The blond one—Koszmar—carried two rifles, and now he tossed one toward them. Lukasz snatched it out of the air. Ren jumped at the sudden movement and nearly slid down the embankment.
With a surprisingly gentle hand, Lukasz grabbed her arm to steady her. Koszmar watched that, too.
“Nawia,” repeated Koszmar. His pale eyes glowed in the darkness. “What are they?”
“I do not know much about them—”
“Can we trust her?” asked Koszmar, speaking over Ren.
The Wolf-Lord looked down at Ren. His expression changed abruptly. In the strange light, he did not look quite human.
“I would not lie,” she said urgently. “I want to live.”
Koszmar spoke again. His voice was soft, almost muffled.
“Oh, everything wants to live,” he said dismissively, and Lukasz’s head snapped toward him. “But you said it yourself. The fury of the forest will rain down on you.”
“Come on, Koszmar,” said Lukasz. “You said she could help—”
Metal chimed, and Koszmar drew his saber.
“Maybe I was wrong,” he whispered. “Because, my darling queen, I do not want to die tonight.”
Ren couldn’t tell whether the saber was for the nawia or for her, but both possibilities infuriated her. He couldn’t defeat a whole slaughter of nawia with one saber.
And he certainly couldn’t kill her.
“You will die if you keep standing here!” she shouted. “We have to run!”
The supernatural light cut new lines in Koszmar’s face, carved the softness out from under his cheekbones.
“Tell me, Queen,” he murmured. “Is this the shape of your fury?”
The Wolf-Lord looked between them, wasting valuable time. When he met her eye, Ren knew it was gone. That shared fear. That moment of understanding. It had burned up in strange light and steel and sabers.
Ren rubbed the back of her hand over her mouth.
“Then you two can die,” she growled. “But I will not.”
Before they could stop her, Ren wrenched herself free of Lukasz’s grip. She was aware of both men lunging for her, but she was too fast for them. The gun cracked behind her, and a branch near her head exploded in a spray of splinters.
She heard Lukasz shouting and Koszmar swearing, and she didn’t look back.
She ran.
The forest floor was cold, frozen sharp as glass. It tore at her feet with every step. Frost raced alongside her, trunks flashing silver-blue. Ren did not look back. She did not stop. She ignored the gasps, rising like sobs, in her throat.
And then . . . slowly . . . bewitchingly . . .
Something began to sing.
It was soft and haunted. It gathered the sounds of her forest, reshaped them, from the wind whistling through the branches to the violin legs of the crickets. It caught the rustle of leaves on the forest floor. It captured the slither of reptilian skin, the lonely cry of a wolf, the whisper of an unseen river. A thousand coincidental noises, arranged into a semblance of a tune.
A figure stepped into the path.
Ren skidded and crashed into it, and they both hit the ice-cold ground. She leapt back to her feet, snarling. Claws split through her fingertips.
Ren had never seen a nav. This could be one of them.
The other girl climbed to her feet. Ren wondered wildly if it was one of their tricks. After all, wasn’t that how the rusalka had tricked the Wolf-Lord? Couldn’t this just be another mirage, from the freckles on this girl’s blunt nose to the toes of her crimson boots? And yet . . .
That face was too familiar. She recognized those eyes, with the dark circles beneath them. Ren hesitated a moment.
It was the girl from the village.
“Please,” begged the girl. “You have to go back.”
She had tried to help Ren. She’d tried to protect her. She’d told her to run.
The music swelled around then. It seeped through Ren’s skin and rushed through her whole body, and her own wild heartbeat joined the sound.
“Please,” echoed the girl. “They will kill him.”
The woods grew colder. The beat of the music was moving faster and faster and taking her heart with it—
“What are you talking about?” demanded Ren.
“My friend,” said the girl. “After those two soldiers kidnapped you, he tried to follow you. To save you. But they—he—”
While the forest changed and sang around them, the girl’s eyes grew wet.
