Chapter 24
TWENTY-FOUR
We shall live a little.
Iwaited for doubt to darken Adrik’s face, but there was only a touch of that tender surprise he wore so well.
I pricked my finger on the sharp tip of an icicle, drawing a drop of blood. Adrik watched me intently as I brushed my lips to the cut and allowed a droplet to spill over the frozen floor.
The monster within me snapped awake.
I drew breath and placed my palm to the frozen mouth of the spring. Deep within, starlit waters remained caged in icy torment. Pain swept sharply through me, from the heart of the mountain into mine. The darkness stirred. The monster clacked its claws against my ribcage.
I stifled a shriek and delved deeper. From the darkness climbed a pair of black-clawed hands, coiling around me, pulling me down, down, down.
The darkness swallowed me.
A faerie yanked me through the briar. His cackle echoed from the hills as we chased through the moonless night. Rot from harvest, he demanded. Make them hunger down in the vale. Make them starve, little bird.
Feel the pain. Accept it. Let it pass. But how could I do such a thing when it stuck to me like tar? I recoiled from this deep, dark cold—but I could not. The claws held me tightly and the monster neared, eager to devour me alive. There was no life here, not a sliver of warmth.
But there was a flutter…
A gentle flutter of warmth around my aching fingers.
There was a hand around mine, unflinching.
I knew that hand. It had held me through terror and fear, had cradled me in the winter woods and steadied me through hours filled with whispered tales of past horrors.
Their warmth swept over me like sunlit waves.
That warmth… It turned into courage as it spilled through me.
I dared to look deeper. I did not falter before the darkness that bloomed within me. I did not falter before that veil of fear.
I stepped through it.
It surged like a tide in my chest and trickled like light through my veins: A magic most curious. It gathered in my palms like golden thread. I let it spill into the ice, guided it into the crack where starlit waters waited to be freed. I wove this magic like a golden string deep into the mountain.
The spring hummed with relief as life flooded its frozen depths.
The hand around mine fluttered again.
I snapped with a gasp back to myself. Water bubbled merrily from the crack. A sob broke from me, filled with awe and disbelief. Gold dust settled over the ice, over my hands, in Adrik’s hair. He laughed, brokenly and softly, as he twined our fingers and brought my palm to his lips.
“Evana,” he whispered. His breath tickled, startling a snicker from me.
“I missed you,” I said to him without thinking. To see that smile again, unguarded, was almost more joy than I could bear. I noticed only now how dark we had become. How shrouded in the shadows of our burdens.
“Come,” he said, smiling as he pulled me to my feet. “We shall live a little.”
We gathered in Adrik’s cottage that eve—Zora, Sai, Lorell, and the three brothers—for a small celebration. I had barely deterred Zora from inviting the whole town for drink and dance to the castle. I was nowhere near so confident that this cautious progress meant I could tame a cursed storm.
Still, we ate in high spirits that night and even Bahra, who took it upon herself to finish our leftovers, found for once little to lament.
“He is not the most pleasant man, is he?” said Adrik when I complained passionately about my encounters with Malek.
“I’ve no idea how you put up with me when I first arrived.”
“You were not half so bad,” said Adrik with a pained grin.
“Liar,” I whispered with a smile.
We sat with berry-wine and tartlets in the well-used fireside chairs until the hour grew late and the shadows thick.
From the kitchen came the soft tune of a harp plucking its own strings and even softer whispers.
I caught a glimpse of Sai and Lorell at the kitchen table tucked into the farthest corner of the cottage, oblivious to the rest of us.
A quiet winter eve among friends.
I giggled madly when Zora burst into song and almost spit my drink from laughing when Yavor abandoned his notebook and began to dance wildly in the firelight.
A drunken, reckless heat bloomed in me whenever I took a sip of wine or felt a burning gaze on me.
It called to me relentlessly, that moss-green gaze, and the more I forbid myself from heeding its call, the less I could bear it.
Whenever I glanced up, I found Adrik already looking at me.
I felt sharply awake, aching with hopes that had blossomed without my notice, with desires better left unexplored.
We were doomed, all of us. The earth ached. The forest hungered. And the wind… The wind whispered of death at the door. I alone could save us. I alone would be to blame if the storm came. If Almira died.
“Allow me to assist in whatever murder you’re scheming,” said Zora as she flung herself beside me into the chair.
I scooched to make space and allowed her to press another chalice of elderberry wine into my hand. “It is not murdering I need help with. It is stopping a cursed storm from turning us all strange.”
Zora's snicker faded and she said sternly, “You are in your head again.”
“I never left it.”
“Liar,” she said with a meaningful tilt of the brow.
“You were full of merriment earlier. Shall I get Adrik to tease you again?” I shushed her with a soft knock against the ribs, cheeks aflame, but this only fueled her.
