Felka picked up the lantern. She was very small, compared to the rest of the humans. Her wrists, poking out from the lace cuffs, looked fragile. She sat down on the ground.
“Why didn’t you leave?” asked Ren.
Felka looked up as Ren sat down beside her.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“The village,” said Ren. “If there was a whole world out there, and if this place is so horrible, why stay? Why not go?”
Felka snorted.
“I couldn’t,” she said.
“Why not?” asked Ren curiously.
Felka laughed. Ren was not used to the laughter of humans, but it struck her that this had no humor in it.
“I don’t have parents, Ren,” she said levelly. “I don’t have a family. I grew up on the streets, sleeping outside. When I was old enough, I worked as a dancer at the village inn. They gave me these red boots—” She lifted the muddy edge of her skirt, to show the shiny things. “And I danced every night, for five years. It was okay, you know,” she said thoughtfully. “We slept in a stable loft. We got two meals a day. It was good. But when I turned fourteen, and everyone knew I was done getting taller and I wasn’t getting prettier, the owner fired me.”
Ren’s brow wrinkled. Felka explained.
“He kicked me out. On the street. I had to find a new way to stay alive, because there were newer, prettier girls to dance.”
“So why did you not leave then?” Ren asked.
Felka laughed again.
“You just don’t get it, do you?” she said. “Because of you. Because of your forest. I had no money to hire someone brave enough to take me, and there were no safe paths. That was when I met Kuba.”
Jakub.
“It was after you’d attacked him. Maybe a year or two. He was alone in his house at the edge of town. He used to walk past me, see me begging on the street. That was when he still had to go outside. To get food, to go to the tavern. People would stare.” Felka’s eyes misted. “They would point. The kids would stop playing when he walked by, just to look at his face.”
She looked down at her hands. The forest had gone quiet around them.
“They called him gargulec. Gargoyle.”
Ren suddenly felt very awkward.
Casting around for something to do, if only to distract herself, she began poking through the Wolf-Lord’s things. The fur at the collar of his coat was oddly warm, despite the chill around them. It smelled like him, she realized. Like gunpowder and the strange, spiced smoke of dragons.
“One day,” said Felka, “I asked him for a job. I knew he was an Unnaturalist. I could read. A girl had taught me at the inn. And . . .” Felka’s eyes were very wet. “He let me transcribe his manuscripts. I lived in his attic, and sometimes I would go out and buy us food. Then I would go out and buy more paper. And ink, and—”
Ren picked a small leather journal out of Lukasz’s things and turned it over in her hands. Her throat felt strangely tight. She did not like the feeling.
“And eventually,” said Felka, “he stopped going out. He stayed and wrote, and I helped.”
Ren began to flip through the book’s pages. They were filled with writing, with drawings, with bits of paper and different colored inks.
“I’m sorry,” she said softly.
Felka smiled. Ren couldn’t see anything behind it.
“Don’t be,” Felka said. “I was happy.”
Ren smiled back.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Ren looked up just as the notebook was snatched from her hands. Above her, Lukasz swung the rifle off his shoulder a little too violently. Ren leapt to her feet. Koszmar and Jakub appeared from the trees.
Beside her, Felka scrambled upright.
“We were just—” Ren stammered. “The lighter—”
“YOU WERE WHAT?” he roared.
In that moment, Ren almost changed. She felt the fury thrill through her, felt it her best response to every kind of fear—
“Lukasz,” said Koszmar, grabbing his shoulder. “Luk, calm down. There are strzygi—”
Lukasz threw Koszmar off, flinging him back as if he weighed nothing. The blond soldier slammed into Jakub, who barely caught him.
Ren bit back the urge to transform. Jakub was watching everything with his one eye. And for the first time, she did not quite trust herself with those claws.
Lukasz was snarling, his slightly crooked teeth gleaming in the darkness. His shirt was torn where the nawia had gotten him, and the fur trim of his coat was still sticky with blood. For a terrible moment, he looked like the dead, newly risen.
“Who the hell do you think you are?” he demanded. His voice echoed like a roar around the clearing. “You think you have a right to—?”
