Page 79 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

My blood leaks onto his sheets. Gáspár holds my arm in his lap, gloved hands running over my wound.

“Tell me what to do,” he says, and the helplessness in his voice nearly ruins me. “Tell me how to . . .”

“Take off your gloves,” I manage, eyelids fluttering.

I watch him as he does, removing each one and letting them drift to the ground, limp as shed black feathers. “Why?” he asks. “What now?”

“No reason,” I mumble. “I’m just tired of you wearing them.”

He lets out a breath that is half annoyance, half exasperated amusement. When his bare fingers touch my skin through the dress, I feel them shaking.

“I have to stop the bleeding,” he says. His hand presses hard over my wound, and I let out a whimper of pain. “I’m sorry. It’s going to hurt. Try and bear it.”

The fabric of my dress is so blood-drenched that I can see the shape of my wound beneath it, wide and clenching. Gáspár pulls at the silk, but the seams hold fast. I hear panic in the hitch of his breath and then he leans over me, mouth so close to my throat that I think for a startled moment he will draw his lips over my old scar again. Instead he takes the fabric between his teeth, incisor grazing my shoulder, and pulls until the sleeve of my dress flowers open.

I remember how Imre stuck the hilt of his knife into Peti’s mouth and told him to bite down while Gáspár cut off his arm. Even then, even when he was only a Woodsman to me, there was horror and regret in his eye. Now Gáspár works with a black determination, his gaze narrowed to nothing but his hands and my bare, bleeding arm in front of him. He tears strips of fabric from his bedclothes and wraps them tight around my shoulder. The pain ebbs, if only slightly.

“I don’t know,” he says, his voice tight. “You’ve lost so much blood already . . .”

“It’s my hunting arm,” I say quietly. Even if I survive, I will never draw a bow again.

Gáspár’s face crumples. In that moment he looks so miserable that I want to apologize for every little cut I have made in him, every drop of blood my words have drawn.

“What happened?” he whispers.

And so I tell him everything: about the Yehuli holiday and Nándor’s mob, about Riika and the dagger, and every single one of his brother’s threats, and worst of all, about his brother’s terrifying power. Gáspár’s brow furrows as I speak, his lips pressing together until they are nearly white. As the pain recedes further, tidewater drawing back from the shore, I become aware of his hand against my arm, his bare knuckles brushing my skin.

“He wants to kill you,” I say at last, hoarse with exhaustion. “And then he’ll banish all the Yehuli, and destroy Keszi.”

Gáspár’s jaw sets. “It won’t be as easy for him as he thinks.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not as daft as you imagine me, Évike,” he says, but his tone is gentle. “I have Miklós and Ferenc switch off guarding my door while I sleep. I don’t eat anything unless I have procured it myself. When I must attend feasts, I let the wine touch my lips but I never swallow it. I know that I am what stands between Nándor and the crown, and that he will do anything to get his hands around my throat.”

My mouth goes dry. “He thought that killing me would make you drop your guard.”

Gáspár nods, just once, and doesn’t meet my eyes.

“None of it matters now.” A bolt of pain runs through me, and I shiver. “He’s too powerful. There’s no way to stop him. Even my magic was nothing against him.”

“Then you must let the king have her,” Gáspár says. “Your seer. It’s not the power of the turul, but it is enough to help my father hold on to his crown.”

“Katalin,” I say, my voice dropping like a stone kicked off a cliff. “Her name is Katalin.”

I see Gáspár’s face shift from bewilderment to realization, and then, abruptly, it hardens. “The girl who tormented you. The one who gave you that scar.”

His thumb brushes my left eyebrow, split by white scar tissue. Memories of blue flame bubble up, but they don’t wound me like they once did, now that I know Katalin is sitting in the king’s dungeon, perhaps even fettered in the same cell that I was.

“If I let her die, then I might as well admit that Virág was right,” I say. The confession of it feels shameful, poisonous, but Gáspár’s expression doesn’t change. “That she was right to cast me out, and that all of us wolf-girls are nothing more than warm bodies. Besides, it’s the same thing I told your father: a seer’s magic is not what you think. It will give the king only a fraction of the turul’s power.”

“Évike, think of what you’re saying.”

“I am,” I bite out, anger and despair washing over all the pain. “Don’t you understand how much I have thought of it? If I save Katalin, I will lose any power I have in this city, any sway over the king’s mind, and any ability to protect the Yehuli. To protect my father, I . . .” I can’t bring myself to admit what I am thinking: that when Zsigmond told me the story of the clay-man, he was begging me to be the one to save them this time. “You have no idea how much I have considered the weight of my words.”

Gáspár pulls away from me, lifting his chin. For a moment, his eye is as hard as obsidian. “You think I don’t understand? You were the one who told me, so long ago, that we were the same. You wielded that revelation like a weapon against me. My every action is a choice between honoring my mother and serving my father. You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who knows this strife better.”

Mortified, I press my lips together. I hadn’t thought he would remember my words so well, the words I hurled at him in anger, not knowing how much they would sting.