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It was illusion, taking form in front of my eyes as he wove cold magic with a speed and dexterity that astounded me.
“We’ve been washed back into the mortal world, love.” The ship vanished as he sat up and spat. “Gah. What I wouldn’t do for a glass of my mother’s hoarhound tea sweetened with honey. Catherine! You’re shuddering.”
He pulled me against him. I could have sworn warmth radiated from his body, although it was hard to feel anything. My wool skirt clung to my legs, the fabric crackling as if it were actually beginning to freeze.
“There’s shelter,” he said. “Walk with me.”
The shoreline was stony beach. A little peninsula of land sloped up to a cliff of ice that loomed over us like fate. There was no vegetation, nothing but rock and ice and sand. Crevices and canyons had dug staircases into the ice cliff, pocked with boulders. On the tiny peninsula, lying between ice cliff and icy sea, a deposit of huge rocks formed a low cave.
“See if there’s any driftwood to build a fire,” he said. “The cave is the sort of place it might get swept into and caught.”
“I c-c-can’t build a fire.”
“Did you pack no flint?”
“You’ll k-k-kill the fire.”
“As long as I can work cold magic, I will not freeze to death, but you will. Do you hear me, Catherine? Tell me you understand what I’m saying.”
The wind gusted out of the north, sweeping over the lip of the ice. A voice flew on that wind, dangerous and wild. A howl rose.
I staggered to a halt. “Do you hear that?”
“Come on, love. Just a little farther. We’ll see if there’s fuel for a fire and then I’ll go back and fetch our gear…”
Wolves.
We hadn’t escaped. The Hunt was after us. My sire had already found us. What did he want from me? Or was he just angry that I had rescued first my cousin and then my husband from him?
The presence of beasts stalking a person concentrates the mind wonderfully. The landscape before me settled and I knew where I was. I had reached for my mother, and somehow the connection between us had brought me to a place she had once walked. “They left the other boat in the cave. We’ve got to drag it down to the water and get out of here before the wolves come.”
His grip tightened on my arm. “Love, you’re raving. There’s no wolves, and no boat…” I curled my lips in a silent snarl that made his eyes widen. “But let’s just go see about the boat.”
We picked our way up the slope and in under the dank shadow. A huge slab of a boulder made a weighty roof, giving the cave the look of a crude shelter of stone built by a giant. I cleared debris off a hump to reveal canvas stretched taut over a rowboat. The boat had been turned over and raised off the ground on stones. Two oilcloth bundles with oars and oarlocks had been tucked along the underside of the benches, together with an unexpected bounty of a spare flint, an iron pot, and a hunter’s knife.
“Lord of All. How did you know this would be here?”
“My mother reached out to me from the past and pulled me here.” I dragged the canvas off the boat. It was big enough to seat six men, but I thought we could handle it. Howls drifted off the height. “We have to get out of here before the wolves come. Can’t you hear them?”
“It’s just the wind.” He rubbed my hands between his. “You need to warm yourself at a fire before we try to cross the water. Your lips are blue. People can die just from exposure to cold.”
Through chattering teeth, I spoke. “You have to believe me about my mother.”
He paused, then resumed chafing my hands. “I don’t see why not. The chain that binds our marriage pulled you to me in Expedition.”
“That was the machinations of General Camjiata and James Drake.”
“Yes, that as well, but didn’t you ever wonder why you found me so easily the moment you stepped onto the jetty? The chain that binds us drew you to me. You’ll always be bound to your parents as well. We’ll rig these ropes so we can pull the boat over, then haul it down on the canvas. But once we get it down there with everything in it, then you must promise me if there are no wolves you’ll build a fire for long enough to warm up and dry out that wool a little bit, and my coat and gloves, which you so wisely brought. By the way the light falls I’m pretty sure it’s late winter or early spring. It’s still morning, so we’ll have time to cross before dusk. Catherine? Are you listening?”
“Yes,” I said, for the sound of his voice was so comforting.
We rigged the rope, flipped the boat, and dragged it over the stone beach to the water. The work warmed me but at the same time sucked all energy from me. Afterward, it was all I could do to stay upright, leaning on the stern, as he fetched our gear and arranged it as ballast. The cold gnawed through my flesh to the bone. He set the oarlocks and oars. Out of the dripping pack he unfolded the winter coat I had carried just for him and put it on me. He looked me up and down. He had the worst frown on his face, startling in its intensity. I had never seen that expression on him before. I had no idea what to make of it.
“Catherine.” He spoke my name with what sounded like anger. “You are now returning to the cave. I’ll build a fire and leave so you can light it and get warm…”
A howl skirled down on the wind. I watched him register the sound. His brow wrinkled. Anger flickered in the twitch of his cheeks. His gaze lifted to the rim of the ice shelf.
High up on the path, three shaggy wolves nosed into view. Four more wolves were already most of the way down a canyon path that led from the rim to the beach. In our effort to shove the boat to the shore, we hadn’t noticed them. They were huge. I smelled their hunger.
