Page 56 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

“You could have done something,” I bite out. When I remember his stony silence, the way he watched the Woodsmen drag me away without lifting a hand to stop them, it burns worse than a hundred billows of blue flame. “You didn’t say a word against Nándor once he had me. You told me I’ve ruined you, but you’re clearly still the same selfish princeling you’ve always been, dressed in your delusions of piety. Well, I apologize, my lord. I’d take back every kiss if I could. Lucky for you, once I’m dead, the secret of your broken oath will die with me, and you can go back to pretending you’re the purest, most honorable Woodsman alive.”

I’m not sure how much of what I’ve said is honest and how much of it is my bitter floundering, hoping at least one of my cruel barbs will hit its mark. Gáspár draws in a short breath, throat bobbing, and then steps sideways into the light. His eye is pooling with venom, but it’s a poor guise for grief. Even though I ought to feel satisfied that my thorns have stuck in him, my blood is cold as ice.

“You don’t understand,” he says, each word a labor, as if he truly does think I’m too simple to grasp their meaning. “If Nándor had even the barest suspicion that I might care for you at all, he’d torture you to death or madness, just to feel like he was taking something from me.”

I stare and stare at him, gulping my fury. I think of the way he held me through the long nights in Kaleva, or the way his lips moved so gently against my throat, but it all makes me want to weep again when I see how he’s looking at me now, as if I’m hopeless and doomed.

“You’ve done a good job pretending,” I say. “Even I’m quite convinced.”

His mouth twists wretchedly. “You’ll have a much easier time pleading your case in front of my father. He tolerates pagans, unlike Nándor.”

The word father runs me through like a sword. “Where is Zsigmond?”

Gáspár doesn’t look at me. The flickering torchlight leaps from wall to wall, bounding after shadows. Finally, he says, “Nándor is still having his fun.”

A blind and furious rage comes over me, like a fissure of pale lightning. I lunge toward him, the bars rattling vainly between us, tears beading at the corners of my eyes.

“Why come back at all, just to keep your head down and follow orders like some weak, worthless Woodsman?” I snarl. “What kind of prince bends silently to the wills of his bastard brother? What kind of prince stands idle and dumb as a struck dog while his people—and yes, the Yehuli are your people, no matter what you believe—suffer? You’re no better than any other soldier who tears mothers from their children.”

“Enough,” Gáspár spits back. “You would be dead already, wolf-girl, if I hadn’t—”

He stops himself, mouth snapping shut. In the time he has been speaking, I have reached out and grasped his wrist, the space between where his sleeve ends and his glove begins and where his bare skin is latticed white with scars.

“I don’t need a knife to wound you,” I whisper.

Gáspár doesn’t move. His gaze meets mine, through the cell bars, black and steady. I see a glimpse of the man I knew on the ice and in the woods again, that bridled fervor and swallowed pain.

“Do it, then,” he says, without a trace of fear. It’s the first time I’ve witnessed this courage from him since we reached the city.

I have the briefest instinct to reach for his throat, where the violet memory of my kiss is still throbbing, but I’m not sure whether I mean to smother him with my tenderness or with my hate. I let go of his wrist, skin prickling.

“Keep one promise.” My voice is trembling so terribly that I have to swallow hard before going on again. “Tell me what your father does to the wolf-girls that he takes.”

Gáspár’s gaze lowers, torchlight leaving his eye. For a long moment there is only the sound of water dripping from the mold-slick walls, and, more distantly, another prisoner’s chains rattling. Bastioned inside my wolf cloak, I wrap my arms around myself, like there is something that needs to be held from breaking apart, or breaking out.

“I’m sorry,” Gáspár says finally. And it is his refusal, this smallest of betrayals, that hurts worse than anything.

He sweeps out of the dungeon, his suba gathering a patchwork of shadow and light, leaving me alone.

I can’t tell how many hours have passed when another Woodsman comes for me, but I have already resigned myself to dying. He’s the same Woodsman from the courtyard, with a bald head like a bruised peach and a mangled, half-missing nose. Beside him is a slip of a girl, shaking and thin as an icicle, laureled in her homespun servant’s clothes. She stares at me meekly over the rim of a bucket, her halved face like a white moon rising.

“You’re the worst I’ve seen yet,” the Woodsman says.

I don’t know if by worst he means ugliest, or if by worst he means filthiest, or if by worst he means wickedest, or if perhaps it is all three. I scarcely have the energy to curl my lip at him.

“Lajos, don’t rile her,” the serving girl protests. I can tell she is not concerned with wounding my feelings, merely afraid that I will lash out at her in my rage. I can hardly blame her for that: I must look worse than I smell, and I feel like something chained and hunted and hungry.

“Wolf-girls aren’t capable of being hurt, Riika,” chides the Woodsman. “They’re soulless things, no gentler or wiser than the animals they wear.”

But Riika is still staring at me wide-eyed. She has a Northerner’s name and a Northerner’s blanched complexion, as pale as a peeled apple. It’s a long way from here to Kaleva, and I feel sorry for her in spite of myself—mostly sorry that she has been given the unfortunate task of wrangling me.

“It’s a waste of water to wash her,” Lajos says. “But it would be a great insult to the king, to present her to him in such a state.”

I consider wounding him, killing him, but it’s a fleeting thought. It won’t help me escape, and it will only prove how loathsome I am to those who already loathe me. I sit still and silent in my cell as Lajos flings open the door and Riika approaches me with no more bravery than a skittish wood mouse. I can almost see whiskers twitching.

“Please,” she squeaks out. “He’ll be furious if you don’t . . .”

She sets the bucket in front of me and then scuttles behind Lajos’s back. I dip my hands in, watching motes of dirt flake off my fingers and drift through the water like dead flies. The water is cold enough to sting, but I scrub my cheeks and my nose and even the grime caked behind my ears. Why not die with a pink, shining face?