tugged his collar straight, even though he didn’t need it. She wondered if his uniform had ever been as spotless as it was now.
“You need to be together,” she whispered.
Around them, the mourners parted like the sea. They kept a slight distance, but their blue-eyed glances were furtive, interested. The youngest Wolf-Lord had been a child the last time they’d seen him. And Ren . . . Ren had not even existed to them.
“My brothers—I—” He couldn’t finish, and then started again. “It’s my . . . it’s my parents. I was four years old, Ren. I don’t know them. They don’t know me.”
Lukasz glanced back up to the lodge. The collar of his jacket was buttoned tightly over the mavka’s scars, and the fur-lined dress jacket was slung over the wounded shoulder. The Faustian fur caught slivers of sun, glittering and glowing against the black.
“I know,” she said, thinking of her own parents. “I know. But the longer you stay away, the harder it will get. You have a second chance, Lukasz. If we had that chance with Ry? or Franciszek, I know we’d both take it. Don’t waste this one.”
“I don’t know if I can do this.”
Ren smiled. She couldn’t know it, but it was the small twisty smile that he loved. The one that had been under all the dirt, framed with matted hair. The one that always seemed to appear right before her fangs.
“You killed a Faustian when you were fourteen,” she whispered, taking his face in long, elegant hands. “You survived rusalki and mavka and you made deals with Leszys and Baba Jagas. You’ve cheated death itself. And you made me love you,” she added, more softly. “You made me love you, when I was determined to hate everything about you. You can do this.”
And he took her hands from his face and kissed them, and Ren couldn’t know it, but a part of him missed the dirt under her nails.
Later, Ren walked the streets of Hala Smoków, feeling, for the first time, lost.
It would take time, she knew, to mend things with her mother. To know her father—Emil, as she had learned his name was. It would take time to stop flinching at the sight of the Dragon, winging up over the trees, speaking into her mind.
She was not sure what it would take to get over Ry?. More than time, she knew. Maybe she would never get over it. Animals were better at grieving than humans; animals were tougher, more accepting, more used to the cruelty of the world. Less obsessed with covering it up. But Ren wasn’t sure which part of her would win out in this private little war. Worse yet, she didn’t know which side she wanted to win.
Those damn strzygi. Easy to forget them, up here among these pretty houses and this clear air. Easy to forget them when you weren’t constantly looking over your shoulder, peering at the shadows between the trees. Easy to forget them when there was nowhere for the darkness to hide and your world was defended by swords and wolves.
Ren turned off the main road, around the side of a barn. Against the wall huddled an old man, an empty tin saucer on the ground by his feet. He shivered in the chill, his hood pulled up and narrow shoulders quaking. Ren’s heart gave a familiar little squeeze—the one she used to get for broken-winged sparrows and orphaned squirrels.
She knelt, fine skirt swishing over the dust, and unclasped the gold necklace from her neck and the bracelets from her wrists. They clattered into the saucer.
“Tell me,” she said to the old man, “how did this happen to you?”
The old man turned toward her and took off his hood.
“I see the humans have yet to corrupt you, Ren,” said the Baba Jaga.
Ren’s hand flew to her heart. She watched, shocked, while the Baba Jaga gleefully gathered up the jewels.
“What are you doing?” asked Ren. Her heart hammered under her palm. “Why are you hiding like this?”
The Baba Jaga smiled her broken-toothed smile. Her black-and-red-striped dress was just visible beneath the beggar’s cloak.
“You were so enamored with these humans,” said the old woman. “You love their habits so. I wanted to make sure you hadn’t picked up the bad ones, too.”
The Baba Jaga cast an appraising eye over Ren’s clothes, and Ren was suddenly self-conscious. She wore a somber skirt and jacket in deep blue velvet, with tight sleeves and a tighter waist. Ren had insisted