“Why did you save me?” I asked. “Why did you protect me from the hexes?”
He dropped the branch in the snow and moved for me quickly.
I lifted Skalei, but then I heard the now too-familiar buzz of a spell whistling through the night air. I dove to the side just as the spell hissed into the snow mere inches from where I’d been standing. A shadow passed over the graveyard, and I glanced up to see a moth-mounted elf swooping above.
I was about to throw the vergr stone when Marroc grabbed me, scooping me up in his arms. His wood-smoke scent wrapped around me like a caress.
Then, like an icy night wind through Boston’s trees, he ran, holding me tight to his chest. And I let him—because I still had a million questions for him, and I needed answers.
The moth was long behind us, but Marroc clutched me in an iron grip as he raced through the city. Cold air nipped painfully at the nub of my severed finger.
At first, he seemed to move without purpose, needlessly redoubling his tracks as he raced around Beacon Hill, but then I realized it was a stratagem. With his bizarre path, he was making it virtually impossible for the High Elves to track us.
Eventually, he started down Commonwealth Avenue, away from the center of the city. I felt the muscles moving in his chest and shoulders as he ran—it was so strange, the way he didn’t breathe or make a noise as he moved. And yet he was so solid, like a marble statue of a god.
“What’s the plan, Marroc? Where are we going?” I didn’t know why I bothered asking, when it was obvious he couldn’t speak.
Without so much as a glance in my direction, he swept past the crumbling brick ruins of Boston University, then crossed over the bridge into Cambridge. With my arms wrapped around his neck, I took a moment to study his face.
It had been harder to see him before, with the cloud of shadows around him, but now I had a close view of his sharp jaw line and cheekbones. Thick, dark, straight eyebrows and eyelashes the color of jet. Skin was pale as ivory, eyes the color of a cloudless sky. His full lips were set in a determined line, and he had a distinct dimple in his chin. His dark hair hung over his shoulders, glossy in the moonlight.
I tore my gaze away from him again, looking over his shoulder. “It’s not safe here.”
A slow slide of his gaze was the only acknowledgment that I’d spoken. His lip curled a little. Again, I got the impression that he hated it when I spoke. His arms tightened under my legs, and he showed no signs of slowing down.
As we drew closer to Central Square, I spotted the first draugr shuffling out of an apartment building. The undead creature was small, and based on her bleached hair with pink tips, I guessed she’d been a woman, once.
As we raced past, I could have sworn that she clutched an empty wine glass in her emaciated fist.
“This part of the city is infested with draugr,” I warned Marroc. “It’s not safe.”
He only continued on, deeper into the streets of Cambridge.
When I looked over his shoulder again, I saw a group of undead following, shuffling along behind us like drunk college students. Which, really, they could have been a thousand years ago—undead from an ancient era, when nearby Harvard and MIT had still been functioning.
Luckily, my cursed prisoner friend was too fast for them, and he seemed indefatigable. The icy winds kissed my cheeks and whipped my silver hair around me.
We raced down Massachusetts Avenue, past the remains of Cambridge’s city hall, into Harvard Square. Snow swept around in squalls, and icicles hung from dormitory windows in Harvard Yard.
But there were even more draugr here, and dread crawled up my neck. They were crawling from shadows around the Harvard campus. Around us, the undead called to each other in low, whispering voices.
Marroc slowed to a stop in front of an impressive building, four stories tall and built of brick. I read its name on the lintel: Sanders Theatre.
Behind us, the draugr closed in, silently wading through the snowdrifts.
Panic made my heart race. “Marroc! We need to keep moving.”
He dropped me, and I slid down his enormous body. Then he grabbed the steps of a fire escape bolted to the wall of the theater. With a screech of tearing metal, he