Page 108 of Winterveil

The question that rose to her lips was stupid, inane, given the circumstances, but—

“What are we?”

Nadiya paused, her hands curling in her lap.

“I know what you are to me,” she said quietly.

Giselle swallowed. “And what is that?”

“My first kiss.” Nadiya’s lashes fluttered. “My first . . . anything.”

Giselle’s breath caught. As fierce and regal as Nadiya’s exterior was, she had felt the fragility of her beneath the armor. The softness of her flesh, the limbs that were more lithe than muscular, the muscles that were more delicate than sinewy. There was a vulnerability to her that made Giselle want to close her arms around her again, clutch her to her chest, keep her safe.

“I . . . ,” Giselle started, cheeks warming, “I hope it was good.”

Nadiya met her gaze. “It was.”

Time seemed to slow around them. They were close enough that Giselle could have kissed her again. Klaudia had put on the record player, “Dance of the Knights” from Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, but the memory of the other song echoed in Giselle’s ears. All I wanna do is bring happiness to you—

“Don’t go away again, all right?” Giselle hated the desperate tinge to her voice. “I can’t . . . I can’t do any of this without you.”

Nadiya straightened. Her hair, held in a loose braid, tumbled over her shoulders, wisps of black curling at her temples. Her eyes were liquid and deerlike.

“I won’t,” she said.

Slowly, Giselle nodded. She trusted Nadiya’s competence, Klaudia’s mind, and even Julian’s loyalty to them all. It was Deckard she didn’t trust. And maybe she didn’t trust herself, either. For as far as she had come since arriving at Valeran, Giselle couldn’t shake the feeling that she was weak.

But if there was anything she cared to accomplish here, it was keeping Nadiya safe. She had rescued her once—against all odds, and mostly thanks to Klaudia—and she hoped that she could do it again, if need be. As if she could summon up some secret well of strength within herself, and do something worthwhile with it. She hardly feared for her own safety anymore; it seemed somehow trivial by compare. She had almost ceased to think of herself at all. It was Nadiya and only Nadiya who she saw when she closed her eyes. Who appeared in the landscape of her dreams.

Nadiya held out one of the pistols to her. She took it, feeling the heat that Nadiya’s hands had left.

Crispin returned, pink-cheeked from the cold. In a surprisingly resolute voice, he said, “It’s time.”

Klaudia rose swiftly from the table, and Julian followed her. “To case the house?” she asked.

“No,” said Crispin. “You don’t—Deckard said you don’t have to. He said you’ve done well enough, and you can finish it now.” He cast his gaze uncomfortably around the room. “He—it’s waiting.”

The four of them exchanged uneasy glances. There was a furrow of confusion in Nadiya’s brow. “And we’re supposed to believe that?”

“It’s true.” Crispin inclined his chin, a bit of defiance in his tone. He turned to Julian.

“Crispin has never lied to us, Nadiya,” Julian said. “Don’t you want to get this over with?”

Nadiya let out a breath. “Fine. But if this all goes horribly wrong, I’m coming after you in the real world and your father will have to bribe me not to—”

“Come on,” Klaudia cut in. “Let’s just go.”

But Julian said, “Do you accept payment in blue chip stocks?”

While they bickered, Giselle noticed that the windows of the ski lodge had turned into gleaming squares of black. The hands on the clock above the fireplace had suddenly raced to twelve. Crispin was right—Deckard was arranging all the pieces into place.

Together, the five of them stepped out into the frigid midnight air. Julian looked up, and the rest of them did, too. Overhead, striations of green and purple light rippled across the sky, a false aurora borealis. And even though Giselle knew it was artificially constructed, it was still beautiful. And it seemed, in that moment, so very real.

She caught a shared glance between Julian and Crispin—brief, but oddly fond. Klaudia was the one who urged them along, down the steps and toward Traumstadt’s residential street.

The road was icy and empty. The streetlamps flickered like a static glitch. Giselle shivered in a way that had nothing to do with the cold. The pistol was pressing hard against her hip bone.

They reached Satow’s house within moments, the quaint, fairy-tale structure with ivy on the trellises and frost on the gabled roof. It was still hard to imagine that sinister things lurked inside. Klaudia led them up the path, careful not to crunch any of the hardened, sugar-like snow.