Very slowly, she rose from the table. Czarn and Ry? stood with her. Claws pushed out of her fingertips and dug into the table, where her long human hands rested. Two of the Leshonki made little eek sounds and slipped under the tablecloth. The wolf and the lynx pulled their lips back and growled at every human and monster at the table.
It occurred to Ren, for the first time, that she didn’t know which of those things she was.
“No games,” she said quietly.
She saw Lukasz swallow, but his expression was unchanged.
“No games,” she repeated. “You promised to do what you said. You asked me to forgive you.”
Tears started in her eyes.
She could feel them brimming, spilling over. She didn’t care. It wasn’t fair. She should have seen this coming. This man shared blood with the creatures who had thrown rocks at her. With everyone who had happily laid the sins of the forest at her feet. With every bloodthirsty, rotten-hearted, selfish human who had come before him.
With her.
“You shook my hand,” she said, and her voice trembled.
Lukasz’s gaze wavered. Then it came back to her. His dark brows were still raised a little too far over hollowed-out eyes. The hungry gleam had intensified. Ren instinctively knew that all the enchanted lanterns in the world couldn’t have taken the darkness out of that face.
“I had to,” he said. “I had to find my brother.”
Ren blinked.
“What difference would it have made?”
He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but it seemed that he could not find the words. Ren watched, feeling her eyelashes growing wet and sticky.
“I see,” she said at last. “You thought that if I found out, I would leave. You thought I would be so upset, I would break my promise to you.”
She looked up to the open sky, took a breath, and met his gaze again.
“You thought . . .” She paused and wiped the tears out of her eyes. “You thought I would act like you.”
“I’ll do anything for my brothers,” he said, unapologetic. “Anything.”
Ren laughed, and the sound was brittle. It had a hysterical edge to it.
“Well, if this is how you treated them,” she said, “then I’m not surprised they left you.”
She instantly knew she had gone too far. Lukasz dragged in a harsh, rattling breath. Ren had never seen such fury in his eyes. They were practically black. Then he laughed. The sound was cold and dark and Ren could hardly believe she’d ever liked his laugh before.
“You need me to kill that Dragon,” he said at last. “Tread carefully, Princess.”
Before Ren could stop him, he turned and walked away.
“If you think this changes anything,” said Ry?, pacing the grass, “then you’re crazy.”
The three of them had gathered on one side of the field, and the humans had grouped themselves away on the other side. Only now, even as she looked across the expanse, Ren wondered if she was in the wrong group.
The Leszy had dismissed them after the disaster at the dinner table. They’d left the food to his animals, and the raccoons had been quick to gather the leftovers in their bandit hands.
“You don’t understand,” said Ren, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking back and forth. “This—this doesn’t make any sense. Why would my parents have left me in the castle?”
“You don’t know they did,” protested Czarn. “Maybe they thought you were dead.”
“And why do I have claws?” she insisted. “If I’m human, why—”
“Maybe the forest changed you.” Czarn shrugged. “Maybe you got the magic you needed to survive. Maybe you aren’t completely human—”
“Ren,” interrupted Ry?. “Ren, it doesn’t matter.”
How could he say that? How could he say that after they’d spent seventeen years together? She’d saved Czarn from a human hunter. They’d made the unofficial promise to hate humans forever. They had hunted monsters, and hadn’t Ren said it herself?
I do not like the monsters that were once human, she’d said to Jakub. I think they are the most terrible of all.
“Ren.” Ry? bumped his furry face against her shoulder and purred. “Ren, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” she whispered.
“Do you know what our parents said?” he asked her, purring. “They brought you to me when I was just a cub, and they said: Ry?, this is your sister.”