Ryś and Czarn began to growl, circling.
Lukasz lifted the rifle and held it ready. The barrel glittered in the firelight as it swung toward the animals.
“Go ahead,” Lukasz warned. “I’ll shoot.”
Panic flooded through Ren, while Czarn’s lips pulled back from yellow fangs. Felka lunged for Lukasz, but Jakub jerked her back across the embers. Coals scattered, and the earth glowed. Ryś hissed as sparks singed his fur. Koszmar pulled a revolver from the back of his belt and took aim.
“Put down the gun!” shouted Jakub from across the embers. “Put it down, Lukasz!”
Lukasz cocked the rifle without breaking his gaze from Ren, and the sound echoed like a gunshot. Ren’s heart caught in her throat. Everything was falling apart.
Every fragile deal. Every uncertain conversation. Every new, terribly delicate friendship.
Felka held up both her hands. Palms out. Like Lukasz had done only the night before.
“We’re sorry,” she said. “Lukasz, please. We’re sorry.”
Ren didn’t know what to do.
“Put the gun down, Luk,” said Jakub, beside Felka. “This isn’t you. This isn’t you doing this. It’s this place. The forest is preying on our minds.”
Lukasz’s eyes flickered to the Unnaturalist. Ren let out a breath.
Then his eyes were back on hers. He looked insane. Sweat trickled down his forehead, lit in a dull shine on his throat, darkening with the shadow of a beard. The whole clearing tasted like panic. The coals sizzled in the silence, embers scattered across the black ground.
Ren noticed, with a terrible sickening twist, that his eyes seemed to have gone darker since the afternoon. Or was it her imagination? And what was more, under his collar, she could just make out the edge of a blistering cut—
Click.
Lukasz uncocked the rifle and lowered it. Everyone in the clearing let out a breath. Then he looked at Ren and lifted the book. It trembled in his shaking hand.
“Not everything in this forest belongs to you,” he said harshly. “Don’t forget it.”
Ren swallowed. She couldn’t speak.
She just nodded.
She waited until he had turned away, until everyone was breathing a little easier, until the coals were raked once more into the fire. She waited until no one was looking at her anymore. She waited until the agony in her hands had dulled to a steady throb.
And only then did she uncurl her hands and wait for the claws to recede, slipping back into her fingertips, leaving behind human palms, already running red with blood.
18
THAT NIGHT, LUKASZ DREAMED THAT he was lying on the ground by the fire, covered by his coat. He dreamed that he was not alone, that Ren was beside him, curled against his chest. He dreamed that the fire lit her hair in the most perfect golden glow, that she had never looked more like some glass-skinned, magic-eyed creature of myth. She had slept, in his dream. She had slept, and been beautiful and warm and real, and he had prayed for it to come true.
And then the cuts in his shoulder opened wide.
He felt them twisting, tearing. He felt the skin tear apart and the bones shatter. He screamed, but Ren was not there.
Throug
h the haze of pain and horror came Jakub’s voice.
. . . multiply not by procreation, but by consumption . . .
Even as he writhed on the ground, he realized that the campsite was empty. He was totally alone. His blood poured over the ground, more blood than any human should have contained, enough blood to drown the fire in a hiss of steam.
When he looked down at his shoulder, the wounds yawned even wider. Sawtooth claws pushed out of the wound, pulling apart his skin, and the monster within struggled to be born.
Lukasz screamed.
. . . in the act of devouring a susceptible human . . .
And still, Jakub Rybak’s voice drowned him out.
. . . creates its progeny.
Michał & Eliasz
FOUR YEARS EARLIER
“FINALLY,” SAID FRANCISZEK, CLOSING HIS book as Lukasz shut the door behind him. “Where have you been? It’s been hours—”
Lukasz pulled off his gloves.
“Killed a Ływern under the king’s castle,” he said, grinning. He dropped the gloves on their room’s sideboard. “Would you believe how the last idiots tried to do the job? They left a sheep stuffed with sulfur outside its lair, and—”
He stopped dead.
