Page 46 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

I can’t get it off him without pulling it over his head, so I reach for my knife, instead. I draw a long slit down the front of his shirt, cleaving the leather in two. It opens like black petals over his bare chest. His veins are dark as pitch, cobbling in an inky swell over his heart. My four fingers close into a fist, and I realize with a flood of helpless anguish that my newfound magic will do him no good: all I can do is hurt.

I kneel over him in the dirt, hands shaking, a sob rising in my throat at how I might as well be the same girl I was when I left Keszi, impotent and weak, and then suddenly the blackness starts to recede. The way the witch’s enchantment waned from me slowly, Gáspár’s veins return to green. That cobbled murk over his heart quivers and fades. And when his eyelid flutters open again, I have to steel myself so I don’t start weeping, this time in relief.

Now that the danger has passed, I am suddenly aware of his bare skin under my hands. His chest is bronze and well muscled, with three long bands of scar tissue running along his abdomen. The mark of the creature’s claws, I remember, from what seems like so long ago by the edge of the lake. I stare down at him, blinking, and then I realize Gáspár is watching me stare and I snatch my hand away, feeling weak in the knees for far too many reasons.

He pushes himself up onto his elbows and buttons the dolman closed over his chest, though I can still see snatches of skin. A flash of his hip bone. I swallow.

“I thought you were going to die,” I say, as if making some defense, though I’m not sure for what. My voice is trembling shamefully.

“What happened?” Gáspár asks. Though his face is still ashen, a stubborn pink creeps over the tips of his ears. I feel so glad to see it I almost laugh. “The last thing I remember is the woman—she wasn’t a woman . . .”

He trails off, eye wandering over the mound of hair and dirt behind me. A white finger bone is knuckling out of the soil.

“A witch,” I say. “She was a witch.”

Gáspár shifts onto his knees, brushing dirt from his suba. When his gaze draws back to me, there’s a furrow in his brow. “How did you stop her?”

I hold up my hand, splaying its four fingers, and try to pin a smirk on my face. “Ördög can do more than snuff out flames.”

My attempt at a smirk falls flat, and Gáspár only frowns at me in return. I have spent so much time studying his expressions that I can tell when he’s truly vexed, and when he’s only scowling because he feels like he’s supposed to. When he’s looking at me like I am just a wolf-girl, and when he’s looking at me like he wishes I were only just a wolf-girl. This time, I can see his lips quivering, as if he is trying to decide whether to scold me or to thank me, and which will damn him more.

To spare us both more of his miserable wavering, I say, “I wasn’t going to let you die before you could atone for the sin of saving my life.”

He only makes a noise of reproach, shaking his head. Gáspár rises to his feet, and after a moment, so do I. I can see the ripple of muscle in his chest as he walks, through one of the gaps between the buttons of his dolman, and I press my lips together, grateful that he cannot guess at the indecent things running through my mind. Wishing that I was not thinking such indecent things about a Woodsman at all, and certainly not after we both nearly died. I imagine him berating me for my single-minded vulgarity. I imagine Katalin sneering at my doomed, unrequited desire, her blue eyes mean and laughing. A rabbit might as well lust after a wolf that plans to eat it.

Gáspár climbs back onto his mount, watching me as I straddle my silver mare. His expression is unreadable, but he cannot miss the flush on my cheeks. I have long since given up waiting for his gratitude when he brings his horse close to mine, their flanks nearly touching, and says, “Thank you, Évike.”

I am so surprised to hear my name on his lips that I can’t think of how to reply. The wind unspools over us, howling softly. I give a stiff nod, holding my chin up, and then Gáspár urges his horse forward, toward the river’s edge. I hold the echo of his voice in my mind for a moment, and then follow after him.

Chapter Twelve

The afternoon light wends its way across the sky, the sun pale and cloud-wreathed. The Élet River foams beside us, carrying water all the way from the Half-Sea, through Kaleva, and past our southern border with Merzan. We have seen more winter villages along the riverbed, their sod houses like rock outcroppings, small windows orange with firelight, but we have taken care to avoid them, diverting our path through the scraggly brush instead. Gáspár has lapsed back into silence. I don’t know what has rattled him more: that the witch nearly killed him, or that I saved his life.

