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Back at the sleigh, I offered to take the reins back. Lilja sat next to me on the bench, and I felt how she grew restless as we crossed the valley. I had a similar urge to turn around and go back to Norstad, but we couldn’t hide there. Alfrun had found us once. She would find us again.

It was late when we reached the village Alma had spotted. It had no inn, but I knocked on the door of the biggest house. A whole gaggle of children opened, and I asked for their father. The farmer didn’t have room for us inside, but he pointed across to the barn. “It’s not much, but it’ll keep you out of the frost.”

“Thank you.” I held a krone out to him on my palm. “For the hay for our horses.”

I unhitched the Poppy and Clover from the sleigh and led them inside. In stalls along the walls stood cows and pigs. The smell was oppressive, with the animals having spent months inside here already, even if I could tell the farmer and his family had mucked out just this morning. Above was a hayloft, and that was where we carried our suitcases, baskets, blankets, and furs.

Alma brought in the lamp, and we ate stale bread and sausages in its glow. Afterward, we laid out the blankets in the piles of hay. I crawled into my makeshift bed with Lilja.

With all my clothes on, at least straw didn’t poke me in the back—although it did poke my neck. It wasn’t too bad, though. The hay was like a mattress, and lying so close to Lilja, I wasn’t cold. I found her hands in the dark. They were like ice, and I cradled them with my own.

“Alfrun can feel my presence just as I sense hers,” Lilja said. “She knows I’m coming.”

“Can a bullet kill her?” Helena asked in a voice so low it was nearly a whisper.

“I don’t know.”

“Can it hurt her?”

“Maybe. Elves don’t have rifles. They have their powers.”

It hung in the cold and reeking air between us—that even armed we were nothing against Alfrun and her kind.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The night in the hayloft was miserable, but that wasn’t why I woke up in a dark mood. This might be my last day with Lilja. Maybe ever.

Her head was on my shoulder, and she was still asleep, her chest rising and falling against me. This was the least comfortable place I had ever slept, but I still wanted to lie here with her forever. The barn was dark with no windows, the only light coming in through narrow gaps between the planks. Still, I adjusted myself so I could look at Lilja. Frost colonized the blanket, and it crinkled when I moved.

I could just about make out her face. She was beautiful in the faint gray light, with her finely shaped nose and mouth and her lashes dark against her cheeks. I could have worked on shaping a face like hers the rest of my life, and I would have never done it justice.

It wasn’t long before she opened her eyes. They filled with tears as she noticed me looking at her.

“You’re coming back with me,” I whispered.

“Do you promise?”

“I promise to do everything I can to free you. Anything.”

She pressed her face into my neck, and I held her tight. We lay like that until Alma and Helena stirred.

Wrapped in the blankets, we ate the last of our bread for breakfast. It was dry, getting stuck in my throat, but our bottles were empty. I would fill them with snow before we set off again. Helena and Alma left to go around the village to buy us more provisions. I set to folding up the blankets, but as soon as the door clanked shut below, Lilja put her hands on my waist and pushed me down onto our makeshift bed.

With her skirts by her waist, she straddled my stomach and bent down and kissed me. I slid my hands up her thighs, and her breaths in my mouth grew heavy as I reached her hips. She took my hand and placed it between her legs. She was already wet for me, and when I caressed her with two fingers, she moaned against my lips. Straightening, she grabbed my hand again and pressed my fingers against her entrance.

“Inside?” I asked.

“Yes, please. If you want to.”

My breath caught. “I… I want to.”

Slowly, I slipped two fingers inside her. She was tight and warm and slick, and we both gasped. I moved out an inch and pushed back inside. “Like this?”

“Yes,” she breathed. “Don’t stop.”

I kept moving my hand, watching her. She moved in rhythm with me. Her lips were parted, and most of her hair had come out of its pins, and it hung loose like it had the first time I had seen her. She held my eyes with hers, and it was like drowning. Like being cloaked entirely in her.

“I love you,” I said.