We leaned on each other for strength as we climbed the hill, bracing against wind and needle-sharp ice. Our faces burned with exertion and tears. I closed my hand around the still-warm pebble and I felt through my feet into the frozen earth. The golden roots of my magic lay withered and frozen. I chose one—the thickest, strongest—and I allowed the thread of powerto unspool from me, breathing warmth back into that root. I groaned with exhaustion, like an ancient tree weathering a gale. I sent my magic deeper until it hissed and twisted, unwilling to meet the mist. The mist, from which came laboured breaths and pained groans and slow, stalling hoofbeats.
The knot of fear dissolved. In its place bloomed rage.
The mists would not take him from me.
My magic clashed horribly with the storm; with a shriek I recognized only by the sting in my throat as my own. I braced my weight against that churning wall, gasping for breath.
The mist shuddered. Retreated just a sliver, then another. From its heart came a breath, a quickening of hooves.
I held it for as long as I could. By its drain on my strength it felt like hours, but I counted the seconds as they slid past, and I made it only to thirty-six. The thread of magic slipped like sea-slick rope from my fingers and barreled back into me, sending me tumbling into the snow.
“Well done, girl.”
Almira and I made it barely to the burrow before she collapsed. I heaved her into an armchair and bundled her into thick blankets. As I stood trembling in the kitchen, holding myself in a stiff embrace, the wind screeched in my ears.
Let me see you. Let me taste you.
No one had gone to relight the flares.
Almira snapped awake with a hiss. I handed her a cup of tea and nestled beside her into the chair. “They have not returned?”
I shook my head. A stiff silence settled over the house. “Do you think we were too late? That they will return as mindless as Miran and Emond?”
Almira pursed her pale lips. “I cannot say.”
Beneath the blanket I searched for her hand and squeezed it. These people had suffered five years of this nightmare; I was cracking after only two moons.
“There must be dozens affected.”
“Just five,” she said absentmindedly.
Almira tensed, and I knew why. She had misspoken. Five. The old miller. The woman in the briar. Emond. Miran. Nasha. Just five.
“It began only when I arrived,” I breathed. “It began only because of me.”
“We do not know that, girl.”
I untangled myself from the blanket. “You did not tell me.”
“There was no need to stoke your penchant for guilt.” Almira spoke softly and patiently, as if explaining something complicated to a simple mind or to a child. I grasped for words, but fury had scattered my thoughts. The humiliation of being kept in the dark turned my mouth bitter. “I was glad to shoulder the blame, girl.”
“What do you mean?”
“Adrik believes that my weakness is at fault. That whatever force beckons these souls into the forest and hollows their minds was kept at bay by my magic.”
“So you lied to both of us. To what end?”
She hesitated, eyes wary and grave. “To the boy, I lied to spare him the burden of lying to you. To you, I lied—”
“—because you knew I would choose to evacuate.”
“To spare you the burden of having to make an impossible choice.”
“You have no right to claim this was for my good,” I hissed. “You have no right to make such decisions for me. I took this burden from you. I bear the storm and its weight for this town. What more must I do to prove that I deserve even a scrap of freedom? What else must I endure to be treated as more than a tool?” I spun to the door, anger pushing aside the bone-deep exhaustion. Before I vanished into the night, I said only, “No wonder Adrik still feels, after all this time, that he must prove himself worthy of this place.”
I chased the wind to the teahouse. There was not a clear thought in my mind but this: That I could not remain in Wildemire if my presence was luring people into the forest. And this: That the town could not brave the winter without me. I had given it all that I could—had shouldered the burden of the cold and the storm. I could not bear the weight of these forest-touched souls as well.
We had to abandon this cursed land.
