HAL CRADLES ME AGAINST HIS CHEST, gently, like he’s uncertain if I want him to touch me. I’m shaking so hard I feel like I might burst apart. I try to focus on Hal, his heartbeat strong beneath my ear, his breath on my cheek, his cold fingers tangled in mine. I don’t understand what he’s done, or what I’ve done. I don’t know how to reconcile the two versions of my life, pages of a book glued together, impossible to tell what words belong to which page. But I know that it’s real. I know that it happened.
And I am not the only one who is living out this story for the second time.
I lift my head to see the Wolf Queen looming over us, angry and brittle as starlight, as ice. “If the girl-child had known everything you have made her endure twice over, she would have never come. Clever of you, Halvarad, not to tell her.”
I hate that she has the power to make me doubt him even now, to make me want to pull away. But I don’t. I hold tight to his hand, and strength pulses between us.
“You are wrong.” Hal’s eyes blaze with fury, his face is flushed and the mark on his cheek from the spot of oil seems nearly healed.
How long have we been here, holding on to one another? There seems to be a change in the wind, blowing down through the top of this woodland hall. I can feel it, I think: the cords of his enchantment falling away from him, the Queen’s hold evaporating like smoke.
“Echo would have come to save me anyway. That is who she is: she gives of herself to the people around her. Gives and gives and gives. Because at the heart of it, in her heart, there is compassion and strength, goodness and knowledge and truth. She would have come all this way, to stand up to you, to break me free from your spell—she would do it all twice, even though I don’t deserve it, not then and not now. That is what burns in Echo’s soul. That is why she’s still holding on to me now.” His voice cracks and he turns his eyes to mine, tears sliding down his face. “I was so afraid, so afraid to go back to her. But I was glad when you lit the lamp, when I woke and saw you leaning over me. I was glad, because it meant you would be free. And then I remembered—I remembered that you’d done this all before, and I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t bear—”
“Hal, it’s over. Can’t you feel it? Your century is fulfilled. You’re free.”
He sucks in a deep, shuddering breath, and lifts his head once more to the Queen. Her hatred seethes toward us, a tangible thing. But she doesn’t take up the threads of her spell-song. She just stands there, staring at us.
“Isn’t he?” I demand. “I’ve fulfilled your terms. He’s free. We both are.”
“You fools,” spits the Wolf Queen. “I do not require an enchantment to destroy you.”
Then she shouts a harsh word at the sky and the world explodes in rock and fire.
I leap to my feet and yank Hal up after me, holding on to his hand with all the strength remaining in my body. The earth cracks in two beneath our feet and fire rages below, molten lava leaping up to consume us. I throw myself across the crack and Hal jumps with me; we run, hand in hand. Mountains explode around us, rocks and ash and fire raining down. The noise deafens me, and all sound narrows to a ringing in my ears.
We run, choked for breath. Ever the earth is rearranging itself underneath, seeking to shake us apart but we don’t let it, our fingers locked hard together. Another mountain bursts ahead, and lava rushes toward us from every direction.
“Jump!” shouts Hal, and we narrowly leap over a new crack.
The lava oozes toward us; I can smell the sulphur, taste the heat. It will make short work of us—there is no escaping this.
“Up here!” Hal cries.
A rock juts up through the river of fire and Hal scrambles to the top with me awkwardly hanging on to his heel. He leans down to grasp my arm and pulls me up after him.
All around, the world shudders and shakes. Lava licks at the base of our rock but doesn’t reach us. Even so, the heat singes my hair, sucks up the moisture in my skin. Soon there will be none left, and I will crack like the ground and fracture like the mountains. This is the full weight of the Wolf Queen’s power, her true nature. I can’t help but think that she is neither wolf nor woman but something else entirely, a creature born of fire and malice and hate.
Hal and I huddle together, his arm tight around my shoulders.
“I’m sorry,” he says into my ear, and somehow amidst all this horror of heat, I can still feel the warmth of his breath on my face. “I did this to you. I did this to you twice. I forced you to make promises you didn’t understand. I forced you to come here. I even—I even scarred your face.”
I open my eyes to peer at him through the haze of smoke and ash and I’m filled with a profound sense of release. “It’s all right, Halvarad Wintar. It’s over now. I chose this. I chose you. I will always choose you.”
He lifts his hand to my face, traces the scars with his fingers. Gently, so gently. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?” I thought all the moisture had been siphoned from me but I’m wrong. A single tear slides down my cheek.
And then I’m leaning into him, pressing my lips against his. Kissing Hal, who was twice a wolf, in the middle of a dying world. He pulls me close and kisses me back. A brittle wind whirls around us, tangling our hair together, my dark and his light. Ash falls like snow.
The lava creeps higher. The earth shakes.
And then Hal draws back from me, tightens his grip on my hand, pulls me to my feet. He raises our joined hands to the ragged, bleary sky. “Do you see this, Wolf Queen? Do you see? You are defeated! Your curse is undone, your rule over me ceases. She has broken it! The century is fulfilled and Echo has broken your curse. Do you hear me? DO YOU HEAR ME?”
“There’s no need to shout.”
Suddenly the Wolf Queen is beside us, floating in the air just above the tumbling lava. Her features seem sharper in the raging light, but no wind stirs through her silver hair.
“Well, then?” Hal’s eyes are hard as flint.
“You have won,” she snaps. “Your stupid girl has prevailed.”
He smiles. “Then we are free.”
“Of the enchantment, perhaps. But not of me.”
She circles us, as she did in the wood.
Hatred and fear and anger gnaw inside of me, and I still don’t let go of Hal. “Where are we?” I demand.
She doesn’t smile, just stares at me as she passes, around and around our rock, walking on nothing, her feet making no sound. “I am the Queen of many realms, many worlds. This is one of them. I was born here. Not the daughter of the Devil as so many have guessed. Just the daughter of another world. But I did not choose to stay.”
Her words are punctuated by yet another eruption, barely fifty paces away. Hal and I fall to our knees, choking on ash. The Wolf Queen regards us without pity. “You have displeased me. You have robbed me. You have brought my enchantment to naught and turned my own daughter against me. And so I shall leave you here. And you shall die.”
Hal struggles to stand amidst the trembling of the world, and he pulls me up beside him. We are one, united and strong against her. “That,” he says, “was not part of our agreement.”
“You don’t make the rules. No one does but me.”
“THAT WAS NOT PART OF OUR AGREEMENT!”
I can hardly breathe. My skin cracks, the heat creeps up to my hairline. We have minutes left. Maybe only seconds.
“I care not,” says the Wolf Queen.
There comes a sudden silence, and then the next second a roaring, like a storm over the sea, and a rushing of wind.
It whirls around all three of us, lifting us from the rock, away from the grasping fingers of the lava, away from the heat and the fire and the certainty of death. I think I catch a glimpse of gold wings.
The Wolf Queen is screaming.
All I can feel is my heartbeat and Hal’s, still together, caught fast between our palms.
The world seems to shift, blurring before my eyes and then sharpening again. But now the fire is gone, and we are back in the Wolf Queen’s court, and she is flat on her back, staring up at three figures looming over her, her face wracked with terror.
The East and South and West Winds blaze with cold fire, and the East Wind presses his sword against the Wolf Queen’s throat.
“You have broken the laws of the old magic, daughter of another world. You have twisted it to your own uses, you have made a deal and failed to honor it.”