I knew those hands… I knew those fingers… The tips scarred from handling burners and boiling brews, the deep lines carved into sun-flecked skin.
I returned to the castle chamber with a gasp and a scream.
“Lorell.”
I was shivering so violently that bile stung the back of my throat. Adrik’s hands were hot and urgent against my cheeks, cradling my face as if to make certain I did not slip into madness again.
“Are you certain?” he asked.
“The pond. The pond, Adrik. He’s going there.”
A flicker of panic lit his eyes. He observed me, face grave and torn. “I do not want to leave you—”
“Then do not,” I said, clutching his hands.
I did not care that it was pathetic and selfish. I did not want him out in the cold, in the darkening winter. I did not want to be alone. The lordling was still out there. A storm was coming. Already the wind howled like an injured beast and the roots of my magic shivered with terror. I’d drained my magic, out there in the swamp. The mists were churning once more, creeping closer.
Adrik hesitated a moment, but I knew that duty would lure him away in the end; and that the guilt would weigh worse thelonger he lingered. Even after these long years of service, he still firmly believed that he deserved good things only in return for his self-sacrifice.
I released him. “Be back before nightfall. Take the stag and the brothers.” I looked from the window, dread knotting my insides. “Something stirs in the forest.”
He kissed my forehead, quickly and fiercely, and he turned back once more before he left the bath. To look tenderly at me. To draw breath as if to speak. He vanished wordlessly with a sharp shake of his head.
I climbed with sore limbs out of the pool, draped myself in a silken robe, and sat by the ceiling-high window, a cheek pressed to the frosted pane. The sheet ice melted under the heat of my nervous breaths, revealing a view of the twilit edge of the forest—and of the lone rider, chasing his stag down the road until the trees swallowed him.
He had gone alone.
He had gone alone, that vain, irritating, thick-headed—
I welcomed the rage, for it scorched the fear from my veins. I could not wait to unleash these flames upon Adrik. To scold him for his carelessness and obstinance. To see on his face the flicker of irritation that told me he knew I was right but would rather fight me than admit it. How I longed for the burn of a quarrel. He would argue back, then make that low, irritated snarl—
A knock snapped me rudely from visions of frantic breath and wandering hands.
“The wind whispers,” said Almira as she came in. “Listen, girl.”
I shivered as she tore the window open. The cold had returned with a vengeance, breathing frost into the room. The howls had turned to a screech, echoing between the hills and from the mountain’s bold rock-face.
Let me see you. Let me taste you.
The flares had died. Behind the trees gathered thick, white mist. It was there that I felt it; an anguish I could not quite place. A scream came from that mist, and the stalling beat of hooves.
THIRTY
A storm is brewing.
“Adrik,” I gasped, blind with panic as I grasped the sill for support.
He’d gone too close to the mists, that foolish, thick-headed—
Almira closed the window with a snap. “You must hold it back and I must help. If the mist catches him, he will not return.”
“You cannot—”
“I must,” she said firmly. “To save the boy, I must rally my strength once more.”
She took my hand and pulled me with, hobbling down the stairs and through the gates.
Let me see you. Let me taste you. Let me show you what he did to us.
