was wrong. She wasn’t like them. She wasn’t like the animals. She wasn’t like any of them.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
She wondered how it would feel to touch his other hand.
“Why?” He laughed bitterly. “It’s not your fault.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Ren said. “No one should feel that alone. It just isn’t right.”
He turned away.
“I had nine brothers,” he said. “I was never alone.”
Then she did what she’d been wanting to do almost since she met him. She smoothed back his hair, which was coarser than it looked. Then she ran a hand over the stubbled edge of his jaw. She loved his face. She loved that crooked tooth.
Ren wondered, suddenly, if she loved more than that.
He got to his feet, and Ren’s hand fell away. She wondered if she’d gone too far. She looked down at her hands.
“You should sleep,” he said roughly, above her, not looking at her. “We walked most of the night.”
“So should you,” she replied softly.
Still, he didn’t look at her.
“No,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “It just reminds me of death.”
33
I AM GOING TO DIE, thought Lukasz.
He had never thought it would end here. With him in his father’s chair, Ren curled up in his father’s bed. She was finally sleeping, and he was too terrified to even close his eyes.
Click, click.
He ran his fingers over the lighter casing. He watched its tiny flame spring to life. He watched it snuff out. Was that how it would end for him? A tiny click, click, and then utter black? Or would he go out like Koszmar, on a single word and a shot in the darkness?
He didn’t think so. His exit would be graceless. He already knew that. He clung to life like a dog. He always had.
Everything wants to live, Henryk had said once.
And by God, Lukasz wanted to live.
His good hand covered his eyes. They grew hot, his vision swimming. The warmth brimmed, threatened to spill over. He rubbed the tears away, looked up to the view beyond the window, now a bit blurry. Dawn had broken, and the Mountains ground to a halt. Sun streamed through the foggy glass, illuminating dust and pink carpet. Rosy hills stared back from six sides, the very same hills that had once stared back at his father. He shivered.
Lukasz wanted to live.
There was a rustle in the doorway.
He leapt to his feet. Then, swaying for a moment, he half forgot what he was doing. His eyes went to Ren, still fast asleep.
God, she was perfect. She deserved a forest free of monsters. She deserved a kingdom free of that Dragon. She’d lost so much already. A crown, a family, now her forest . . . It wasn’t fair that she’d lost a brother.
It wasn’t fair that she kept forgiving him.
But she wouldn’t forgive him this time. He had one last promise to break. Hard to believe that when he’d first lied to her, he’d thought his hand would be his downfall. And now he wouldn’t just lose his career. He wouldn’t just lose her.
Lukasz wished he could live.
Someone moved beyond the doorway. Just as he returned to his senses, a man moved out of the hall and into the warming dawn.
Lukasz’s heart stopped. It couldn’t be . . . not after all this time . . .
The mavka venom must have been eating away at him from the inside. For a wild moment, he wondered: Was he dying? Was he already dead? Was this how it ended, among ghosts in a ghost town, doomed to an eternity in these purple hills?
“. . . Dad?”
The man in the doorway had a black beard, and he wore his gray-black hair long, in the more traditional style of the Wolf-Lords. He wore a Faustian-fur cloak over Dewclaw chain mail. A scabbard hung from his leather belt. No sword.
“How did you—?” Lukasz had to stop and start over. He was horrified by how hoarse his voice sounded. “You’re—I can’t believe you’re alive—”
His father had Tad’s deep-set eyes and beaky nose. He had Lukasz’s feline mouth. He had Rafa?’s jaw. In his father, Lukasz could see each of his brothers, he could see fireflies, see his parents dancing, see nights warmed with dragon fur and enchantment, and it took him a moment to realize he wasn’t seeing. For the first time in a long time, he was remembering—
The tears came. Spilled over.
“I am not he,” said the figure.
His voice was harsh and hollow, as if it had been dragged from