they give you a name. It means that you’re part of the Church. That if you die, you’ll go to heaven, not to hell.”
Ren frowned.
“I do not understand.”
“My parents baptized me Lukasz,” he said. “Kosz’s called him Koszmar. And yours—” He stopped abruptly.
The surprise melted to something else. Ren waited. And then he asked heavily:
“Someone named you, didn’t they?”
She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, but he looked suddenly older. His eyes had sunken back and darkened, nearly black. He looked sad.
“Do you ever miss them?” he asked when she did not answer.
Ren blinked.
“What?”
“Do you ever miss them? Your family?”
Ren blinked again.
“I’ve only been away from them for a few days.”
“I meant—” He made a gesture with his hands that somehow struck Ren as being helpless. He was still wearing his gloves. “I meant your real family.”
“My real family is at the castle,” she said.
“I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” she interrupted. “My parents are lynxes. They loved me when I was a human. They loved me as a lynx. They love me even though I am different from them, and they never cared where I came from.” Her voice came out brittle, with an undercurrent of a growl. “My family—my lynxes—they chose to love me, when no one else would.”
He gave her a very strange, unreadable look. Ren wished he would just say what he was thinking out loud. But that was not the way of these humans. They kept their thoughts close to themselves. They lied.
Lukasz crawled back toward the opening over the embankment of dead strzygi. He examined the sky and the forest floor carefully before he returned.
“The Dragon’s gone,” he said. “But something is moving in that pit. We need to find the others and get out of here.”
20
THE DRAGON CIRCLED OVERHEAD. IT watched the strzygi burn, and it watched the pit open. Then it watched the girl and the Wolf-Lord crawl out from their pathetic hiding place and return to their little group.
The Dragon watched them.
It had expected more. It had expected her to fight—to burst out from under that tree, to challenge it for the forest. The Dragon smiled to itself. Wasn’t that why the girl was coming—to test it?
The girl’s mother had fought. Bravely. The Dragon wouldn’t soon forget that day, seventeen years ago, when the pair of them had gone up in golden flames. No one had been able to stop it that day. No one could stop it now.
Not even this little princess.
It wondered if she knew how reckless she was being. After all the effort that had been taken to hide her, here she was, burning like a torch in the forest. Surrounding herself with all that humanity . . .
It had been all too easy to find her. They had a particular scent, those humans: like blood and sweat, like greed and pride. Like hope.
And one of them . . .
The Dragon took another breath, just to be sure.
One of them smelled like death.
21
THEY RODE NORTHEAST, CIRCUMVENTING THE dead strzygi, and around them, the forest darkened.
They agreed they would cover more ground on horseback, and Felka quickly partnered up with Jakub. When Koszmar didn’t volunteer to take Ren, she ended up with Lukasz. She didn’t completely hate it. Besides, she had noticed that the silver-eyed soldier preferred being on his own.
The branches had closed overhead, sky and sun disappearing behind tangled boughs. The dampness was lit only by the eerie glow of the antlers on Lukasz’s horse and by the Dragon’s flames. Golden fire crowned the blackened branches, licking lazily at the blistered trunks. It didn’t spread at all, just burned steadily. Silently. Dreamlike.
The air was hazy with heat, shimmering. Blurring. Everything was red, warm, and dull, a hundred alternating shades of crimson. It was hot. Ren could already feel sweat beading on her forehead. It was silent. Owls didn’t call. Wolves didn’t cry. Crickets didn’t chirp.
The silence was broken by their hoofbeats and by Felka’s and Jakub’s quiet voices. Czarn loped beside them, still favoring his paw, and Ry? trotted ahead, trying—without success—to sneak up on Ducha.
This world was bloodstained and empty.
Click, click.
The lighter clicked on and off in the silence.
On impulse, Ren slid her hands up Lukasz’s chest. He half turned, and she could just make out the edge of his shadowed jaw as she tugged herself high enough to murmur, by his ear: “I forgive you for shouting.”
She felt his heart pound faster. His hair brushed her cheek. It was coarser than she had expected,