Our horses’ footsteps are hushed in the soft, damp soil. There is only the low churning of the river, oddly companionable as it threads through the slopes and valleys of Szarvasvár. In the aftermath of our encounter with the witch, a giddy relief has cracked open inside me, muffling many of my previous fears. I keep thinking about the way her body came apart in my hand, hunks of red clay and dust, still painted into the creases of my palm. Having spent so long being afraid, sublimating myself to the magic of the other wolf-girls, this sudden fearlessness is like a song that begs for singing, the words and the melody bubbling up in me boldly, loudly.

I let my muscles unclench from the back of my mare, belly gnawing with hunger. When I suggest to Gáspár that we stop so I can hunt, he gives me a morose stare.

“You can’t possibly have an appetite after that,” he says.

I consider telling him that he sounds as waspish as Virág, since the comparison always makes him scowl, but thinking of her or anyone in Keszi makes my throat tighten, all that bold certainty curdling like sour milk. “If I’m to die Király Szek, as you’re so certain I will, I would like to die with a full stomach.”

His face darkens. He has never appreciated my black humor, but it seems to rankle him differently now, when I speak with a flippant smile about the possibility of my death. Now it doesn’t make him flush with anger, only go thin-mouthed and silent.

“We’ll have to get a bit further down the river first,” he says finally, voice curt, “if we’re to arrive in time for Saint István’s feast.”

I bite my tongue on a reply. Though I’ve mentioned it in jest, I have not truly allowed myself to think of what awaits me when we reach the city; I have only held on fiercely to my coin and to the conviction that I will be able to find my father, and of course protect myself with my magic. If I let my mind wander long enough to consider so many grisly possibilities, fear will wither me up like a wildflower that has been cut and I will walk into one of the sod houses and wait for the soil to close over my head.

“We ought to stop for water at least,” I tell him. “You look woozy.”

He does scowl at that, but he doesn’t argue. We bring our horses to a halt and leap down, boots soundless in the wet soil. I lead my silver mare toward the water to drink while Gáspár kneels at the riverbed. It’s true enough that I wanted to stop, but I wasn’t lying about Gáspár’s appearance: though hours have passed since we left the witch’s house, his face looks particularly pale, and there is a fold of worry between his brows that makes my stomach twist with a mirrored concern. It seems almost impossible to remember that I had been so terrified of him once, that I had wished him dead. He removes his gloves and dips his cupped hands into the water, shoulders bowing. In the early days of our journey I would have considered how easy it would be to put a knife between his shoulder blades while his back was turned. Now I am looking only at the way that water clings to his lips, almost iridescent in the late-afternoon light, delicate as drops of dew.

I bend beside him and lift a handful of water to my own mouth. I think of my trysts by a different riverside, the one near Keszi. Mostly quick and shameful, my knees in the dirt so our eyes would never meet, sometimes brusque enough that it bloodied the insides of my thighs. I imagined that when the same boys took Katalin to the riverside, they had her like an oyster strokes out its pearl, delicate and slow, and when they finished, they helped her brush the dirt from her cloak and untangle the dead leaves from her hair. Gáspár wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and squints through the light, watching me. It is frighteningly easy to envision him on his back in the dirt: he would be as fumbling and gentle as a fawn, I think, and afterward anxious to conceal any bruises he had left.

Of course, he would sooner curl his lip and bristle at a wolf-girl’s touch. Since leaving Kaleva behind, there’s no need to anchor each other against the cold, and if he’d felt my hands run over his bare chest, he would have leapt away from me with a start.

The question rises in me anyway. “Are Woodsmen forbidden to wed?”

Gáspár’s shoulders lift, and I hear him draw in a breath. “Yes. It’s a holy order—none of the men are permitted to take wives, or to father children.” He hesitates, a breeze feathering his black curls over his forehead. “Why?”