The twins were sitting on straw pallets of their tavern room. Franciszek sat on the wide windowsill, twilight behind him, his book closed in his lap. Eryk, second-eldest of the remaining brothers, was painstakingly stitching a gash in Michał’s skull. Eliasz held a bloody rag to his mouth.
Both glowered.
“Oh my God,” said Lukasz, unbuckling his sword. “Are you all right?”
Michał turned toward him. A veiny, mottled bruise covered half his head. Eryk had shaved down the black hair over the wound and was now placing tiny, perfect stitches in Michał’s scalp.
“No,” he said in a lisping voice. “We’re idioths.”
“Oh my God,” said Lukasz, this time much quieter.
It was winter. Outside the window, the buildings of Miasto stood out against the sky, in pink and yellow and blue. Snow covered their roofs, and more snow fell behind Franciszek. Their room had the cozy smell of woodsmoke from the fire burning in the hearth; it had the warm, rich smell of evergreens, draped along the mantelpiece and the available sills.
The sound of laughter and music drifted up through the floorboards, which were speckled with blood.
“Why?” asked Lukasz. “Why would you do something so stupid?”
“That’s how Skuba defeated the Wawel dragon,” said Franciszek from the windowsill. He folded his hands across his chest. “I thought—”
“But this wasn’t the Wawel dragon!” exploded Lukasz. “This was an Anglan Ływern! Didn’t you look at it? It just needed to be killed, fair and square, no tricks—”
“Lukath.” Eliasz shook his head warningly.
Lukasz sat down on the empty bed. When Eliasz took the rag away from his mouth, a few broken white stubs glittered in the dark. He was missing most of his teeth. Lukasz suppressed a cringe and glanced sideways at Franciszek.
His older brother looked pale and drawn.
“Sorry,” said Lukasz awkwardly. “It’s not your fault. It was a good idea.”
Franciszek swallowed. His eyes were a bit shiny.
“I made a mistake,” he said. “Ływerni have formative memory. It may have known the story of the Wawel dragon and figured it out.”
Lukasz nodded.
“You couldn’t have known,” he said.
Franciszek didn’t look convinced.
“There,” said Eryk, stepping back. “All done. Best stitches I’ve ever done. Come and admire, Lukasz.”
Michał reached up and gingerly touched the side of his head. Lukasz stared at the gash beneath the black stitches. It twisted like a serpent, animated by its venom, undulating and iridescent on the left side of his skull.
He made a face.
“Is that . . . normal?” He glanced at Franciszek. Usually eager to share, Franciszek was avoiding his eye.
Instead, it was Eryk who answered. He did not look especially concerned, but then again, this was Eryk. He did not rattle easily.
“Strange things leave strange wounds.”
“Will it get worse?” pressed Lukasz.
“It’s done, Lukasz. We can’t do anything about it now.” Michał shrugged. “Now go get us some vodka. We need to celebrate your victory.”
The truth was, Lukasz didn’t want to look at those injuries a moment longer than he had to. He didn’t know what was worse: Eliasz’s missing teeth, which might disfigure him, or Michał’s poisoned wound, which could very well kill him.
Lukasz descended the tavern stairs. He’d been lucky with the Faustian. One clean impaling, and he had a neat little scar above his knee that had healed well and didn’t look . . . well, didn’t look like that.
Lukasz pushed past the spectators to descend the staircase to the ground floor. The main attraction was a raised boxing ring in the middle of the tavern, and the rest of the building had been designed around it, with the upper floors opening onto the center. Balcony after balcony, the spectators rained beer and gold upon the prizefighters, taking and making bets, everything lit with an enormous wooden chandelier, swaying and dripping hot wax on them all.
When he’d finally pushed through the crowd, Lukasz ordered five vodkas from a bartender so tiny he could barely see over the counter. He waited for the drinks, regretting his fur vest. The tavern was hot.
“That your brother?”
Lukasz turned away from the bar.
