Alexus returns and checks the oil lamp. “I’m not sure how long we slept,” he says. “Feels like forever. We should get back on the path while it’s not pitch dark out. Take advantage of the light and cover some ground.”
He creeps to the rear of the overhang where rock meets rock. Clusters of grass have broken through the stones there, brown and dead. He jerks them free of their roots with ease and heads to feed the horses. When he returns, he has the flask, an apple, and half the loaf of stale bread. Carefully, he nestles the bread and apple on a rock in the embers to warm.
“The skins of water are frozen solid, but this—” he shakes the flask “—should be fine.”
In a short time, we’re enjoying our first food in days. Toasted bread with warmed apple mush. It isn’t a lot, but it’s enough to ease the pain cramping my stomach.
I don’t want to leave the heat. In truth, I’d like nothing more than to tend the fire until it’s roaring, forget about Helena’s odd behavior, and curl back up against Alexus. I cannot believe I’m thinking such a thing, but I’m cold and hungry, tired of not having a roof over my head or stew in my belly or a bed under my back. I miss everything about the cottage and the vale.
Everything.
I say nothing, though, and soon, we’re struggling through deep snow, the horses making every effort to travel back the way we came. I ride with Helena, and Alexus leads the way.
Not far from camp, it becomes evident what stamped down the snow enough to reveal the path.
It wasn’t Nephele.
Alexus stops and dismounts. About a dozen Eastlanders and their horses lie half-buried in the snow, scattered beneath the trees. We couldn’t see them before, but now, with more light, they’re impossible to miss. They must’ve gotten lost, or maybe they were wet from the lake and froze to death here. They look like statues, all shades of black, gray, and white, leaving yet another image of death in my mind.
They could be us. Might still be us, eventually.
Alexus digs around in the snow, feeling for weapons. My stomach turns as stains of blood and torn flesh become visible.
He glances up. “Look away. Wolves have been here.”
I bury my face in the hood of his cloak and stare at the ground while he continues digging, until he comes within sight. He’s freed a curved knife and stuffs it in his boot, replacing the dagger he lost on the lake.
We leave then, making it to the path faster than I expect. Again, we travel the way Helena says, avoiding the mountains, but after several hours, the snowfall blurs the world once more, and the miserable cold in my bones returns.
We keep going, struggling to see through the blizzard swirling around us. Alexus stops and tries lighting the lamp using flint, steel, and tinder, but he can’t get a spark to catch with such strong wind. Eventually—using the blanket to shield the wind and snow—the lamp lights, giving off soft illumination. We ride on, but we won’t have that light for long. The lamp has little oil.
Like before, I call out to Nephele from my mind. Tuetha tah, if you can hear me, help us. Bring us through this wood, bring us to Winterhold. Please do not let me die here. I try again, in Elikesh, every single word.
Nothing happens, and I find myself fighting back tears.
But my attention snags on a bough hanging over the path. The tree it belongs to is massive and crooked, bent hard to the right, with knotty bark that looks like a face peeking through the snow. I noticed it earlier. It’s the same tree.
I’m not the only one who notices.
“We’re going in circles.” Alexus draws back on Mannus’s reins. “We need to turn around. Head for the fork in the path and take the route toward the mountains. You’ve walked that ground, Helena. Can you lead the way?”
“Why don’t you confer with your witches?” She stops the mare, jerking on the reins too hard, her voice cutting with a razor’s edge. “I can’t know how they manipulate this construct.”
I watch Alexus from beneath my hood, watch him lift the lamp to better see her. His chilly stare lingers on Hel, but he slides his eyes my way and speaks to me alone.
“We aren’t continuing like this.” He raises his voice over the whistling wind. “I’ve been more than patient with our guide, but this stops now. Are you with me or not?”
Alexus Thibault is still such a stranger, but I know beyond doubt that what he didn’t say is that if I’m not with him, I’m on my own.
Before I can take my hands from Helena’s waist to reply, she answers for me.
“Of course, she’s not with you. She’s with me. And we’re not going into those mountains, Witch Collector.”
I can’t pinpoint what it is that strikes me so wrong—her words, obviously, and her tone. But there are so many other warning bells ringing when I consider the last several hours with Helena as a whole.
I finally let go of my friend and swing down from the horse. My boots sink into the snow up to my ankles.
An expression of irritated surprise takes over Hel’s face. Her lip curls back on one side, her nostrils go wide, and the skin around her eyes draws tight.
“Get back on this horse, girl.” Her words strain around clenched teeth, words that Helena would never speak to me.
Tuck snorts and jerks her head, stamping in the thick snow. But that isn’t what roots my feet on that horrible, wintry path. It isn’t even Helena’s eyes, clouded by a white haze that moves and slithers, swallowing her pupils.
It’s the scarlet-tinted shadows that leak from her body.
Whorls of foul darkness suddenly seep from her mouth and nose and radiate from her skin. Save for the stench, it reminds me of the Prince of the East.
I take a step away, and another, stopping only when something metal crashes behind me, followed by the thud of boots striking snow.
A nervous glance reveals the still-burning oil lamp on the ground and Alexus standing steady behind me.
He slips his hand across my hips to my waist and draws me close while the ring of his sword hisses through the night. “Leave the girl. Return to the Shadow World you came from, wraith.”
My heart stutters. It can’t be. Wraiths are just scary stories passed around bonfires in the summertime. There are no gods left to walk the Shadow World to free such an abomination.
Except…maybe a god wasn’t needed this time. Maybe the guilty party is the one man made of shadow himself.
The thing inside Helena tosses her head back and laughs, the sound an ear-splitting shriek. “My prince wouldn’t be very pleased to find that I disobeyed him.”
No. I shake my head. It can’t be.
The shadow dismounts Helena’s body in that same awkward, stiff manner, wearing her skin like a cloak. It comes ever closer, smiling, but then stops and removes the gambeson, tossing it aside. Like before, it slides Helena’s hand along her thigh, but this time, it drags Hel’s destroyed dress up a sleek, dark leg until the buckle of one of Finn’s dagger belts comes into view.
Fast as a heartbeat, the wraith unsheathes a weapon.
A long moment passes as I grasp what I’m seeing, all wrapped up in shadows, the reason the waters showed me so little back at the stream.