years.
“I used some ?ywokost on it,” said Koszmar over the fire. “It should help with the healing. We can try bylica if that doesn’t work.”
Ren tried to smile. She couldn’t stand the thought of Lukasz in pain. She wondered if that was a weakness. And if it was, she suddenly realized, then she didn’t care.
“Thank you,” she said. “You . . . I wasn’t expecting . . .”
Koszmar looked up.
“Me to help?” he murmured. “You wouldn’t be the first.”
Ren flushed. “I was trying to be nice.”
Koszmar put his pipe between his teeth with a click, which echoed in the darkness. His hawkish face softened.
“I know,” he said. Then he added, “I suppose I am, too.”
Ren wondered suddenly if Koszmar was as unsure around the others as she was. It seemed unbelievable that humans could be uncomfortable with their own kind. But all the same . . .
“How did you meet Lukasz?” she asked.
“In the village,” he said softly. “The day we met you.”
Ren’s eyes widened.
“I thought you knew him before,” she said.
Koszmar laughed. It was hard to believe she had ever thought him silly. Since beginning their journey, he seemed more angular. A little more uncompromising. Somehow, not unhandsome.
“No, no,” he said. “Lukasz is too famous for me. All the Wolf-Lords are—were. I’m a nobody.”
It was hard to imagine anyone as glossy as Koszmar being a nobody. He practically dripped gold.
“What do you mean?” asked Ren.
Koszmar grinned at her.
“I was born in a town called Granica, on the northern shores,” he said. “Ever heard of it?”
Ren shook her head. Koszmar laughed again and examined his perfect hands.
“No, of course you wouldn’t. You’ve never left this place. You’d like Granica, I think,” he added. For once there was no sarcasm in his voice. No pretense. “The beaches are white sand. There’s a pink hotel on one of them, with a pier that reaches into the middle of the ocean. The mayor’s house has entire rooms made of amber. The houses are all different colors. But ours was white.” He closed his eyes. “It smells like the sea.”
It was odd that someone who so obviously loved the colors of his old world now dressed only in the same black uniform. The thought filled her with an inexplicable sadness.
“Granica has the biggest port in this country,” he continued. “The mayor collects taxes from every merchant ship that sails through that port. He decides on all the fashions of this country—on what silks the fine ladies will wear, on what spices the cooks will love, on what designs will be in vogue for the next thirty years.”
“Those seem like silly things,” said Ren frankly.
Koszmar chuckled.
“They are, Ren,” he said. “But they’re the things that humans care about. In my world—Lukasz’s world—it isn’t about who has the sharpest claws or the strongest jaws. It’s about who has money. And the mayor of Granica has the most of it. He is the most powerful man in this country. Probably even more powerful than King Nikodem.”
“You humans are very strange,” said Ren.
“We are,” Koszmar agreed.
Ren had never seen him like this. She wondered what could have come over him.
“So you come from this city?” Ren struggled around the word. “Granica?”
“Oh, it’s far worse, I’m afraid,” murmured Koszmar. “The mayor is my father.”
Maybe, she realized, he behaved this way because she was both queen and princess. And because, as he had just made very clear, Koszmar understood the value of such things.
“Your father?” she echoed. “Really?”
Koszmar smirked. It was a very different smile from Lukasz’s. Lukasz had the kind of smile that felt special, just for you. Lukasz pulled you in, turned you in circles, left the world a little brighter when he let you go.
Koszmar just made you cold.
“Certainly,” he said. “I was the second son of the mayor of Granica. Don’t look like that. I was never anything special. Seweryn, my older brother, is far more lovely than I. He is handsomer, smarter, taller. He is a general in the Wrony. He is a drunk and a gambler, too, but one day, he will be the mayor of Granica.”
Ren digested this for a moment. “You mean . . . you don’t like your brother?”
Over the heat of their small fire, he blurred and blended with the trees behind. Glowing, obscured by the smoke from his pipe.
“Ren, darling,” he said, smirking, “I loathe my brother.”
Ren thought of Ry?, snoozing gently on her other side. She couldn’t imagine loathing Ry?, or Czarn, or anyone in her castle. Even