The man had blond hair and a single premature line between his long eyes. He wore a black uniform that seemed to give off its own shine, despite the dirty light. And everything was covered with golden embroidery: collar, cuffs, even the hem of the spectacular greatcoat. His black cavalry trousers were trimmed in more gold embroidery, and his black boots had golden tassels.
In that moment he struck Lukasz, raised on empty roads and in black caves, as the most elegant person he had ever seen.
The man spoke again.
“Never seen Wrony before?”
Despite his smile, his voice verged on aggressive. Lukasz tapped the emblem stitched, rather badly, to his linen shirtsleeve. They’d been knighted the year before by King Nikodem. The Brygada Smoka was an official brigade of the king’s army.
“I am Wrony,” returned Lukasz. He heard his accent rumble.
The soldier raised his brows over silver eyes and took the pipe out of his mouth.
“If you say so,” he said idly.
Then he shifted gracefully against the pillar, put his hands in his pockets. Lukasz hated himself for it, but he envied that practiced air.
Then, the elegant Wrony gestured to the throng of people.
“You scare them, you know.”
Lukasz’s grip tightened on the broadsword, the dragon blood flaking a bit at his hip. His eyes raked the room.
“They going to give us trouble?”
When the Wrony didn’t answer, Lukasz glanced back at him. Even gleaming with the heat of the tavern, he looked inescapably aristocratic.
“They wouldn’t know how,” said the soldier in a lazy voice.
Looking back at the crowded room, it was as if he were seeing them for the first time. Three of his brothers were at the bar, the light lost in their dull leather vests, bringing out the dirt in the pale fur collars. Eryk descended the stairs, light glancing off his sweaty hair, illuminating the blood smeared across one cheek. The crowd parted like water. The conversation quieted. Even the chandelier seemed to dim.
For a moment, Lukasz could see it. Fear. It was thick. And then he realized suddenly the soldier in front of him wasn’t afraid of them.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
The soldier smiled. It was slow, lazy, and too cold to warm his eyes.
“Seweryn,” he said.
“Lukasz,” said Eryk, approaching. “Let me help. Hey—why didn’t you order pierogi? I’m starved�
��”
Lukasz was quiet as they gathered their drinks and ordered their food. Eryk clearly was starving, because he asked for mushroom, rabbit, and onion, and three orders of Rusz-style pierogi, which were filled with potatoes and cheese and fried instead of boiled. They also ordered kielbasa and bigos, and barszcz for Eliasz.
And for the first time, Lukasz saw Eryk the way they must have seen him. Streaked with blood and sweat, smelling like mountain air and savagery.
They carried their food back upstairs and settled in.
“Who was that soldier you were talking to?” asked Eryk, diving into a plate of pierogi. He had some cream on the end of his nose that he still hadn’t noticed. Lukasz watched him without eating, and Eryk continued: “He looked like one of those peacocks from the botanical gardens.”
Michał guffawed and then winced.
“No one,” muttered Lukasz, picking at the kielbasa.
“Don’t trutht him,” cautioned Eliasz.
“I don’t,” rejoined Lukasz.
For some reason, he found himself thinking of the Kwiat library. Raf playing with the dola and the librarians shooting them dirty looks. Now he suddenly wondered if it hadn’t been disdain at all.
Had it been fear?
“Listen,” said Michał. “This is a lot. Being one of us. Being you. Killing that Faustian, being famous. Now you’ve killed the Ływern, too. People are going to try to change you. Just don’t forget who you are, all right? Don’t forget you’re a Wolf-Lord.”
In Kwiat, they’d given them money, but they hadn’t invited them into their homes. The king had given them a commission, but he hadn’t offered them the famous black Wrony coats.
“They’re scared of us,” said Lukasz. “They think we’re animals.”
Eliasz took a sip of vodka and winced. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and returned to his barszcz.
“Who cares what they think?” asked Michał, sounding incredulous. “Lukasz, it doesn’t matter.”
A bronze dragon skull hung on the far wall of the room. It had probably once belonged to a minor Faustian. The Wolf-Lords had collected bones, he suddenly remembered. Lashed them into monstrous decorations, hung the halls of Hala Smoków in the corpses of their kills.
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