My father.
He might still be out there. Another reason I have to stop crying and keep moving. So I trudge onward, but again, I hear my name, drifting on the wind.
Slowly, I turn a glance over my shoulder and wipe a half-frozen tear from my cheek. In the pale light of early morning, one of the bodies moves.
With his long, dark hair and shredded tunic, the Witch Collector pushes his hulking form to his knees. He struggles to stand, but after a long moment, his body unfurls, shoulders rolling back, feet spread wide, hands fisted like hammers at his sides.
A cold wind snaps through the ravine, and a funnel of snowflakes whirls around Alexus, whipping through his hair and tunic. Behind him, a mist rolls into the gorge, slipping around him. It takes the shape of a man—or perhaps something more than a man. Whatever or whoever it is, it’s standing a few feet away from the Witch Collector.
From within the mist, white wolves emerge with predatory grace and howl like they mean to wake the dead.
And the earth rumbles.
III
Winter Road
33
Raina
I open my eyes to the sound of cawing crows and jerk like I’m falling. At first, I think I’m still draped over the back of the horse that carried me from the ravine and through the forest, but perhaps I’m still dreaming. Only my dream was of Collecting Day, the last day I spent with those I loved.
And that is not where I am now.
I’m in a tent, on my side. The air is bitter cold, freezing my breath in soft plumes, the light gloomy yet bright to my eyes. I turn my ear, listening to the crows and the tent canvas whipping sharply in the wind.
“Ah. I thought you’d never wake, Lovely.”
That voice sends a hard shiver through my bones. It isn’t the voice I long to hear, but it’s familiar, nonetheless.
“Make her face me.”
Suddenly, Rhonin looms above. My instinct is to punch him right in his perfectly angular nose, but my wrists are tied in front of me, restrained even further by a rope that connects my hands to my feet.
With one hand, he grabs the knotted mass at my wrists and hauls me up, making me gasp around the pain settled deep in my shoulders and injured arm. Without a second glance, he returns to his station.
At the Prince of the East’s left hand.
“Welcome to Winter Road, Raina Bloodgood,” the prince says. His face appears gaunt under the faint illumination of a nearby oil lamp, and even in the weak light, his crimson shadows are visible, a twitching and squirming halo.
He sits two feet away on a tall, thick piece of chopped tree trunk, elbows on his knees. He wears the bronze leathers of his men, stained with so much blood they’re nearly the color of the Eastlander flag leaning in the corner behind him. His long hands are covered with cuts, like he punched through glass, and his fingertips and ears are black with frostbite. At his right side stands General Vexx, hands behind his back, looking too pleased with himself as he stares down at me with a smug expression that I want to rip from his face.
They’re all here. The three men I want to end. So very close and so very different from the men I thought I’d have killed by now when all of this began.
The prince stands then squats in front of me, close enough that I smell the scent of something like ash and the spicy aroma of ground yarrow root, packed into the gash that travels across his face. Black hair stubbles his chin and jawline, but the skin around the wound looks corrupt and fevered.
Inwardly, I laugh. It looks like misery.
I hope it is.
The prince’s eyes are soft and roving like he knows me. It dawns on me that he knows me far better than I wish.
He reaches to touch my cheek, but I jerk away. Surprisingly, he lets his hand fall as a wicked grin curves the undamaged corner of his mouth. “You should get very comfortable with me, Raina,” he says, voice tender. “We’re going to become the closest of friends.”
Like our first go around, I spit. This time I hit my mark, right on his ugly face.
Nostrils flaring, he takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, tempering the anger burning in his eyes. Without breaking the stare that pulses between us, he holds his hand out at his side. Vexx hands him a kerchief, and the prince carefully wipes away my disrespect.
“I planned to kill you,” he says. “Painfully. But now you have use.” Again, he moves to take my chin, and again, I draw back. But this time, he doesn’t let me. He ensnares my jaw and—with fingertips digging painfully—yanks me forward so that I’m an inch from his rotting mouth. “The reality you need to understand, Miss Bloodgood, is that you are mine now. Keeper. Healer. I’m sure there are more mysteries to discover behind that beautiful face and all those pretty witch’s marks. You can reveal your skills willingly, or I will find ways to unearth them myself. I can be kind, or I can be your worst nightmare. Your choice.”
He shoves me away and flicks his hand at his shoulder. Vexx moves to the edge of the tent and draws back the flap, stepping outside where daylight fades from the sky.
How long was I out? I don’t recall anything after…
I close my eyes and swallow back tears. Gods, I wish the memory of the ravine wasn’t part of me, but it’s branded on my spirit, along with so many other awful images that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
At the thought, two tiny flutters at the back of my chest make my heart skip a beat—two tiny darknesses. Though Helena and Alexus are gone, part of them will always be with me.
When I open my eyes, my tears roll free. In the next moment, my breath rushes from my lungs like I’ve been kicked in the gut.
I might as well have been.
When we were leaving the ravine, I dreamt of Nephele. I saw her screaming, surrounded by flames. She was clinging to Mother, who stood wide-eyed and pale, a spear’s tip protruding from her chest. They reached for me. Crying. Pleading with me to help them.
My mother looked forlorn and lost, but Nephele was angry, her eyes filled with accusation. It was so real that even now, just the thought of it makes my skin tingle from the memory of fire and sends my heart lurching against my ribs, a reminder of everything I felt the moment I watched Mother’s life leave her body. I’ve feared what might await me when and if I saw my sister again, when I’d have to tell her that I let our mother die.
Across the tent stands a woman, tall and slender, dressed in sealskin trousers and a blood-stained jacket, the color of a blue beryllus stone—the same color as her eyes. Her hands are bound behind her back, her mouth gagged. An array of multi-colored witch’s marks covers the smooth, pale skin of her hands and neck, even the sides of her face, curling at her temples.
Nephele.
I struggle to get my legs under me, my mind screaming her name.