It was in my hand half a breath before he leapt at me in a snarl of teeth and anger; I nicked his side, and blood dripped down his white fur.
I scrambled to my feet and started moving in the direction I thought the door must be. My hand slipped on the sword hilt and I didn’t want to think about why. I gripped it as tight as I could.
The wolf recovered himself and stalked after me, snarling, blood leaking down his chest.
“Wolf, stop. Please. I don’t want to hurt you.”
He crouched again.
“Wolf, please!” I screamed.
He jumped at me and I knocked him away with the flat of my blade. I ran three more steps to the door, not even noticing the swaying, shrieking, knife-edged crystals slicing into my skin.
He leapt again, I knocked him away for a third time. I glanced back and I could see the door.
One more time the wolf snarled and sprang toward me. He collided with the blade, screaming as it bit into his chest and blood spurted red. The cut looked deep.
And then I was at the door, through the door, slamming it behind me, asking the house to lock it tight.
I shuddered and shuddered. I couldn’t stop. I sobbed in the hallway because I thought I might have killed him.
I DON’T KNOW HOW LONG I sat crying outside the obsidian door, but I finally lifted my head, brushed the hair out of my eyes with my blood-streaked hand, and stood shakily to my feet. The sword lay quiet on the floor, the blood on the blade already darkening.
There was no sound from the bauble room. I opened the door the barest crack and peeked in. The wolf wasn’t there, the only sign of his presence a pool of red. So much blood.
Too much.
“House,” I whispered. “Bring me to the wolf.” I grabbed my sword and started down the hall, the pain from my own injuries suddenly asserting itself: my shoulder, my side, my face, my hand. But none of it mattered to me.
So much blood on the floor in the bauble room.
I walked faster.
The house led me down a stair and out into the garden, where the wind bit shockingly cold. There were bloody paw prints in the snow.
I followed them, panic searing into my bones. Past the dead roses and the white stone paths winding up the steps. Past the lily pool and the hammock hidden in the willow. Through the waterfall to the hidden room beyond, where the wolf lay too still in a pool of widening crimson.
I dropped down beside him with a cry, shouting instructions at the house almost without thinking: a fire, bandages, clean water. I brushed my fingers tentatively across his fur; I could feel his heartbeat, wavering just beneath his skin. He was still alive.
The supplies appeared at my elbow even as a fire flared up in the hearth on the back wall of the cave. I dipped a clean cloth into the water and carefully worked to clean the blood away from the wolf’s wounds. He had many smaller cuts on his back and his long white legs, but the wound in his chest was jagged and deep. I hadn’t punctured any vital organs, or he would be dead already, but it wouldn’t stop bleeding. I thought of the diagrams in my medical books, the instructions for how to close such a serious wound, and my hands went to the pouch at my hip. The needle was there, but the spool was empty.
“Bring me thread,” I whispered to the house.
It appeared in my lap, strong and white. I slipped it into the binding needle, shaking so hard it took too many precious seconds to accomplish. But the moment I put the needle into the wolf’s skin, my hands grew still and certain. I tugged the thread through, pulling the ragged ends of the wound together, just as, not that long ago, the wolf and I had mended the tear in the library. A lamp flared into existence just above me without my asking, the house instinctively knowing what I required.
I stitched in silence, aware of every beat of the wolf’s heart, every ounce of blood that seeped onto my hands and stained my skirt as I worked.
And then it was done. I washed more blood away and spread the stitches with an ointment made of yarrow leaves. Then I bandaged it, lifting the wolf’s heavy head as I passed the roll of cloth around his chest and over his shoulder several times. The bandage was thick when I’d finished.
I laid the wolf’s head down and immediately started shaking again.
I made myself bandage my shoulder and my hand. I made myself get off the floor and sit in one of the armchairs in front of the fire. I asked the house to lay a blanket over the wolf; it settled around him in a soft cascade of blue.
I think I fell asleep for a while, because when I opened my eyes, the light coming through the waterfall was a deep amber orange.
The wolf was gone.
I WENT TO THE LIBRARY. I stepped into five different book-mirrors, looking for Hal. He didn’t come and I wasn’t surprised. Because if Hal was the wolf, he was too injured to come. The thought twisted inside of me, sharp and terrible.
At last I went to my room and crawled into bed. I blew out the lamp earlier than usual. I curled myself into a tight ball. I’d tried so hard to help him and I’d made everything worse. I’d almost been trapped by the Queen of the Wood.
And I’d nearly killed the wolf.
I felt him climb into bed beside me a long while later. My tears were dry by then and I was profoundly glad. I didn’t want him to catch me crying, not after everything he had suffered.
We lay a long while in the silence and the dark, not speaking. I knew he wasn’t asleep—his breathing was too quick and sharp for that.
“Echo,” he said at last, his voice tight with pain. “Thank you for saving me.”
I took a breath. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“I attacked you.”
The image of him lunging at me, eyes wild, teeth dripping red, would haunt me forever. “What would have happened if I had broken the mirror?”
On his side of the bed, the sheets rustled. “It would have killed me.”
I cursed myself.
“Echo do you remember the day you freed me from the trap?”
My heart seized up. The blur of white. The blinding pain. Looking in the mirror for the first time at my ruined face. “Of course I do.”
“I have fought the wildness every day for nearly a hundred years. But sometimes—sometimes it seizes me no matter how I resist. Like it did with the trap. Like it did today. And that—that is when I hate myself the most.”
“Wolf—”
“When I hurt you.” His words were choked, like he was fighting tears. “I hurt you from the moment I met you. I do not mean to, but I cannot seem to help it. I—I do not want to hurt you anymore. You should leave. Go back to your father’s house. I will see you safely through the wood in the morning.”
“But I promised you a year. I gave you my word.”
“There is only one day left. It doesn’t matter.”
“I will fulfill my promise. I’m not leaving you.”
I listened to him breathing, three heartbeats, four. “If you are certain.”
“I’m certain.”
He said nothing more.
Sleep stole slowly over me, and as I was slipping into the realm of my dreams I thought I heard the wolf’s quiet voice at my ear, just a breath away. “Forgive me, Echo. For what I have done. For what I will do again.”
And then, in the last few moments of consciousness, human fingers tangled in my own, and a heartbeat that was not mine beat quick and sharp in my palm.
When I woke in the morning I was once more alone in the bed, but I knew with absolute conviction that the voice and hand had not been a dream.
And it was time to prove that to myself.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
I ROSE AND DRESSED, DONNING A FUR cloak against the chill permeating the room, and skipped the breakfast the house had laid out for me. I went straight to the library.
The magic mirror was still locked in its cupboard in the back room. I took it out, settled down on the floor, and pulled out a hair and pricked my finger.
“Show me Hal.”
The surface of the glass rippled and changed.