shot out of the pit. Claws dug into his leather glove. Lukasz’s hand closed around the foreleg. Ry? was completely covered by the monsters. Movement flickered beside him, and when he looked over, Ren had thrown herself on her stomach next to him.
“RY?!” she screamed. “RY?, HOLD ON!”
A yowl. It was strangled. Lukasz threw down another arm, grasped the foreleg with his other hand. Long fingers wrapped around his gloves. Ren was practically falling into the pit.
He had no idea what was going on down there, below the lip of the crater. What was happening to that poor lynx, hidden under the strzygi. Lukasz didn’t want to know.
Ry? let out a piercing scream, and Lukasz heard himself shouting:
“NO—”
The claws extended suddenly. Five toes spasming, every tendon straining under the fur. Ren was screaming, fingers scrambling. The claws tore free of Lukasz’s glove. Ry? screamed again. Lukasz grabbed frantically.
Fur slipped through his gloves. His hands closed around nothing.
“Ry?!”
Ren lunged down the pit. Lukasz grabbed her shirt, dragged her back. She thrashed against him, and he threw his arm over her shoulder. She shrieked and tried to throw him off, but he held her fast, pressed her into the ground.
“Ren, he’s gone—”
“Let me go!” She was screaming. Changing so rapidly from human to lynx and back again that he feared she would get away. He didn’t let go.
He kept her pinned to the ground, watched the blood from his shoulder trickling down the back of her neck. Watched it staining her shirt. The pit burned below them, from red then to maroon. Cooling, to depthless black. It reminded him, sickeningly, of the Leszy’s forge. Everything went still. Roots hung lifelessly. Darkness stretched down forever.
Ren stopped screaming. She stopped changing.
She lay flat and human and broken, hands over her face, sobbing.
Ry? was gone.
28
SHE HAD A MOMENT.
A moment of numbness, of horror. Of Lukasz holding her down, the only thing keeping her from diving down there herself, finishing them off. Bringing him back. A wild flashing moment when she considered every possibility, every single scenario where Ry? wasn’t gone, wasn’t gone, wasn’t gone, wasn’t gone—
Thud.
Ren’s heart slammed into her chest.
Thud.
Lukasz swore.
Thud.
Then they were both on their feet, Lukasz weighing the sword in his hand. She’d been so distracted that she hadn’t realized a battle was still raging behind them.
Jakub, Felka, and Czarn had kept the strzygi away from her and Lukasz. Done her, she realized, the same kindness they had done Jakub among the mavka. Now Jakub had the firewood hatchet and was wildly hacking in every direction. Felka kept firing and reloading Koszmar’s revolver. Czarn fought with tears in his eyes. On the other side of the clearing, Koszmar had drawn his saber, surrounded by strzygi.
A shadow fell across the trees.
Ren crushed everything in her that wanted to scream and cry. She held up the rifle.
The sky disappeared, replaced by a sparkling gold canopy. The sun blazed through the membranous wings of the Golden Dragon. It circled once. And then, even through the screaming monsters and the sickening thuds of Koszmar’s blade, through Lukasz’s heavy breathing, even through a sound that she realized was her own sobbing, she knew what was about to happen.
The Dragon had come to join the fight.
Ren dragged Lukasz back as a stream of gold shot across the clearing and fire lit up the world.
The strzygi twisted upward, deciding whether to feast or to burn. The first wave of flames incinerated a dozen of them, left the rest to stumble, still burning, around the clearing. Fed by flesh, the fire flared higher.
The others reeled. As the flames closed in, she saw Felka drop the spent revolver to yank Jakub away from the blaze. She dragged back on Lukasz’s arm. His face was livid in the golden light, his eyes almost black.
“We have to go,” she gasped. “Get Koszmar—”
“KOSZ!” he was already shouting. “KOSZMAR!”
But the fire had separated them from the blond Wrony. If Koszmar had heard them, then he didn’t show it. He just hacked away at the monsters around him, still attacking despite their already charring limbs.
The Dragon roared again, shot out a second jet of flames. By luck alone, it lit the trees behind them, lighting the roots around the pit and barely missing them. Heat broke over Ren’s back.
“Koszmar!” she screamed. “Kosz!”
Through the dancing curtain of fire, the Wrony looked up. Even through the haze of heat, Ren saw his expression change. She watched realization dawn.