He’d been so against asking the help of the humans. He now knew her provenance and had dismissed it in four words.
“You are my sister,” he said. “You are always going to be my sister. That’s all that matters.”
There was a small cough above them, and Ren looked up. Felka was standing over her, and behind her, Koszmar and Jakub lurked nervously. Lukasz was not with them. He’d disappeared into one of the Leszy’s tunnels, probably to lick his wounds.
Ren tried not to miss him.
“May I sit down?” Felka asked. She cut a very awkward curtsy.
Ren rubbed her hand across her cheek.
“Why are you doing that?”
Felka blushed.
“Well, I—”
“I’m a queen, not a princess,” she said a little hoarsely. “I’m what I always was.”
But that wasn’t true. Now she was a human. She watched the three of them sit down. She had always taken a very special kind of pride in being different from them. She’d ranked herself equivalent to the vila, the rusalka—even the nawia. A good equivalent, opposing their evil, but equivalent nonetheless.
But now . . .
“Did you know?” she asked.
Felka shook her head. Felka, maybe, was her only friend. It hurt. She’d thought Lukasz was her friend, too.
“I suppose . . .” Ren gave a small shrug. “I suppose I’m more human than I thought.”
“With all due respect,” said Jakub with a smile, “I’ve never met a human with your . . .”
He struggled to find the right word.
“Dentition,” supplied Koszmar.
“Lukasz was right. We did suspect,” said Jakub, ignoring Koszmar and seating himself. “Forgive us.”
“Still,” said Koszmar, lowering himself to the grass, only to do an awkward half-standing crab scuttle when Ry? growled at him. He tried to salvage some of his dignity, adding: “You shouldn’t have said those things to Lukasz.”
Czarn folded his elegant paws and watched the blond soldier through narrowed blue eyes. He said:
“You shouldn’t have lied.”
Koszmar frowned. “I don’t like it when they talk,” he said to Ren.
“Now you know how we feel about you,” muttered Felka under her breath.
“Please, Ren,” said Jakub, ignoring Koszmar. “You have to see it from Lukasz’s perspective, too. He’s desperate to find his brother.”
“If he’s even still alive,” said Ren without thinking.
Silence fell over the group, and Ren knew that she was the first to voice what everyone else had been thinking. His skull could have been set in the riverbank, doomed to watch an eternity of souls have their skin stripped away. His eyes could have been staring, petrified, out of the recesses of a psotnik nest. His headless, black-coated body could have been piled somewhere, rotting away, in the field of the mavka.
He could be at the bottom of the Glass Mountain, consumed by golden flames.
He could be a strzygoń.
“Don’t tell Lukasz that,” said Koszmar, and tried to laugh, but no one joined in.
Ren was angry with these humans, and she was angriest with Lukasz. But it made no difference to the tiny part of her heart that broke at the thought that his family might be gone. In Ren’s experience, everything wanted to live, and nothing wanted to be alone.
It was Felka who changed the subject.
“How do you think he knew?” she asked. “The Leszy, I mean.”
“He’s the god of this forest,” said Jakub. “Traditionally, the kings of this kingdom have asked for the forest’s blessing at the baptism of their children. Perhaps the king called upon him for . . . yours.”
Lukasz’s words came back: Someone named you, didn’t they?
“I’d never heard of a Leszy before today,” said Ren, squashing the memory.
“I can assure you he exists,” said Koszmar.
Ren rounded on him, but Ry? intervened.
“Listen,” he said. “Nothing’s changed, all right? We still need to get to that Mountain and kill that Dragon. And last time I checked, we need the Wolf-Lord to do that.”
He turned to Ren.
“You need to get to that Mountain, Ren. You need to get that Wolf-Lord, find that sword, and kill that Dragon.”
Ren watched the animals playing in the grass.
“I am angry with him,” she said quietly.
“Good,” said Ry?. “But he owes you. He promised.”
For a long time, they were quiet. Three humans, two animals, and someone who lay in between. Someone who had been left to die in a crib seventeen years ago. Someone who had been abandoned and who had been called a monster, and who now held the fate of a forest in her hands.
24
FAR BELOW, LUKASZ WANDERED THE dark tunnels of the Leszy’s cave. He was furious with Ren. He would have