then, my breath freezes against the cloth, creating a patch of white frost. With the wind come the whispers, howling against my ears with every blast. Their words are such a jumble, I can’t understand what they’re saying, but they send my heart racing until my shoulders sag from exhaustion. Now and then, I think I see dark silhouettes standing in the crevices of the mountains, watching us with sightless eyes. I can only see them in the edges of my vision—when I turn my head, they vanish.