almost laugh. Is this what Mars believes too? That I am the long-dead child of the Kerce queen? That it’s Begynd’s magic shining from behind my eyes?
“Living souls are not the same as living bodies, Shyne. You blaspheme by claiming such.” The elder’s eyes find me again, rest on my face with a question I’ve no problem answering.
“I’m with you, sir,” I say, still fighting the hilarity building in my chest. “I’m no one’s savior.”
“You saved me,” Crysel chimes.
“I could have killed you,” I say over my shoulder. “Want me to try again?”
“Where did you come from?” the elder asks, his grip tightening on my wrist.
I fight every urge I have to be free of him. Of all the lunatics I’ve met in the past two days, this one might be on my side. And I could use someone on my side. “The outpost at Whistletop. I live over the tavern there.”
“The tavern?”
“I’m a rig driver. That’s all.”
“No,” he says, his lips soured. “You come from somewhere else. Somewhere across the sea. I smell the Paradyian sun on your skin.” It’s an accusation, something that does not please him.
“I’ve never been off the island.”
“Mistress Quine died years ago,” he says. I don’t ask him how he knows this—the story made its way through the surrounding mountain settlements. The bloodied body. The shattered windows. The missing child. Though I am surprised the tale made it as far as High Pass. “Who raised you?”
“A widower named Cornelius Drypp—he owned a tavern in Whistletop.” Thoughts of the tavern, warm and bright, thoughts of Drypp wrapping Lenore and me in heated blankets after a day of skating on the ice, assault me, make me desperate. “His granddaughter, Lenore, was my closest friend—is my closest friend. She’s like my sister and she’s been . . . taken.” It’s true, isn’t it? Lenore never would have gone on her own. “I need safe passage across the Shiv Road so I can find her. Please.”
His face is shriveled now, his eyes sharp and narrowed. He presses his thumb to my eyebrow and lifts.
“Don’t,” I say, attempting to pull away. But there are too many hands pushing and shoving, too many bodies holding me still. My chest rises and falls, and my eye waters as I fight to close it against his grip.
“Kol and light,” he says.
“You can be certain she inherited neither from Mistress Quine,” Shyne says.
After another long moment, the elder releases my brow and his hand cups my chin softly. His gentle touch is worse than his grip, but this time he lets me pull away.
“Foxes are not interested in light,” the elder says. “In the depths of white winter, when rodents are scarce, foxes are interested in only one thing: a ready meal.”
“They licked at her wounds,” Shyne says. “Nothing more. They scattered at my approach and left behind, I found—”
“The newborn daughter of the Kerce queen,” the elder says, falling back on the pelts, a sickening strain of revelation in his voice.
Now I do laugh. It’s ridiculous. Three hundred and twenty-five Rymes, he said. It’s not possible.
“Winter serves her,” Shyne says. “I’ve seen it myself.”
“I had a Kerce tutor,” I say. “That’s all you’ve seen. Shyne, please, you’re misinterpreting what you saw the other day in the pass. I do not speak the language of Winter. Winter saved the girl of her own accord—she’s not the evil power you make her out to be, and I do not order her to do my bidding. I am not some ice-resurrected daughter of a dead queen.”
“And what if you are?” Shyne says. “What if it is your duty to command Winter?”
I laugh, but he scowls. He genuinely expects me to answer.
“That’s ridiculous . . .”
“What if it is your duty?” he demands.
“Winter has always been good to me. I could never send her away.”
The cave is silent, so silent I wonder if they can all hear Winter purring in my chest.
“And why do you think that is?” Shyne asks, my own desperation radiating from his eyes.
I can’t have this conversation. Not here. Not when these people think I’m something I’m not.
I look to the old man for help. It’s not clear who’s in charge—who the cave full of Shiv will side with—but he’s the best chance I have to get free.
“How old are you really?” I ask him.
He clears his throat—or attempts to. The rattle tells me he’s been trying to clear it for years. “I do not know.”
“Did your mother not tell you the