continued to stare across the river.
The trees crowded together on the opposite bank, and Lukasz felt like they were being watched. He couldn’t shake the memory of the red mist, and the dragon’s quiet golden flames.
This forest felt alive. Not just its animals, its trees, its underbrush—but the earth itself, the air, the dark sky overhead. Even in stillness, it seethed. A silent heartbeat pulsed in the air, and he wondered if Koszmar, too, could feel it.
It’s alive, he thought. It’s alive, it’s watching, it’s—
“She likes you,” said Koszmar suddenly.
Lukasz didn’t answer.
“Ren,” said Koszmar. He began putting away his supplies. “She cares about you.”
Lukasz laughed. It sounded tired, even to him. The forest leaned in.
“I think she wants to kill me,” he said.
Koszmar chuckled. It was soft. The human sound broke up the forest’s heartbeat, occluded that strange, vital thrum around them.
“Well.” He kept his eyes across the riverbank. A half smile slipped over his face. “If she didn’t like you so much, then maybe she would.”
They might have been strangers talking nonsense in a pub somewhere. Not two soldiers in the service of monsters and queens.
“You know,” continued Koszmar, as if a thought had just occurred to him, “I would stay.”
“Here? In the forest?”
Koszmar nodded, eyes unfocused in the distance. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on his bent knees. His uniform was still spotless: from the sparkling emblem at his throat to the toes of his tasseled boots. But something else had changed.
“I like this forest,” he said. “I would stay.”
Lukasz got to his feet after Koszmar left. He slung his rifle over his shoulder and was about to turn back to the camp. But for some reason, he lingered. Perhaps that hypnotic, eerie heartbeat. Perhaps that overall sense of vitality, of things watching and life burning. Perhaps it was the evil. Here, it lay thick enough to taste.
Evil so powerful, so dense, webbing the ground and soaking into the soil. Evil trickling through tree roots and nestling under tree bark. Evil had twitched the tree branches and it had scraped and burrowed and whispered, and in its own way, evil had breathed life into these things.
He couldn’t understand why Ren would sacrifice so much to save this. He looked down at his hand, hidden in its glove. He had to tell her. Maybe she’d understand. Maybe she’d see that hand and she’d realize why he couldn’t do it, and maybe—for what felt like the thousandth time—maybe she’d forgive him.
Or maybe she wouldn’t.
Calling wolves, are you? Franciszek would have said. Asking for trouble, are you?
The gloom shifted. Lukasz twisted around. The trees behind him rustled, the wind whistled, and then all the sounds and ever-changing shadows came together, and as if made from the darkness itself, she took shape.
She hung back a moment.
She was looking at him the same way she had once looked at him on another riverbank: cautious, curious, nothing cold, nothing closed off. Eyes full of the things that kept making them start things they couldn’t finish. Things better left unsaid. Better left ignored.
She had him. She had him forever.
She moved closer, and despite the dark sky, it was as if she had a light all her own. Still she was coiled, ready to spring away, cautious as always. Wary of what lay ahead.
“Me too,” she whispered, breaking through his thoughts.
He toyed with the lighter in his hand. His voice was hoarse.
“You too what?”
Her eyes glittered, a little glassy, and then she looked down. She spoke again.
“I’ve also been told I go looking for trouble.”
Lukasz laughed. He put the lighter back in his pocket. Part of him wondered if she’d read his mind. But she hadn’t; it was just her. She understood animals; she understood him.
“You know, humans have a saying for that,” he said. He repeated the old phrase, a phrase first learned as a child, now seared into his memory forever: “Don’t call the wolf from the forest.”
Ren thought about it for a moment.
“I don’t really understand.”
“Don’t ask the wolf to leave his home and come eat your livestock,” said Lukasz. “Don’t go looking for trouble.”
Ren nodded.
There was a heartbeat’s pause.
“Did you come here to say something?” he asked into the silence.
She shot toward him. Faster than he could react. Faster than he could pull away. Not that he would have. God, he never would.
Her hands found his collar, pulled him to her. Her lips on his jaw. Warmth, pressure, and then her smooth cheek slid past his rough one. And while