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I stand there stupid for a second. Then the bear roars again and lunges.
I roll, run. I sprint faster than I ever have in my life. I fly. But the bear is faster, if less agile; the woods shudder as it crashes through brush and trees.
I run beside a massive godTree and dive through bramble. There the ground creaks beneath my feet and I realize, as leaves and snow crumble under my feet, where I stand. I put the place between myself and the bear and wait for the bear to tear through the underbrush. It bursts clear and lunges for me. I jump back. Then it is gone, shrieking as it plummets through the trap floor onto a bed of wooden spikes. My joy would have been longer lived if I didn’t dance back and step into a second trap.
The earth flips. Well, I do. My leg snaps upward and I fly into the air on the end of a rope. I dangle for hours, too frightened to call to my army for fear of Proctor Apollo. My face tingles and itches from the blood rushing to my head. Then a familiar voice cuts the night.
“Well, well, well,” it sneers from below. “Looks like we’ve two pelts to skin.”
Sevro smirks when I tell him I’ve allied with Mustang. At camp, where Mustang was preparing search parties to send out for me, his reputation precedes him amongst the northerners. The Minervans fear him. Tactus and the other DeadHorses, on the other hand, are delighted.
“Why, if it isn’t my belly buddy!” Tactus drawls. “Why the limp, my friend?”
“Your mother rode me ragged,” Sevro grunts.
“Bah, you’d have to stand on your tiptoes to even kiss her chin.”
“Wasn’t her chin I was trying to kiss.”
Tactus claps his hands together in laughter and draws Sevro in for an obnoxious hug. They are two very peculiar people. But I suppose snuggling in horse corpses gives a bond—makes twins of a morbid sort.
“Where were you?” Mustang asks me quietly to the side.
“In a second,” I say.
Sevro has only one eye now. So he is the one-eyed demon the Apollonian emissary warned me about.
“I always wondered what sort of mad little fellows you Howlers were,” Mustang says.
“Little?” Sevro asks.
“I—didn’t mean to offend.”
He grins. “I am little.”
“Well, we of Minerva thought you were ghosts.” She pats his shoulder. “You’re not. And I’m not a real mustang, if you were wondering. No tail, you see? And no,” she interrupts Tactus. “I’ve never worn a saddle, since you were going to ask.”
He was.
“She’ll do,” Sevro mutters sideways to me.
“I like them,” Mustang says of the Howlers a few moments later. “Make me feel tall.”
“Perrrfect!” Tactus picks up the bloodback pelt with a grunt. “Looky look. They found something in Pax’s size.”
Before we join the group at the large fire that Pax stokes, Sevro pulls me aside and produces a blanket. Inside is my slingBlade.
“Kept it safe for you after finding it in the mud,” he says. “And I made it sharper; time for using a dull blade is over.”
“You’re a friend. I hope you know that.” I clap him on the shoulder. “Not a game friend. A real friend now, when we’re out of here. You know that, yes?”
“I’m not an idiot.” He blushes all the same.
I learn from him around the campfire that he and the Howlers, Thistle, Screwface, Clown, Weed, and Pebble—the dregs of my old House—stayed no longer than a day after I disappeared.
“Cassius said the Jackal took you,” Sevro says through a mouthful of weevily bread. “Delicious nuts.” He eats like he hasn’t seen food in weeks.
We sit fireside in the Greatwoods, bathed in the light of crackling logs. Mustang, Milia, Tactus, and Pax join us in leaning on a fallen tree in the snow. We’re all bundled like animals. I sit close with Mustang. Her leg is entwined with mine beneath the furs. The bloodback fur stinks and crackles over the fire. Fat drips into the flames. Pax will wear it when it dries.