“I don’t know what to do,” she said desperately. “He saved my life. Please, I can’t leave him—”
The frost was growing around them. Ren had to run. She had to get back to the safety of the castle and let these selfish humans answer for their cruelty.
“He should not have come,” said Ren harshly. “You should not have come.”
“Please—”
“No,” said Ren coldly. She went to push past the girl. “You humans can fend for yourselves. You are nothing but cruel.”
“People make mistakes.” The girl’s voice rose. “Even you!”
“I am not people!” Ren roared, and the trees trembled.
The girl did not cower, and Ren paused. She was taken aback. No human had ever looked on her without fear before. The girl was not finished.
“Just because they say you’re a monster,” she shot back, “it doesn’t mean you have to act like one.”
That stung. Stung worse than the herb-soaked ropes, cutting into her wrists. Worse than the cut on her cheek. Worse than that horrible, ignorant word, pounded into her skull.
Monster.
Evil gathered. The trees turned to hoarfrost around them. Brittle, crumbling. Under the claws of the most terrible of monsters, Ren had to choose.
“Fine,” growled Ren. “Fine. I will help. But only for you.”
The girl followed as she turned on her heel, starting back through the trees. Toward the epicenter of the cold. The heart of the evil. That girl was going to die, thought Ren. That girl was going to die in the frost and the starlight, and it would not be her fault.
All for a human.
“They’re near the river,” said the girl behind her as they walked. “They have a camp—”
Ren spun around.
“How do you know that?” she demanded. “Were you with them? Are you part of this? Are you lying?”
“No!” retorted the girl, “I came to help you, but the Wolf-Lord had already let you go.”
Ren turned back around to hide her expression. He had let her go, hadn’t he? He had cut the ropes. . . .
She spoke as they walked, without turning back.
“And they never noticed you?”
“No one notices me.”
Ren did not answer. They walked in silence back through the campsite, even though every instinct in Ren screamed against it. Everything in her wanted to run. A thousand unseen hands placed themselves on her shoulders, trying to force her back. Each step was harder than the last, and she was breathing raggedly as the trees became familiar.
They passed the remainder of the campfire. Ren looked around.
“The nawia took them,” the girl was saying. “They must have taken them all—”
Ren remembered the glimmer of the saber in the dark. Then she remembered that other time, too—when the snow had been red and Czarn had been hurt. They had hurt Czarn. They had hurt her. She owed them nothing.
The horses shrieked, stamping, still tied to tree branches, showing the whites of their eyes.
“I said I would help your friend,” said Ren, and it took a great effort to get the words out. “But not the others.”
Is this the shape of your fury?
The girl was going through the soldier’s saddlebags, and now she looked up. There was a light burning in her eyes, bright enough to obliterate even the dark circles beneath them.
“There is no other here,” said the girl. “It’s good or evil—us or the nawia. And you’re on our side—whether
you like it or not.”
Ren pressed her lips together.
“I do not like them,” she said at last.
Up ahead, a gun went off.
“Neither do I,” said the girl grimly. “But they don’t deserve to die.”
They made their way to the river, the same path Ren and the Wolf-Lord had walked only a few moments before. But now the world felt different. The song surrounded them, enveloped them. Tugged them on with a force equal to the instincts pushing Ren back. On the embankment, one of the rifles lay on the ground. The girl picked it up and held it at the ready. Neither of them said anything. The stream below was covered with a layer of ice. When they walked across it and Ren glanced down at her feet, the fish below gaped up at her, eyes wide.
Go back, they seemed to plead. Go back, Ren.
She wished she could.
On the other side of the stream, a hill rose before them. Light radiated over it, silhouetting the edges of branches, softening the harsh crystals of ice around them. It practically glowed with danger, but it was beautiful. Ren climbed the hill, trying not to taste the fear in her throat. When they finally reached the top, her breath caught.
Beside her, the girl had gone very still.
“My God . . . ,” she murmured.