She whispered fiendishly, “I bet he’d be more than eager to assist in making you forget your troubles tonight. ”
My gaze slipped, without warning, to where I’d last seen Adrik. He stood in conversation with Radan near the kitchen. As if I’d called him, his eyes snapped to mine—bright and a little wicked. A slow smile danced at the corners of his lips.
I swallowed a gasp. “Perhaps for a night,” I said quietly. “But in the morning, the troubles will return and I’ll have one more to add to the list.”
There was a heavy silence as Zora took my mangled hands and squeezed them gently.
“That you carry this burden for us is more than we could have asked. That you are willing to go through this torment—” She drew a long, shivering breath.
“That you are trying is enough. You cannot fail, Evana.” I swallowed, my throat stinging sharply.
Zora continued, with a glance at her father, at Adrik, “You must forgive us for clinging so desperately to this place. It has saved many of us. I did not return to Wildemire by choice. I fled Kresting after my masters attempted to peddle my magic to a faerie. This town… It has kept me safe since.”
A haven, these forgotten lands. A place where people like us could wield our magic and shape it into something wondrous. A refuge for the mad and the strange and the magical. It was about to disappear.
I slipped out the door, when I thought no one was looking, to catch my breath. The cold lashed viciously at me as I stepped beneath the ribbon-hung elm. I huddled against its trunk. My bones felt brittle, about to snap from the burden I carried.
“One should not brood when there is dance to be had.”
I smiled weakly at Adrik as he joined me beneath the elm. “I do not see you dancing either.”
“You took the warmth with you.”
I did not ask what he meant—I felt it, too. The cold that gathered in his absence in the gaps between my ribs. I glanced through the firelit window, framing Zora and the brothers as they danced and sang, like an alive painting depicting a lie.
“Is Emond feeling better?”
“They chase the grief away with laughter and merriment. Emond… He is still not the same. Miran and the miller, too.” We sat close, but Adrik was rigid and careful not to touch me. As if he was afraid I might burn him. “They whisper only of beasts and strange things.”
“They are still frightened,” I said desperately. “It will pass with time.”
“That is not all. Their skin remains cold as ice to the touch.” He paused to draw a shaking breath. “Their eyes are still white as snow, Ana. I search for the people within, and I fear they are lost.”
We remained for a long while in thick silence. A clump of dread barred me from speaking until Adrik lowered his head and put his face in his hands. I could not bear to see him like this.
“It will be spring soon,” I said firmly. “I will learn. I swear it.”
He did not answer. He only glanced at me with a quiet ache I could not place. I gasped when his finger traveled softly over my cheek.
“I regret that I made it your burden. I regret that I asked you to stay. If I could go back to that night in the forest, when the road was still clear, I fear what choice I might make.” In his gaze flared a wildness.
“You are where my will falters, Evana. The spirit knew it.
It knew that I'd thought of it, in the dark of night. Of just us two making for the mountain pass. Of just us two escaping this fate. We could make it, you and I.”
I laughed sharply. “You would not make it a step beyond the castle walls.”
“I am half of a wicked faerie. I am selfish and bound to act on impulse. I am inclined to burn the world for—” He broke off with a sharp shake of the head, as if to banish whatever thought had almost spilled.
“You are also half of a human, and you would sacrifice yourself thrice over for these people. I know you too well, Adrik. You cannot make me think badly of you, try as you might.”
He stared at me, lips parted in awe, as if I had done him a favor, when I’d only spoken the truth. “I should have made them leave long ago. I should have put that crown on my head and made that difficult choice. Now, we all pay the price for my failure.”
I stared at the half-full moon and I could not say where the time had gone.
I had lived these weeks like looking through a misted glass.
A wraith, tethered to this world only by a final unfulfilled task.
I almost heeded Zora as we cowered beneath that elm, Adrik and I.
The whisper burned on the tip of my tongue: Touch me. Make me forget.
I craved him achingly. I wanted him to strip me of these clothes just as I wished to strip us of our burdens.
I wanted to beg him to delve between my legs and make me forget for a night about death.
For him, I’d burn brightly enough to banish the cold for a night.
I bit my tongue harshly enough to spill my own blood, just to keep the words inside.
As I chased the warmth into the pocket of my coat, I came across the still-warm pebble.
“Come,” I said, soothed by an echo of brighter times. I urged Adrik firmly to his feet. “Let us live a little more tonight, if just to spite the darkness.”
He laughed brokenly as I pulled him back into the warmth of the cottage. This was a language we both understood. Had we not both lived for a long time just to spite death?
We laughed in its face that night.
This spite… It spurred us on as we danced our feet raw and sang until our voices cracked.
Adrik kissed me once on the cheek as I passed him, drunk with rage-fueled mirth.
I brushed his hand before I slid away with a mischievous smile, and I carried the heat of that kiss with me until dawn and beyond.
It was a doomed thing, this happiness.
Still, we lived well that night.