“Say the word. Say it, and I will hunt that faerie to the edge of this world, into the torment that awaits him Beyond. Say it, and I shall become a hound under your command.”
I was inclined to curb such dramatic declarations, but his rage was a spark and I was but a withered tangle of dead dreams and hopes. It set me ablaze, that spark, like a flame catching kindling. Rage flared in hollows and forgotten corners, chasing the ice from my bones.
I laughed sharply. “You forget yourself,king. Revenge, I fear, must wait. Your people need you more than I do.”
He retreated swiftly, as if indeed remembering himself. “Forgive me, Evana. I have nothing to offer but my sword and my rage.”
In the warmth of the fire, and under the heat of his stare, my thoughts melted like wax. I sank deeply into the cushions, and before darkness took me, I murmured, “You have given me much more.”
EIGHTEEN
Until the moon has waned and waxed again.
Adrik must have carried me to bed after I’d fallen asleep for I stirred awake at dawn amid silken sheets.
Heat welled beneath my skin at the thought, despite the chill that came from the frost-adorned window. My heart felt raw and feeble—like something worn thin from overuse. I remembered the terror and the hurt of the night, distantly. It seemed much less terrible from the comfort of a warm bed.
Beneath the ribbon-hung elm scurried a slender shadow. I caught a glimpse of copper-red fur and a nose black as a button. How good to see the little fox alive and well. Was it still starving? Had it followed me here from Lorell’s house in hopes of being fed? Or was this just a random fox beneath a random tree and I was going a little mad?
The whistle of the kettle lured me to the kitchen. There was a long, delicate silence when Adrik looked up from his book. I did not know why I froze for a beat or why his smile, still soft with sleep, felt more intimate than I could bear.
“Did you rest well?” he asked.
I nodded, cheeks aching as I attempted to dull my smile. A sweetness lingered in the air. Adrik watched me with quiet interest, leaning against the kitchen counter. The silence prickled with the same static I knew well from chasing through the forest at the brink of a summer storm.
“I should head back to Lorell,” I said, nervously pulling at a loose thread in my blouse.
“I must find Yavor,” said Adrik at the same time. “There is much to prepare for a possible journey through the wasteland.”
Yavor’s name stirred memories of a bone-white gaze beckoning me close. I shivered. “How is Emond?”
The brightness drained from Adrik’s face. He busied himself with the steaming kettle, hands shaking a little. “The cold lingers. As does the strangeness.”
“The woman we found in the snow the night you killed the hounds—what happened to her?”
A muscle stiffened in his jaw. “She is alive.”
“Alive and well?”
“Just alive.”
I swallowed the terror and said quietly, “The dream I had about Emond—I think I had the same dream, the samevision, about her too. There was a third one, was there not? An old woman on a bed of moss and mushrooms.”
Adrik flinched, spilling scalding water over the counter. “The miller?”
“I saw her, too.”
As strange as a hag and twice as mad.
“I have seen stranger things than this,” Adrik said gently, setting the kettle aside to muster me. He must have realized how it pained me to admit these things. “I do not think you are mad. These visions might help us find a missing person sooner, if it happens again.”
Before the forest feasted on them. Before the mists turned them into strange, mindless things.
“Does it happen often?”
“Sometimes,” he said with a dark glance at the dawnlit forest. “We believe that the mist calls them close. Almira controlled it well. She is too weak now.”
Until the moon has waned and waxed again.
