loved to confront her. Shout at her. Shout that she knew nothing of his brothers, of his people, of his world. But he didn’t. Firstly, he was pretty sure that Ren could have killed him—even drenched in bylica with her hands tied behind her back.
Secondly, she was right.
If this is how you treated them, then I’m not surprised they left you.
If only she knew how cruel he’d been to Franciszek. For seventeen years his brother had taken care of him, and for seventeen years, Lukasz had resented it. He couldn’t blame Franciszek for leaving. Not when he had spent most of his life being mad at him.
Ren. Irena. Once the princess. Now the queen. Jakub had been right all along, and Lukasz had convinced them all to lie. . . .
And then he heard it.
A dull clanging rang through the tunnel, like someone banging metal on metal.
He knew he should turn back, but light flickered at the end of the passage. It seemed to pull him forward. He suddenly felt groundless. It was as if darkness and earth had sealed out the rest of the world. There was magic here. Thick, dark, dangerous magic.
Lukasz hesitated at the tunnel’s end. His shadow flickered on the wall behind him.
It was a forge.
Glass sheets hung from the walls, shimmering in a dark rainbow. Curling in the heat, enormous scrolls of parchment lay strewn across workbenches. At the far end, a forge the size of a house glowed like the gates of hell. And in the center stood a little shadow. A little shadow with bandy legs and a cap that dragged on the ground.
The Leszy danced from coals to anvil, gripping huge iron rods, bending them with superhuman strength. Lukasz watched him stab a particularly unwieldy rod into the forge. The metal rapidly changed color: purple, red, orange with a heart of vivid yellow. . . .
The hammer banged on. Steady as a heartbeat, dangerous as dragon wings.
The Leszy stopped suddenly. His shadowed face turned toward the door, and Lukasz caught the gleam of animal eyes.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” trilled the Leszy. “I see you, I smell you, come out, come out.”
Lukasz emerged warily from the black, moving into the glow of the forge. The heat was unbearable. The Leszy licked his lips.
“You smell like death,” he said.
He had hammered his piece of iron into a curve. It took Lukasz a moment to recognize what he was creating—the iron frame for stained glass windows. It struck Lukasz as an odd choice for a forest god in an underground castle.
But Lukasz didn’t say that out loud. Instead, he willed himself to appear relaxed, and he leaned against the worktable and crossed his arms to hide how they shook.
“I got attacked by mavka.”
“Tut-tut,” chided the Leszy. He abandoned the rod in the forge and stood, bandy legs apart, skinny wrists poised against his round middle. “Clumsy, aren’t you?”
Lukasz shrugged. The Leszy thrust a new rod into the forge, humming. Purple, red, orange . . .
For some reason, Lukasz flinched as the orange gave way to yellow. It glowed, sizzled. Looked, for a moment, like those burning pits. And like those pits, Lukasz imagined, it could burn down the world. He spoke, still staring.
“Will I make it to the Glass Mountain?”
“I thought you were looking for your brother,” said the Leszy snidely, without looking up. “Not the Dragon.”
Lukasz didn’t answer. The Leszy was right, of course. He was only going as far as Franciszek. He wasn’t even capable of fighting a Dragon. Even if he’d wanted to help her.
Which he didn’t, he reminded himself.
The Leszy hammered in silence for a moment. Then he said, in a voice that had entirely lost its musical quality, “I find it very interesting, you know.”
Lukasz didn’t move. He stayed still, a tense outline in the yellow light.
“Find what interesting.” Lukasz spoke flatly. Despite the heat, the Leszy’s abrupt change of tone chilled him to the bone.
“You have an appetite for monsters”—the Leszy licked his lips and then they curved upward, enough to make Lukasz’s skin crawl—“and they for you.”
Lukasz shrugged. It was a short gesture. He meant it to be casual, but it was cut off by a spasm of pain. He put his hand on his belt, considered how to answer.
“I suppose,” he said.
The Leszy grinned again.
“Just remember, this is my forest,” he cautioned. His face, still partially obscured with shadow, looked like a nightmare where the light touched it. “It’s mine.” And then the Leszy’s