Page 39

“Precaution, not mistrust.”

“You lie well.”

He gave a shrug. “You live longer when you learn to.”

The device ticked faintly, then dimmed. He set it aside, rubbing his thumb along the seam of his mechanical wrist.

Silence stretched. The kind that made her aware of every crackle of fire and every breath they shared in the cold.

After salting a circle, she lay on her blanket and curled up tight, shivering from the cold. Lysander laid his own over the top of her.

Her teeth chattered. “Thanks.”

“Your father would kill me if I let his only daughter freeze,” Lysander said and lay on the damp snow-packed earth beside her.

Only daughter. The words landed wrong. Idonea went still beneath the blanket. Did he truly not know? Or had something happened to Dyota after she was taken?

Lance slithered up beside her, putting himself between Lysander and her. Twice in the night she woke to the sensation of cold breath at the nape of her neck. On the second occasion she rose and looked. A wraith stood at the perimeter of her salt ring, its form barely there. It didn't attempt the circle. Idonea hated how human that patience felt. It simply watched until she met its gaze, and then it receded into the dark between the trees.

She didn't sleep again until dawn.

The land changed on the fourth day. The hills rolled uneven beneath the snow, large enough to hide almost anything. Idonea disliked them immediately.

The horse’s breath plumed white in the air. Idonea had learned the rhythm of its gait now, swaying easily with its motion, the ache in her body fading.

They crested a rise, and the land fell away into a vast valley. In the distance, a fjord cut through the mountains. She slipped from the horse to take it in.

Idonea paused, breath catching. For a moment, even she forgot the cold.

Lysander stood beside her, cloak whipping in the wind. “Dangerous,” he said.

She smiled faintly. “Most worthwhile things are.”

Lysander looked at her for a moment too long. Idonea pretended not to notice.

They passed through an abandoned village at dusk. Three stone houses and a chapel, all roofless, their interiors filled with drifts of snow. Idonea dismounted to study the broken doorway of the chapel. Inside, the altar was scorched black, a sigil burned deep into the stone: a spiral of thin lines.

“They were trying to open a veil,” she said.

“Did they succeed?” Lysander moved through the chapel, toeing aside rotten chunks of wood.

She pressed her palm against the sigil, but the stone was cold. No disturbance present within the Current. “No. Not entirely.”

“Well, that’s something.”

Idonea had no urge to linger and returned to the horse.

They descended towards the fjord, snow crunching under hooves. The cold had turned cruel, biting at their faces. When they stopped, Lysander built a fire within a ring of stones, while Idonea wrapped her cloak tighter. Lance perched above them on a rock.

Idonea watched him work. He sat across from the fire with the silver flask in his hand, turning it without opening it. After a long moment he uncorked it and took a careful sip. He caught her watching and corked it without explanation.

"You drink less than I would expect, for a man who carries his own flask."

"I drink what I need to."

"Is that an answer?"

"It is the answer I have."