ON!”
Koszmar moved slowly. He looked up at the Dragon. Blood covered one side of his face, and for the first time since Ren had known him, his hair was a mess. He had his cavalry saber in one hand, his remaining revolver in the other. He was still for a moment, staring upward into the gold. Then he turned back at them. His image shivered with heat. He smiled, and his mouth moved. It was too loud to hear him over the shrieking, but Ren could read one word on his lips.
It seemed like the same secret voice of the nimfy. A quiet monosyllable of enchantment, a two-decade game of cat and mouse, summed up in a single syllable.
Run.
And Ren knew.
“NO!” Lukasz shouted. “NO, KOSZ, DON’T—”
He didn’t listen. Koszmar never listened. He only did what he wanted. He only did what suited him. He was cruel and mean. He was arrogant and angry and sad, and worst of all, he was Ren’s friend.
“NO!” shouted Ren. “Koszmar!”
The revolver rose. A shot sounded. And behind the flames, Koszmar fell.
“NO!” Felka was screaming. “NO!”
Lukasz dragged on her arm. Pulled her back, but Ren was screaming, crying. She would have run right through those flames. She would have dived back down that pit. She would have done anything, she would have burned, she would have taken on the Dragon at that moment, with nothing but her claws, if it only meant—
“Ren,” said Lukasz, pulling her almost off her feet. “Ren, he’s dead.”
And they left Koszmar to burn amid the dying strzygi, and they ran.
How long had he been dead? Hours? Who knew. It was still night.
The longest night of her life. They’d caught the horses on the way from the clearing, Ren still sobbing. Felka and Jakub had been white-faced and silent. Ren could not look at Czarn.
Lukasz was the only one who kept it together. He moved mechanically. Efficiently. Like he’d run from flames and left behind the dead, and like it was all so familiar, so easy for him now, like he’d been doing it his whole life. And of course, as Ren knew, he had.
She owed Lukasz her life. If it hadn’t been for him, she would have died back there in the clearing—twice, once for her brother and then again for Koszmar, and her poor brother—
They stopped when the horses could go no farther.
Czarn had tried to stop her. Ren couldn’t look at him. It was all a blur. All a terrible, horrible blur.
She left them. She left them and went to the water. Because the water kept you safe from flames. Because water was where this had started. Because she had always loved the water, and because she’d always been happy in it, and because despite the rusalki and their horrible skulls, she chose to believe that nothing bad could happen in water.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, cold in the shallows. Watching her skirts float in the black. The river was up to her chest; her arms were wrapped around her knees. She wondered if she was cold. She couldn’t feel it.
Footsteps sounded behind her. She recognized them. Slightly uneven. The limp he thought he hid.
Lukasz waded into the shallows, and Ren wiped the tears off her cheeks.
“Don’t,” she said, keeping her face down. “You’ll get wet.”
It began to rain, a thousand tiny bullets hitting the smooth river surface. Lukasz lowered himself down next to her.
“I’ll get wet anyway.”
The rain crescendoed to a murmur. It enveloped them in the blackness, the trees blurring. In that moment, they were alone in the world: a wet black uniform and a wet blue wraith.
He didn’t look at her. But he asked, “Are you going to be okay?”
Ren’s throat felt stretched to the breaking point. He’d called her Malutka. He’d been the only creature alive who’d known how small she could feel. In the entire forest, the only one who saw her as a sister first and a queen second. His claws opening. His fur slipping through her hands. Her human hands.
Ren pressed her fingers under her eyes, tried desperately to hide the tears. Lukasz pretended not to notice.
“Are you okay?” she asked instead of answering him.
Was she asking about her brother, or about his? She didn’t care. It didn’t matter. They were all dead. His and hers. Ten of them. Dead and gone. Not even buried. Just lost, lost forever.
How was she going to tell Mama?
That thought brought the tears.
They slid down her cheeks, dripped off her chin, dotted