pity. Or compassion. It was because the dragon had spared his life, and because she needed to know why.
The rusalka giggled again. She wrapped one arm around his neck and pulled herself up to whisper more quiet things in his ear. No . . . Ren corrected herself. Not a she. An it.
Ren could see its fingers flat across his back, gossamer-thin membranes sparkling between them. Maybe it looked like her. Maybe it looked like a dozen other girls. But nothing about that thing, right down to the broken, bloodstained nail, was human.
The light of the fire caught them both in flashing angles, and then the rusalka took its face out of his neck and looked Ren right in the eye.
“Let him go,” Ren repeated.
It smiled. Its perfect lips peeled back from stained teeth. They were square, but so chipped and crowded that they looked like fangs. Ren snarled back. She was the queen. She came second to no one.
But the rusalka just laughed. It didn’t take its eyes from her as it took his chin in a clawed hand and jerked him to face her. Eyes still locked on Ren, it kissed him. His arms came up, encircling it. And to Ren’s disgust, he kissed it back.
It had him. It had him, and it was keeping him. Ren watched, suddenly nauseated, as the rusalka closed its eyes, kissed him like it was starving, and together—forever—they slipped below the water’s surface. Water slid over, covered them. The river was still as glass.
Ren swallowed.
She stared into the water. She should leave. She knew that. But the Dragon . . . She glanced down at her feet, where the heavy sword lay in the grass. She reached down and touched the blade. Blood came away on her fingertips. And then, before she could react, her fingers began to tingle, and tiny sparks of flame leapt to life and then disappeared.
Ren jumped back, heart racing. She stared at the still water again.
Is that . . . Could it be . . . ?
She glanced up at the burning trees.
Dragon blood?
It was possible, she realized, that he knew about dragons. And it was possible, she reasoned, that he might even deserve better than death from a rusalka.
I won’t hurt you, he’d said.
He didn’t just look different. He’d looked at her differently. Without fear or anger. He’d looked at her like he wanted to help.
Ren shook her head. No, better not to think about that. She had seen what they’d done to Czarn. The humans called her a monster, but they’d been the ones to . . . to do that to him.
Ren gritted her teeth.
There was no point in trying to find good in them. Trying to find compassion, or kindness. She needed him alive for the same reason she had needed to bury those humans in the clearing: it was for her forest.
Nothing else.
Ren closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and dived into the water.
It was cold. Bone-chillingly cold.
While her eyes adjusted to the dark, she scrabbled blindly, searching for the riverbank, trying to orient herself—
She nearly screamed.
She’d expected mud. What she found was a skull.
She pulled her fingers out of the empty sockets, her vision clearing a little. It was embedded in the riverbank, one of hundreds. The skulls formed rows in the mud. Fishers and water spiders flitted in and out of their evil grins. Bones floated around her, illuminated by shafts of light, shot through the green water.
She peered into the murk. The river seemed to go down forever. Far below, a writhing shape receded rapidly into the depths.
Ren kicked hard and shot down like a missile.
He’d come to his senses. He was trying fight off the rusalka. No longer beautiful, it had turned to a skeleton, draped in slime and bloated flesh. Stringy hairs still clung to its skull. It clawed at his eyes and he flailed like a wounded animal.
Ren grabbed the skeleton’s arm and pulled. It reeled, hissing at her, tongue still intact in its toothy mouth. Ren snarled back. She seized the creature by the eye sockets and yanked. The skull came right off the spine. The skeleton went instantly limp. Ren pushed past the bones and grabbed his arm. His eyes were already closing.
Around them, the water began to writhe. Skeletons rose from the depths. They drifted, hissing, baring more broken teeth and bits of tongue. Ren growled, but it didn’t carry through the water.
There were too many to fight. It wasn’t going to