Page 55 of A Dark and Drowning Tide

“I’ll go,” Lorelei said. “But if he’s injured, I can’t carry him back on my own.”

No one volunteered.

Lorelei swept her gaze over the others. Sylvia did not look at her. Unsurprising, she supposed. They hadn’t spoken since the day of the festival. The others, huddled by the remains of the fire, had clearly come to some kind of understanding, discussed and decided upon without words. It was a language she’d come to understand well:us against them. Lorelei wasn’t surprised, only bitterly disappointed. Whatever scrap of power she had been gifted by Wilhelm meant nothing.

She’d been exiled.

Lorelei snatched her backpack from the ground and threw it over her shoulder. She wanted to bear it stoically, but the leering dark between the trees and the serrated ridge of the mountain beyond unnerved her. She’d never braved the wilderness on her own. If anythinghappened—orif they chose to head back down the mountain withouther—she’dbe dead. No one would come for her. No one would tell her family what happened.

Then, Sylvia huffed. “Such bravery and selflessness on display. What shining examples of the nobility you all are. I’ll go with you.”

Once again, that petty, helpless impulse to lash out rose up within her. She wanted tosneer—toreject her help, if only to spite her. She did not want her pity. She did not need it. But she couldn’t do this alone.

“Fine,” Lorelei said. “Let’s go.”

To her utter humiliation, she’d failed to keep strangled hurt out of her voice.

***

Lorelei knew very well they might be marching to their deaths. But outside that damned clearing, she felt oddly lighter. Sylvia, meanwhile, had grown sulky and petulant, dragging her feet as they trudged through the forest’s underbrush. Every now and again, she muttered something or other about cowardice and the decay of virtue. For her own sanity, Lorelei let the sound of her voice recede into meaningless noise. If she acknowledged her at all, inevitably they would have to discuss the way Sylvia had leapt to her protection.Twice. Lorelei would sooner die.

Bitter cold held the world in its grip, and the air hung heavy and still with the threat of snow. They had wandered this stretch of the woods so many times, it had ceased to be remarkable. And yet, she did not know what to expect anymore; anything seemed possible. Ludwig crumpled on the forest floor. Ludwig emerging from the thicket with his sly, quicksilver grin. Ludwig waiting for them back at camp as though he had never vanished at all.

No, she was not so optimistic as to expect that.

They walked for what felt like hours in grim silence. Lorelei strained to notice anything out of the ordinary, but all around her was interminable green, and overhead was the tangle of pine boughs.God, she couldn’t wait to return to the heaving sprawl and noise of the city. Then she remembered that if she did not find theUrsprung—orconvincing enough evidence to pin the murder onHeike—shewould never go home again.

What am I doing?Walking in circles, looking for a needle in ahaystack...Theywould never find him at this rate. All of this was completely, utterly pointless,and—

Something about the tree in front of her caught her eye: an L-shaped mark carved into the trunk. Yesterday, when they’d realized just how lost they were, they’d made a few attempts to record where they’d already been.Johann—toLudwig’sdismay—hadslashed a few trees deep enough that they bled sap. But these cuts were careful, shallow, and precise.

Had Ludwig done this?

Lorelei paused to inspect it. Nothing about the tree seemed terribly unusual at first glance. Then, she spotted the mushrooms sprouting from its roots. Their bell-shaped caps looked to be shingled and dripping with liquid aether. It pooled on the earth below, indigo and shimmering.

Sylvia appeared over her shoulder. “Well done, Lorelei!”

Lorelei nearly leapt out of her skin. “Don’t scare me like that,” she snapped. Her heart was pounding far too loudly. “What am I looking at?”

“A gate,” Sylvia said.

“Towhat?”

“Freedom.” Her entire being lit up. “As you know, many wildeleute can ensorcell people. Take nixies and their magnetic songs, for example. You will also sometimes find that places with high concentrations of aether become shrouded in a sort of ambient enchantment, often to protect themselves.”

Lorelei frowned. “And you think this is such a place?”

“It must be! I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before. Ludwig was working on a paper many years ago about this phenomenon. He noticed that the bounds of these aetherically charged places are often marked with unusual flora. Oftentimes, the area of effect is quite small: say, the center of a ring of mushrooms or the shade cast by a lone tree in themiddle of an empty field. But in this case . . .” Sylvia swept her hand out. “There’s a gate. Do you see it?”

To her surprise, she did.

Two narrow trees leaned toward each other, their branches twining elegantly together like a pediment over a doorway.Mushrooms—allof them faintly iridescent in the twilit glow of thewoods—carpetedthe earth between them.

“Shall we?” Lorelei asked.

Feeling foolish, she squeezed through the narrow gap between the trunks. There was no sudden flood of light, no shiver of magic that passed over her skin. She was almost disappointed. But after a few paces, the landscape began to change. A light dusting of snow glittered on the ground, and delicate icicles dripped from the branches. And there, rising high above the trees, was their destination: the summit, shrouded in a skein of mist as delicate as gossamer. Whatever spell of suspension the woods had imprisoned them in had broken.

Ludwig really had done it.