Page 81 of The Wolf and the Woodsman

My breath comes in white clouds as we pause at the mouth of a tunnel. Now that the pain has ebbed and my mind has cleared, there is room for all my misgivings, all my bewilderment and despair. I think of Yehuli Street and the taste of challah bread. I think of the star-dappled temple ceiling and the way my father held me to his chest. I may be damning them all.

“Évike.” Gáspár’s voice is stern, but not ungentle. “You have to come now. You’ve already made your choice.”

He is right, though the thought of it makes me want to weep. I follow him through the tunnel and out the other side, stepping into the cool wash of moonlight. Katalin’s hair and cloak are as pale as a dewy pearl.

Numbly, we go to the stables, saddling three black Woodsman steeds. They stomp the earth with a sound like far-off thunder. As we mount them, I stare and stare at the sweep of the landscape before us, the flat grasslands of Akosvár and the craggy topography of Szarvasvár. Beyond it, farther than I can see, winter is holding Kaleva in its white-toothed maw.

Above us, the city bells begin to sound. They are certainly spreading the word of our escape, of the missing seer, the cunning wolf-girl, the traitorous prince. Something hard and hot rises in my throat.

Gáspár’s brow is as heavy as a storm cloud, but his jaw is held tight. He spurs his horse on, and Katalin and I follow, leaving Király Szek behind.

Chapter Twenty-One

We ride hard until dawn, when morning light glides down the yellow hills of Szarvasvár and we and our horses are all too exhausted to take another step. I half topple off my horse and kneel on the soft, cool grass. A stream of silver-blue water threads down the mountainside, and when I can summon the strength I pad over to it and take a long drink. The wind feels fierce on my face, stinging the skin that has been rubbed raw by tears.

Katalin, to her credit, says nothing. She hasn’t spoken a word since we left Király Szek, though I can feel her chagrin mounting with each passing moment, her eyes narrowed as thin as knife slits. She joins me by the water, to drink and wash her hands, which are burned red with bristly rope marks from having her fingers locked so tightly around the reins. Her gaze trains on my missing pinky.

“So that’s what you did,” she says. “Mutilated yourself like some Woodsman.”

I curl my hand into a fist, flushing. “What makes you think I did it to myself?”

“It just seems like something you would do.”

“Well, you gave me plenty of practice in enduring pain,” I say, but I can’t imbue the words with the venom that I want. “Have you known all this time, that this was a way to get magic?”

“I suspected.” Katalin lifts one shoulder under her wolf cloak; her eyes are circled with sleepless bruises. “Our magic always takes something from us, but I see that Ördög’s ways are a bit more extreme.”

I think of Virág thrashing in my lap, of Boróka falling into her long, impermeable slumbers. Of course, Virág would never want to highlight what magic cost us, only what we could gain, how it protected us. She talked around the truth, shrouding it in stories of Vilmötten and his great feats. But thinking of Vilmötten makes me think of Nándor, and my stomach folds over on itself, chest tightening like a vise.

Gáspár hunches beside us and fills one of the calfskin flasks hanging on the horse’s saddle. Katalin draws herself up again, wiping her mouth, and levels him with a baleful stare.

“So, Woodsman,” she says. “What have you been offered in exchange for helping a wolf-girl? I don’t think Évike has much to bargain with, except her body.”

I’m not sure if she’s talking about my pinky or something else, but Gáspár goes red from forehead to chin. Either way, her barbed words make me wish, for a fleeting moment, that I had left her in Király Szek to die.

“He’s not a Woodsman,” I snap. “He’s the prince. Bárány Gáspár. And do you know what his father would have done to you, if he hadn’t helped me save your life? He would have torn off all your fingernails to adorn his crown, then slit your throat on the floor of his feast hall.”

Katalin inhales sharply; she looks not quite mortified, but it’s better than nothing. “Still, what does the prince have to gain from saving a wolf-girl?”

With a roiling belly I tell her everything: about making my vow to the king, about the counts and the Woodsmen, about Nándor. I leave out all the parts about the Yehuli and my father—they are too painful to speak aloud, and it would feel like a betrayal if I did. Those moments are for me alone to hold, precious as the last ember in a bed of ash. And I cannot swallow the shame of leaving them behind. When I speak of Nándor, Katalin’s lips go taut.

“I tried to kill him,” I say, holding up my four-fingered hand. My voice is shaking. “His skin was burned off, right down to the bone. His blood was on the ground. But all he did was pray, and he was new again.”

And he had no scars, no evidence of the sacrifice that had bought him such power. All I can think of are his eyes, the edges of them still iced and white, bright with the memory of his death. Perhaps the black, silent moment when his heart stopped beating, before the Érsek dragged him out of the water, has earned him greater blessings than any spilled blood. Perhaps what he believes about himself is true. When Vilmötten cheated death it made him immortal, too, something close to a god.

“If he’s so powerful, it seems a poor choice to leave the king unguarded in your absence,” says Katalin. “What’s to stop him from taking the throne now?”

“Me,” Gáspár says. “If he takes the throne while I’m still breathing, he’s compromised all that he stands for. Patritian law decrees that it must be the eldest son, the true-born son. But even if he kills me, his reign will be plagued by doubt and uncertainty. What he really wants is for me to step aside willingly, then live the rest of my life in exile or obscurity, until he can have me killed later, when everyone has stopped paying attention.”

I feel as if I’ve been scraped clean of anger and hate, scraped clean of everything but exhaustion. Fear. “And then he can massacre the pagans as he pleases.”

Gáspár nods. A silence falls over us, the wind bristling through the dead grass. Finally, Katalin says, “It might have been a lot simpler if you’d only left me to die.”

I choke out a laugh. “Are you sincerely saying you’d rather I let the king slit your throat?”

“No,” Katalin says. The bruise on her cheek is throbbing violet. “I’m only saying that you could easily have left me. It’s what Virág would have done.”

My mouth opens mutely, then closes again. Katalin has turned away from me, staring off into the distance, at the clouds gathering like fat white birds on the horizon. I think it is the closest she will ever come to thanking me.