I whispered, “And if I hadn’t lit the lamp?”
“I would have been free, but Echo, that doesn’t matter—”
“Where is she taking you? How can I save you?”
The wolves drew closer. They wore silver collars around their necks, and their cruel muzzles were studded with jewels that glittered in the light from the burning lamp.
“Hal, please. Where is she taking you?”
Pain stretched across his forehead, snowflakes catching on his eyelashes. “She rules in a place where the mountain meets the sky, and the trees are hung with stars.”
“What does that mean?”
The wolves drew closer.
“Echo, you have to run. You have to run far from here!”
“Hal!” I grabbed his sleeve.
But two of the wolves seized Hal’s arms in their huge jaws. They ripped him away from me.
“HAL!”
He looked into my face, his eyes wet. “North, ever north. But Echo don’t come after me. Promise me you won’t. This isn’t what you think, and I couldn’t bear it if—”
I blinked and he was gone, no trace of him or the wolves but the lamp burning bright, oil seeping like blood into the snow.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
SO I LOST HIM TO THE snow and the ice and the wolves. I lost him to the wind and the dark. I lost him to a flare of lamplight and a spot of oil.
I lost him, and it was all my fault.
I dropped to my knees, screaming his name into the dark. Shame raged inside of me.
He was gone, he was gone, he was gone.
I wept as I knelt in the snow, the cold and damp creeping through my thin nightgown and soaking me to the bone. My tears turned to ice.
But no amount of regret could erase what I had done, could bring him back to me.
I lifted my shuddering head and stood, my legs so stiff and cramped with cold I barely managed it. I was an aching, wretched void, my heart a bird flown from its cage, my soul a wisp of smoke evaporated on the wind.
Some distant part of me knew I would freeze to death before the morning came if I didn’t do something. Numbly, I rescued the lamp from the ground. The flames had burnt out but there was a tiny bit of oil left, and matches still in my pocket. That distant, thinking part of me understood I’d need both.
The snow fell thicker; huge wet flakes settled heavy on my shoulders. The thinking part of me scanned my surroundings for shelter, and spotted a little cave miraculously dug into the side of the hill. I wondered if the house was somehow still looking out for me.
I slogged through the snow in my soaked stocking feet, forcing myself to hold onto to the lamp even though I wanted to smash it against the rocks.
I ducked into the miraculous cave and my heart seized up. It was the room from behind the waterfall, or what was left of it. The armchairs where the wolf and I had sat so often were smashed beyond repair, the little side table tilted over between them. There was a broken tea set, scattered cake crumbs. The fireplace, thick with ashes. Ragged edges of bandages, a jar of salve. A bloodstain on the floor, where the wolf had lain while I stitched his wound closed.
I couldn’t bear it, but the thinking part of me broke the end table, used the pieces to build a fire.
I stared into the flames without seeing them. All I saw was Hal, sleeping beside me, the spot of oil burning his cheek. I saw him jerk awake and realize what I’d done.
Saw him standing in the snow in his shirtsleeves, his eyes dark with terror.
Saw the wolves pull him away.
He was gone, he was gone, he was gone.
I had no more tears, but still I wept, dry and ragged into the flames.
And I swore by my father, by my scars, by God in heaven, that I would find him, that I would atone for my mistake and free him from the hell I’d sent him to.
Ever north. Where the mountain meets the sky and the trees are hung with stars.
I would find him, even if I spent my whole life searching.
I DREAMED OF A WOOD: a clearing under cold starlight, an arching hall made of twining trees, open to the sky.
The Wolf Queen was waiting for me, on a throne made of thorns.
She was extremely tall, with long silver-white hair that flowed down around her shoulders and pooled in her lap. Her hands were furred with silver, her fingers ended in claws that had been sharpened and ornamented with jewels. Her face was too angular to be human, her lips unnaturally pale. Gray lupine ears showed through her silver hair.
Her eyes were pure fire.
She rose from the throne and came toward me, the grass flattening under her feet as she walked. She touched my face with one clawed hand. “What will you do, Echo Alkaev?”
Even in my dream, I felt the bite of her claws. “I will find him. I will free him. And I will destroy you.”
She laughed. “You are wrong three times over. But come, if you can. I think I shall enjoy it.”
And then she released me.
The dream changed.
Hal lay on his side in an underground hollow, his wrists and ankles bound with roots. Blood stained his white shirt. Ragged sobs wrenched his whole body.
“Hal!” I screamed. But I was frozen in place. I couldn’t go to him.
And he couldn’t hear me.
He wept and wept.
Somewhere above, the Wolf Queen was laughing.
I WOKE TO FIND MYSELF half-buried—snow had drifted into the cavern while I slept. I shoved free, numb with panic, hating myself for falling asleep.
The house had one more offering: a fur cloak in the snow just outside of the cave. All I had left to my name was my mother’s emerald ring, and the compass-watch from Rodya, ticking steadily against my heart.
I shrugged into the cloak, opened the compass.
I went north, to where the stories always said the wild things lived, where the folktales came from and still magic in the mountaintops.
I passed through open fields of snow and scatterings of forest, climbed up and over a jagged mountain range. I stopped at the first village I could find and bartered away the cloak for supplies, asking everyone I met if they had heard of the Wolf Queen, or a place where the mountain met the sky and the trees were hung with stars.
No one had. They all stared at my scarred face and whispered about devils and passed me hurriedly by.
Every night, I dreamed of the Wolf Queen. Sometimes she spoke to me, and sometimes she did not. But she always, always laughed. And there was always Hal, standing in the snow in his shirtsleeves, or sobbing in the dark, blood staining the ground.
Winter deepened as I journeyed further north.
I happened on a reindeer caught fast in a briar bush. The wind whipped icy down from the distant mountains, and I almost left the beast to her fate, but something pricked my heart and I stopped to help her. I wrestled her free from the brambles and we sheltered together underneath an outcropping of rock as the storm raged fierce and cold around us.
After that the reindeer traveled with me, sharing in my feasts and in my famines, too. Her antlers were velvet and she made her own heat and could sniff out the barest traces of lichen under the snow. Her company eased my heart a little, at least during waking hours.
The weeks dragged on.
I heard no word of the Wolf Queen, no hint of the place ever north. Despair numbed me. Dreams haunted me.
And then I met a reindeer herder in a snowstorm. He shared stew with me from an iron pot hanging over his fire, lent me furs to wrap around my shoulders. I scooped the stew into my mouth with such haste I burnt my tongue, but I didn’t care—I hadn’t eaten anything in two days.
“There’s a storyteller who comes sometimes to the village on the mountain,” the herder told me. “He spins tales of wonder and horror, stories no one has ever heard before. If anyone knows of your Wolf Queen, it’ll be him.”
And so I crossed the valley and climbed the mountain to the ancient village on its ridge.
I came to find the storyteller.
I came to find you.
PART TWO