Ren licked her lips. It wasn’t just her strength or her skill that had made her queen; it was also that she picked her battles, and because she knew when to run. When she finally spoke, her voice was rough with gravel.
“I told you: we should not have come.”
Below them, bodies lay among the trees.
Hundreds of them, if not thousands. They stretched as far as the eye could see, piled and heaped on top of each other. They lay on their backs, limbs at odd angles. They draped across roots, hands outstretched, begging for help that had never come. They slumped against trunks, they keeled over, they sank to their knees in final prayers. Even from the top of the hill, Ren could see the gloved fingers clawing at the dirt. The trees, crusted in frost, tried to lean away.
White, spectral figures walked among them.
Nawia.
It was from the nawia, intensely white, that the light emanated. With hands outstretched and fingers longer than their forearms, they walked among the corpses. Of all things, there was love in their faces. Ren’s heart went cold. Love in their soft smiles and their dark eyes. Even their song, she realized, was gentle and caressing. She shivered.
A hand closed on Ren’s arm, and she nearly transformed on the spot.
“Where are their heads?” whispered the girl.
Among the trees below, the human corpses were headless. Ren watched the nawia wander among them, singing, gazing upon their dead.
“I do not know,” said Ren. She swallowed hard. “I don’t know anything about these creatures.”
“But you’re—you’re the queen.”
Perhaps Ren should have been ashamed, but she couldn’t be. There were too many monsters for one queen to keep in check. And every good ruler knows which wars to wage.
Ren would have rather run from a nav than face one.
“Felka,” said the girl after a moment.
Ren glanced at her. In contrast to how she had looked at the campsite, here the pale light only made the circles under her eyes darker. It rendered her hair even duller. But when this girl looked Ren in the eye, there was no fear in her face.
“If I’m going to die with you,” she said steadily, “then you should know my name.”
Ren could feel her fear. But she was a queen, she told herself, and she’d led troops into battle before. She was good at this.
I am best at this.
“My name is Ren,” she said. “And we are not going to die.”
Below them, she could make out the two soldiers who had captured her, plus a third man who was separated from the others. This third man must have been Felka’s friend. From what she could tell, he seemed to be speaking to a nav, this one smaller than the others. Suddenly, she remembered the rusalka, whispering in Lukasz’s ear. She went cold all over.
“We will need the soldiers’ help,” she said, thinking out loud. “We should get them first.”
Lukasz and Koszmar were on their knees, surrounded by nawia. Ren wondered, acidly, if they had even put up a fight. She was not especially surprised, but she was disappointed. A part of her—a very small part—had hoped the Wolf-Lord might be capable of more.
“I need to save Jakub!” protested Felka. “You have to get him before the others.”
For some reason, the name was familiar. Ren didn’t have time to dwell on it.
“You said there are no others,” replied Ren firmly. “We cannot take the nawia alone. And look . . .” The small nav had bent toward the third man, holding his hands in hers. Ren didn’t know what it meant, but she knew it couldn’t be good. “Look, he’s safe for now.”
“You don’t know that—” began Felka.
“He is surrounded on all sides,” interrupted Ren. “We need the soldiers’ help.”
Felka looked furious. Ren knew she would have been equally adamant if Czarn or Ryś had been on the line. She did her best to be reassuring:
“Felka,” she said, and the name felt strange on her tongue. “No one is going to die tonight.”
Then she turned and started down the hill, hearing Felka behind her. As they slipped down the mulchy hill, the smell became overpowering. Like blood and rot. Ren’s bare foot came down on a bone, which broke with a tiny snap.
The nawia turned toward them. Up close, they were not nearly so beautiful, with black eyes that took up half of their elongated faces. They looked almost like insects. For a moment, Ren saw her own face reflected in a thousand pairs of black eyes.
“Move!” she shouted.
She and Felka broke into a mad dash. The song turned into a scream. The nawia hurtled toward them.
