why. She just walked to the river, trailing her fingers over the tree trunks. Whatever he had done to her, she reasoned, he could still kill the Dragon.
It could still work.
“Be honest,” he said behind her. His voice was low. “Was it you?”
Ren stood on the riverbank, overlooking the water moving silently just beyond her feet. It was black and tranquil. Her forest was still beautiful. Her forest deserved to be saved.
When she answered, her voice came out clear and unhurried.
“I am always honest.”
Then she added, “What are you asking me?”
Ren half turned. He leaned with one shoulder against the tree, a little higher on the embankment. He had his hands in his pockets. Patches of silver embroidery adorned each leg of the trousers, frayed and creased. Then he asked:
“Was it you who dragged me under?”
Moonlight crept out from beyond the trees and caught a silver cross, stark against the brown skin of his chest.
The night rushed in to fill the silence. Fury, silent and simmering, spread through her veins. Ry? had been right, she realized. He’d been right about them. There was no point in asking for help of creatures so ignorant, so closed-minded. So blind that everything looked the same to them. Hadn’t he seen the rusalka’s webbed fingers? Hadn’t he seen its broken teeth? Hadn’t he known, she wondered, the difference between her touch and that of a monster?
She had risked her life for someone who couldn’t tell the most basic difference between good and evil. She laughed, and it was cold and angry.
“You were dragged in by a rusalka.”
He shook his head, pulling a small contraption from his pocket to click it open. Click, click. A tiny flame ignited, and he put it to his lips. Click, click. It was a small paper cylinder, which glowed red in the darkness.
“She looked a lot like you,” he said. The slightest suggestion of a smile stole onto his face as smoke filtered down from his lips.
“Rusalki can take any form they choose,” Ren began.
“That’s convenient.” He laughed. It cut across the darkness. And stung.
“But most often,” she continued, “they take the shape of someone the victim already wants.”
Even as she said it, her anger was renewed. She hadn’t considered the possibility until she’d said it aloud. And even as she thought about it, she remembered how close they’d been, remembered his hand on her face, remembered—
Click, click.
He opened and closed the contraption once more. The flame leapt to life and then died. Then he grinned around the ember between his teeth, and glancing up and down the river, he said:
“That, my friend, is wishful thinking.”
She did not like him. Whatever had happened on that riverbank, she did not like him.
“I am not your friend,” she said softly. “And rusalki do not lie.”
She turned back to the water.
The surface began to shiver. Then it danced. Then it freckled, as if under rain.
Ripples expanded. Silence fell. Fish flashed by, shooting through dangerously shallow waters. Ren’s heart quickened. Frogs raced past. On the opposite side of the stream, a family of otters erupted out of the water and frantically gathered their babies onto the bank before disappearing into the shrubs.
Click, click.
An icy blast of wind whipped across the forest, chilled Ren to the bone. For a moment, she was frozen. Her eyes were fixed upstream, waiting. Beyond, the Mountains loomed to the east. Ren spun around. She could just make out the edge of one castle tower in the distance. Mist billowed from the trees and rolled toward them. The water clouded, then became opaque and frozen.
Ren’s breath, long and shuddering, hung in front of her like a cloud.
“What the hell was that?”
The Wolf-Lord had straightened up. Around him, the trees flashed blue-white, sparkling with new frost.
Ren backed away from the water.
“We need to go,” she said. “They’re behind us.”
“What?” The Wolf-Lord’s hand went to the sword at his side. “What’s behind us?”
Ren scrambled up the embankment.
“They’ve cut us off. I don’t know where they came from, they’re surrounding us—”
Lukasz grabbed her forearm and hauled her up the rest of the way. He dragged her so close that she knew the mist from his lips smelled like smoke and cinnamon.
“What the hell are they?” he repeated.
The fog thickened around them. It had a bluish shimmer to it—cold, and prickling, and unnatural. Ren snatched her arm back, and as frost and silence descended, she hissed:
“Nawia.”
12
FOR A SECOND, FEAR BOUND them together. For a second, she forgot to be angry.