Page 53 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

“She wrote to me fairly often during the war. The first letters she sent were about what you’d expect, but toward the end, there was something about them that troubled me. They were . . .” He thumbed his lip pensively, as though the word escaped him or none seemed sufficient. At last, he shrugged. “I was worried about her, so I asked her to stay with me for a few weeks when the fighting ended. I was shocked when she arrived in the state she did. I hadn’t seen her in years, but it was like she was a completely different person. Haunted, I suppose.”

Lorelei did not need to ask for more details. Although it surprised her, she could imagine it with perfect, horrible clarity. Her moonlit hair disheveled. Her pale silver eyes as empty as her own had been. All of her indefatigable enthusiasm quashed.

Hollowed out by ghosts.

“The only thing that seemed to cheer her up was this pack of kornhunds that lived in the cornfields on my property. She would go outside and watch them for hours after sunset.”

Kornhunds were wildeleute who took the form of sight hounds. They ran atop gusts of wind with lightning sparking at their paws, bringing bad luck to anyone who gazed into their eyes. They were driven out of the fields when they were threshed, but during the growing season, they were menaces. They picked off children hunting for cornflowers and tore apart anyone who imitated their howls.

“One night, I looked out my window. It was pitch-dark, so all I could see was her hair and a spark of lightning. One of the hounds had come out of the corn, and Sylvia was crouched there on the edge of the field, waiting for it.”

None of this sounded remotely surprising. But she supposed this was Sylvia before she wasSylvia. “What happened then?”

He laughed breathlessly. “Well, I grabbed my musket and ran outside, but by the time I got there, she was gone. That’s likely for the best. Johann has tried to teach me a thousand times, but I’m a terrible shot.

“I looked for her for hours. And then, come morning, she stumbled out of the corn. Her eyes were wild, and she was practically shouting in my ear from excitement. I couldn’t understand a single thing she said. Because I wasso...angry.”

Lorelei couldn’t picture Ludwig angry, but she could picture Sylvia with perfect clarity: tearing barefoot through the fields with a pack of wild dogs at her heels, lightning dancing around her, her hair unfurling into the dark like a war banner Lorelei would follow to her own death.

“I told her she was completely mad. I told her she could’ve died.”

“And what did she say to that?”

“Nothing! She just laughed at me. And when she was finished, she said,Isn’t it beautiful, Ludwig? Isn’t life incredible?”

Lorelei stared straight ahead, unable to meet his eyes. Those infernal creatures had saved Sylvia’s life. It brought to mind a lonely young girl in the Yevanverte, collecting bugs from the neighbors’ garden and thinking it something like magic.

“And this,” she said, “proves her innocence?”

“She isn’t capable of killing. Notanymore—andnot like that. She refuses to use magic. It upsets her too much.”

Lorelei frowned. She supposed now that she thought about it, she had never seen Sylvia wield magic. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Consider it my parting gift,” he said lightly. “Someone ought to figure this mess out, and it certainly won’t be me.”

I have figured it out. She trusted Ludwig,yes—evenconsidered him a friend. But he liked Heike. She refused to drive a wedge between them without proof. Instead, she said, “Don’t say things like that.”

“Right. Morbid. Sorry,” he said. “But really, if I don’t come back, you should have that coat of mine you like so much. You remember which one I’m talking about?”

“Yes, yes.” Lorelei scowled. “How generous.”

For all their sakes, she prayed that hisplan—whateveritwas—worked.

Later that night, Lorelei slipped into her tent and watched the shadows draw long fingers across the canvas roof. The forest was eerily completely still. She heard no nighttime birds, no insects, no skitter of creatures in the dark. And yet, she could not shake the feeling thatsomeone—orsomething—waswatching them with malicious intent.

Thirteen

LORELEI AWOKE TO ANache in her limbs and a cold that had settled into her bones. The first thing that reached her through the fog of her exhaustion was the faint scent of snow.

Now, that would be just their luck.

Outside her tent, that bruised-purple sky awaited her, maddeningly unchanging. The branches over the clearing knitted together like the gnarled, imposing latticework of a wrought-iron gate. No one else had stirred.

Coffee, she decided. It was the only way she could make it through another day of aimless wandering. She grabbed the kettle and walked to the stream that skirted the edge of camp. She knelt by the water and submerged the kettle, letting the current eddy around her wrists. Nothing but the burble of water cut up the silence, but she did not move until her fingers went bone white in the cold. The knot of unease pulled tighter within her. Even now, she couldn’t shake the feeling that had chased her into sleep.

Something in this forest was watching them.

After returning to camp, she raked the coals back from the embers of their campfire and boiled water for coffee and oat porridge. They’d tragically run out of raisinsyesterday—moreaccurately, Heike had eaten half of themherself—whichleft them with nothing but flavorless slop to look forward to.