Ren tried to ignore the bodies that she kicked aside as she ran, tried to ignore how the limbs flopped as her feet interrupted their decay. The nawia closed in. Ren was faster, ahead of Felka.
“HEY!” she screamed. “HEY!”
But Lukasz and Koszmar were far gone. One of the nawia was already slipping white arms around Koszmar’s neck, his head bent back, staring into her large black eyes. Ren watched the white claws gleam against his pale skin, and she doubled her pace.
A nav cut her off. Ren skidded to a halt just as a hand swiped the air inches from her face. The spidery fingers resembled jointed claws with sawtooth edges. A second nav, this one behind her, lashed out.
Its blow caught her across the ribs. Ren went flying. Her head bashed against a breastplate. She gagged, and yet another nav bore down on her, screaming. Its black mouth loomed, filled with thousands of needlelike teeth.
Panic and fear burned hot, changed. Fury.
Ren hissed.
The nav hesitated.
There it was, the raw, rushing surge she knew so well. Ren fell to her knees as the rush of power bristled in her neck, wrapped around her throat. More nawia joined the first. Ren had no idea where Felka had gone, and she had no time to care. Her hair crawled on her head, raced down her back. Her legs shortened, bent up. Her spine stretched out. Ren climbed to four feet, her clothes slipping off her back.
For a second, no one moved. The nawia surrounded her, close enough that she could hear their claws clicking, like a thousand insects ready to pick the flesh from her bones. Ren could feel her own saliva freezing on her teeth. She could see the frost forming on her fur. She could see her breath, rising like smoke, from her whiskered lips.
And Ren struck.
They crumpled under her claws. They collapsed under her fangs. Blood, silvery and ice-cold, flowed down their bodies and froze on the ground. They were a storm of black eyes and needle teeth, screaming. Dying.
Ren tore her way through them. She threw aside their elegant bodies. She made her way toward Felka, who was swinging a curved sword, red boots dancing in the black.
Ren was imp
ressed. The girl was tougher than she looked.
“Come on,” shouted Felka. Silver blood spattered across her striped skirt and bathed the corpses at their feet. “We have to get to the others—”
They were already almost across the field, nearing the two soldiers. Their attack had temporarily distracted the monsters, but the two men lay still amid the dead.
Ren sank her claws into Lukasz’s jacket, tried to shake him awake.
“Get up!” she shouted through her animal teeth. “Get up, you fool!”
Ren swiped, claws retracted, across his face. He groaned. She whacked him again.
“Get up!”
His eyes began to open. Felka backed up behind Ren, and she could hear the nawia screaming as they fell under the blade. They didn’t have much time. Felka couldn’t hold them back forever.
“You need to get over this,” growled Ren. “Come on—”
He moaned, blinked. But his eyes were glassy and fogged.
Ren growled, shook herself out, and felt her fur recede. She took his rough jaw in the hands of a human and hovered with her face an inch from his. Maybe it was because she was human. Maybe—and her heart skipped a beat—it was because he recognized her. But at that moment, to her complete surprise, his eyes flickered toward her face.
“They are in your head,” Ren whispered, leaning close. “You can resist them. You have to keep them out. We need you to save your friend. Keep them out.”
He groaned, tried to twist out of her hands. Ren could still hear the nawia’s music, but it was no longer beautiful. It was terrible. Skin-crawling. Beside her, Felka was shaking Koszmar by the collar while he woke, swearing dazedly as he tried to shove her away.
The Wolf-Lord also began to struggle, tearing himself from the dream. Their misty breath intertwined, filled the space between them.
“I need you, Lukasz!” she hissed. “Wake up!”
His eyes cleared and widened. He reached up, maybe to rub his eyes, but instead his hand hit her bare back.
“You came back—” he managed, while the monsters raged around them.
Ren raised her eyes to the treetops, stretching out her neck until the joints cracked on either side. Fur covered her. Claws pushed against his skin. When she returned his gaze once more, he faced the fangs of a lynx.
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