soldier’s saddlebags, and now she looked up. There was a light burning in her eyes, bright enough to obliterate even the dark circles beneath them.
“There is no other here,” said the girl. “It’s good or evil—us or the nawia. And you’re on our side—whether you like it or not.”
Ren pressed her lips together.
“I do not like them,” she said at last.
Up ahead, a gun went off.
“Neither do I,” said the girl grimly. “But they don’t deserve to die.”
They made their way to the river, the same path Ren and the Wolf-Lord had walked only a few moments before. But now the world felt different. The song surrounded them, enveloped them. Tugged them on with a force equal to the instincts pushing Ren back. On the embankment, one of the rifles lay on the ground. The girl picked it up and held it at the ready. Neither of them said anything. The stream below was covered with a layer of ice. When they walked across it and Ren glanced down at her feet, the fish below gaped up at her, eyes wide.
Go back, they seemed to plead. Go back, Ren.
She wished she could.
On the other side of the stream, a hill rose before them. Light radiated over it, silhouetting the edges of branches, softening the harsh crystals of ice around them. It practically glowed with danger, but it was beautiful. Ren climbed the hill, trying not to taste the fear in her throat. When they finally reached the top, her breath caught.
Beside her, the girl had gone very still.
“My God . . . ,” she murmured.
Ren licked her lips. It wasn’t just her strength or her skill that had made her queen; it was also that she picked her battles, and because she knew when to run. When she finally spoke, her voice was rough with gravel.
“I told you: we should not have come.”
Below them, bodies lay among the trees.
Hundreds of them, if not thousands. They stretched as far as the eye could see, piled and heaped on top of each other. They lay on their backs, limbs at odd angles. They draped across roots, hands outstretched, begging for help that had never come. They slumped against trunks, they keeled over, they sank to their knees in final prayers. Even from the top of the hill, Ren could see the gloved fingers clawing at the dirt. The trees, crusted in frost, tried to lean away.
White, spectral figures walked among them.
Nawia.
It was from the nawia, intensely white, that the light emanated. With hands outstretched and fingers longer than their forearms, they walked among the corpses. Of all things, there was love in their faces. Ren’s heart went cold. Love in their soft smiles and their dark eyes. Even their song, she realized, was gentle and caressing. She shivered.
A hand closed on Ren’s arm, and she nearly transformed on the spot.
“Where are their heads?” whispered the girl.
Among the trees below, the human corpses were headless. Ren watched the nawia wander among them, singing, gazing upon their dead.
“I do not know,” said Ren. She swallowed hard. “I don’t know anything about these creatures.”
“But you’re—you’re the queen.”
Perhaps Ren should have been ashamed, but she couldn’t be. There were too many monsters for one queen to keep in check. And every good ruler knows which wars to wage.
Ren would have rather run from a nav than face one.
“Felka,” said the girl after a moment.
Ren glanced at her. In contrast to how she had looked at the campsite, here the pale light only made the circles under her eyes darker. It rendered her hair even duller. But when this girl looked Ren in the eye, there was no fear in her face.
“If I’m going to die with you,” she said steadily, “then you should know my name.”
Ren could feel her fear. But she was a queen, she told herself, and she’d led troops into battle before. She was good at this.
I am best at this.
“My name is Ren,” she said. “And we are not going to die.”
Below them, she could make out the two soldiers who had captured her, plus a third man who was separated from the others. This third man must have been Felka’s friend. From what she could tell, he seemed to be speaking to a nav, this one smaller than the others. Suddenly, she remembered the rusalka, whispering in Lukasz’s ear. She went cold all over.
“We will need the soldiers’ help,” she said, thinking out loud. “We should get them first.”