“That’s what we were trying to do,” he said, and I recognized that tamped-down glow, the restrained ember of his excitement when he delved to the bottom of something. “With Mara’s legends. We were trying to literally undo the spell by breaking it down into components, and creating an equal and opposite ritual to what Mara did. But the problem is that you were imitating her. Mimicking. And you were using the wrong set of tools to do it, a different kind of magic.”
Luka sprang to his feet like a coiled spring, and even though I still had no idea what he meant, watching him pace as his mind whirred so quickly made me want to back him into some trees myself.
“It’s freedom,” he said suddenly, looking up at us with blazing eyes. “That’s the opposite. True love is freedom, loving someone enough to do what’s best for them—to let them go, if that’s what they need. Mara’s love is just another kind of slavery, a falseness, a perversion of the word.”
“But what then?” Niko asked. “What do you do with knowing that?”
“It would have to be an effort of will,” I said slowly, my heart beginning to pick up speed. “Maybe that’s how she sealed this deal in the first place, by casting her will so far and wide that it set this cycle in place in perpetuity. And that’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it, with the infinite bloom? Imposing my will on things? Isn’t that what you said, Dunja? That the infinite bloom is the ultimate gleam, imposed on space and time?”
Dunja’s eyes sharpened on me. “Yes. Exactly so. The infinite bloom is the basal gift, the one that lets Mara cast at her highest order of magnitude. It lets you bind far past yourself, to bind the universe to your will.”
“So why do I have it now, when I never did before? I mean, I could always make things bloom, but I couldn’t do what I did with the—with that wisteria that comes from me. It’s like Mara’s roses, I assume, but why can I do it?”
“You’ve never been so desperate before, most likely, and you’ve spent your life weakened, away from coven and suppressed by your mother. To apply your gleam fully to the infinite bloom, you have to cast from truest yearning. The deepest desire of your soul. The thing you want more than any other thing, perhaps even than to live.”
So that was it, then—it had always been protection. Every time I had summoned the wisteria, it had been because I needed it badly, to shelter Malina. To put myself between her and whatever was coming.
But maybe I could want to save myself, too.
“So, maybe . . . maybe we could all go bigger,” I said slowly. “I think I already did it once, Dunja. I opened a portal to somewhere—somewhere that might have been his kingdom, even. Because I wanted to beat Malina. I wanted to will myself to be the one to go, to save her.”
“That’s it, then,” Luka said. “It must be. Because that’s what fractals are—an expression of infinity. You can see it, Iris. And if you can see it . . .”
“Then maybe I can touch it,” I finished. “But even if I can, what am I supposed to do once I’m there? I knew what I wanted, the last time I did it. I wanted to make sure I was the one who went. But this—I’m not sure I know how to want this, properly.”
“You’ll have us,” Malina replied. “To help you. Mara sold us into slavery; maybe we can do what Luka says, and break those bonds by turning them into freedom. I could sing it. Dunja can dance it.”
“But where do we do this? In the cave?”
“No.” Luka shook his head. “The Ice Cave is hers—that’s still playing by her rules. We need to take it up another level. Set it all up above her. Go even higher.”
Malina groaned. “Oh, I was afraid of that.”
Niko’s head snapped up. “There’s not going to be enough room for me and Luka,” she said flatly. “Is there.”
I shook my head, biting back tears. “No. Not if Dunja will be dancing.”
He set his jaw. “I’m not going to leave you. I want to help.”
“You already did—you let us see all this in a different way,” I answered gently. “And that was what we needed. But I think you know it, too, that we need to do this alone, the three of us.”
“Princess,” Lina said gently as Niko struggled before melting against her. “Please. Don’t make this so hard. Come say good-bye this time.”
Luka crouched down next to me and cupped my face with one hand, curling the other tightly around my neck. I inhaled at the force of his kiss, the taste of him, the warmth behind it. The full heat and fervor of his love, as he kissed me on each cheek and between my eyes. And even before he said so, I knew he’d do it. He’d leave me alone to this, because that was what I asked of him.
“Don’t you dare think these were good-bye kisses,” he said when he drew back. “It was just to tide me over. And because I love you.”
“I hope so. And I love you, too.”
EVEN IN THE twilight, the world spread below us was stunning from this high up. For a little while, I hadn’t even thought that we would make it. The earlier stages of the ascent had been almost pleasant, green and winding paths up the mountain that zigged and zagged to bring us higher without the impression of terrible danger. But the last leg of the climb had been so steep and severe—just scree slopes with hand-and toeholds you had to feel out carefully to find, that should have required actual climbing equipment if we’d had the time for that—that Malina had simply frozen against the mountain with her face pressed against the still-warm stone, whispering that she couldn’t go farther, she just couldn’t.
Eventually, Dunja and I had arranged ourselves beside and below her against the cliff face, and carefully moved her hands and feet for her as she clung to the side like a limpet. I’d never been very afraid of heights, but the little fear I’d had seemed to have dissipated. Instead I felt a vast, yawning sense of awe inside me, as if my soul had opened its mouth wide to breathe all this in.
“Bobotov Kuk,” I said as we scrabbled over its lip and onto its face. “Holy shit.”
The summit pyramid of stone was larger than it seemed from the valley below, but not by much. There was enough room for the three of us to huddle toward its center, with a ring of open space around us. The summit stood between two slightly lower peaks—the Nameless Peak and the Maiden, Dunja informed us—and together the three made a jagged mountain wall to the west, dropping off into a plummeting slope toward the green-fuzzed ?krka Valley and the glacial pools of its two lakes below, one massive and one small. Beyond them the rest of the Durmitor range soared, mountain after mountain like the earth’s own stone fractals, into the fall and fire tones of the dying day on the horizon.
“I know I was full-throttle about this,” Malina gulped, “but I’m very, very scared right now. We’re so high up, and it’s—I could fall—I don’t know if I’ll be able to sing anything other than that.”
“I would never let you fall,” Dunja said, sliding a hand down Malina’s hair. “I promise you. And once I start the dance, you’ll pick up the thread from me. It’ll be all right.”