This magic of mine, vile and dark, had saved us.
It had saved us.
I had saved us.
Just as I had that night beneath the ribbon-hung elm. It was not evil, that magic. Never had been. It had taken the form of the vileness the lordling had channeled into me. He no longer controlled me now. I was free to choose how to use this magic. And I’d chosen to use it for good.
I would choose over and over to use it for good.
“The spring,” I gasped, coming sharply back to myself. I glanced past Adrik’s shoulder at the frozen drops afloat in the biting air. A thick knot of ice adorned the fissure, trapping the healing water deep within. The spirit had known what we sought. It had punished us for its defeat.
Adrik cursed as we stepped between the pillars of ice. “We will take the drops and let them melt,” he said. “It is not much, but—” Another curse as he plucked one of the drops from the air. It was not frozen water, but a perfect iridescent pearl.
Almira will fade come moonrise.
We had nothing with which to stave off her death but a handful of useless pearls. Then how long until the mist would devour the town? How long until we were all mindless half-dead?
I stared at the basin, into the mirrorlike sheen over the frozen water. At the woman who stared back at me.A light flickered in her gaze. She was bright, despite her burdens and her grief, and she was almost as lovely as the face the spirit had worn.
She was who Adrik saw in me.
A thought tugged at me, ludicrous and daring. I’d made no progress spilling blood into the earth down by the burrow. I’d not breathed a sliver of warmth into the cold, not a sliver of life into dead things. And still…
Here, in the ice ablush with dawn and with such new lightness in my chest, I could see it. I could feel it at the tips of my fingers; a most curious magic, keen to burst forth. It ached to dance along the ice and bathe it with golden dust.
“I could thaw the spring,” I whispered.
TWENTY-FOUR
We shall live a little.
Iwaited for doubt to darken Adrik’s face, but there was only a touch of that tender surprise he wore so well.
I pricked my finger on the sharp tip of an icicle, drawing a drop of blood. Adrik watched me intently as I brushed my lips to the cut and allowed a droplet to spill over the frozen floor.
The monster within me snapped awake.
I drew breath and placed my palm to the frozen mouth of the spring. Deep within, starlit waters remained caged in icy torment. Pain swept sharply through me, from the heart of the mountain into mine. The darkness stirred. The monster clacked its claws against my ribcage.
I stifled a shriek and delved deeper. From the darkness climbed a pair of black-clawed hands, coiling around me, pulling me down, down, down.
The darkness swallowed me.
A faerie yanked me through the briar. His cackle echoed from the hills as we chased through the moonless night.Rot fromharvest, he demanded.Make them hunger down in the vale. Make them starve, little bird.
Feel the pain. Accept it. Let it pass. But how could I do such a thing when it stuck to me like tar? I recoiled from this deep, dark cold—but I could not. The claws held me tightly and the monster neared, eager to devour me alive. There was no life here, not a sliver of warmth.
But there was a flutter…
A gentle flutter of warmth around my aching fingers. There was a hand around mine, unflinching. I knew that hand. It had held me through terror and fear, had cradled me in the winter woods and steadied me through hours filled with whispered tales of past horrors. Their warmth swept over me like sunlit waves. That warmth… It turned into courage as it spilled through me.
I dared to look deeper. I did not falter before the darkness that bloomed within me. I did not falter before that veil of fear.
I stepped through it.
It surged like a tide in my chest and trickled like light through my veins: A magic most curious. It gathered in my palms like golden thread. I let it spill into the ice, guided it into the crack where starlit waters waited to be freed. I wove this magic like a golden string deep into the mountain.
The spring hummed with relief as life flooded its frozen depths.
