That was all he needed to hear. It was all he needed.
He jerked Tadeusz’s cross from around his neck. For a moment, it was suspended over the table, revolving slowly in the light. Its movement had an almost hypnotic effect on the table. Even Ren and the Leszy stopped arguing.
The Leszy licked his lips. His tongue was long and forked. He began to shrink, his clothes transforming piece by piece into his thick coat of fur.
The question was on the tip of his tongue.
Where is my brother? No, he should be more specific: Where is Franciszek? No. It would have to be perfect, with a tricky little creature like this. No loopholes.
How can I bring Franciszek safely back to Miasto?
There. That was perfect.
Lukasz leaned forward and caught a glimpse of Ren’s face. Her eyes shone with tears of frustration.
“How—” he started, and then hating himself, changed tack. “How do we kill the Golden Dragon?”
Silence fell on the table. Lukasz could hardly believe himself. One flash of green eyes, and he’d wasted his question.
The Leszy’s gaze glittered. It was almost as if he knew what Lukasz had meant to ask. Then his voice seemed to tear itself, as if against his will, from his throat.
“There is a glass sword in Hala Smoków,” he whispered at last. His eyes were bloodshot, swirling. “The Dragon can only be killed by a sword made of glass. The sword must be carried up the Glass Mountain, where the Dragon has made its lair. It must be killed on the Mountain itself.”
Then the absurd creature shot forward and yanked the cross so hard that Lukasz nearly slammed into the table. Briefly, the volatile little face was very close to his own. Then the Leszy tossed the cross away. He settled back in his chair, cackling obscenely.
“A myth,” said Lukasz, sitting back. He could hear his own accent growing thicker. “A thousand years of Wolf-Lords have searched for the Glass Mountain. It does not exist.”
“How typical of a human,” sighed the Leszy. He mimicked Lukasz’s accent to perfection. “I cannot find it, therefore it does not exist. Of course it exists,” he continued sharply. “The Glass Mountain is the perfect lair. The walls are too smooth to climb, but perfect for tumbling down. The Dragon breathes fire, and the knights fall down.” He began to sing. “Fire! Fire! The knights fall down. Fire! Fire! The knights fall—”
He leaned backward until his neck bent at an unnatural angle, and he spat a stream of flame into the air. Then he turned back to them, grinning. His voice fell to a whisper. “—down.”
He likes it, thought Lukasz. He likes to see humans fail and die and disappear.
Lukasz could not bring himself to look at Ren. He couldn’t believe what he’d done. His chance—his one foolproof chance to find Franciszek—and he’d blown it away on a pair of pretty eyes and a couple of tears.
“You’ve made me tell secrets,” said the Leszy. He turned the cross over in his knobbly fingers, catching it on his cracked nails. “Like spilling secrets, do you? You know,” he added with an evil glint, “I can spill secrets, too.”
Then the wretched little thing turned to Ren.
“Did either of these pretty boys tell you their secret, Ren?” he asked.
Lukasz stood up so fast that he knocked his chair over.
“Don’t you dare—” he started.
The Leszy smiled sweetly. He looped the cross around his chest, running his vile fingers back and forth over the metal.
“Or should I call you Irena?” asked the Leszy. His eyes flashed, and Lukasz, with a jolt, noticed that they had turned back to green.
“Perhaps even . . . Princess Irena?”
23
REN COULD NOT MOVE. SHE could hear herself breathing. She could hear her heart beating. She couldn’t hear them talking. They were talking, all at once.
He wasn’t. He was quiet.
He was looking at her. But he was quiet.
No, she thought, feeling dazed. No, her lynxes were her parents. It had just taken her longer to act like one—to look like one—it had just taken until she’d been twelve, and no one had ever thought it strange that she could change between the two. So maybe she’d always had just a little bit more magic than Rys—the forest did strange things, the magic was unpredictable . . . no one had ever thought—she had never thought—it was because . . .
A human?
A weak, pathetic, helpless human? Like them?
No. Her eyes darted around the table. Not like them.
They were villagers. They were soldiers. They were Wolf-Lords. And she was not a queen at all . . . she was . . .
A princess?
Ren’s stomach dropped through the earth.
She was a princess?
Her mind was a blur. Disappointment welled up in her. And even then, even frozen at the Leszy’s table, she wasn’t quite sure if she was disappointed in her own origin, or in the fact that he had lied.
“Is it true?” she whispered.
Silence fell over the table.
Lukasz met her gaze.
“We didn’t know for sure,” he said.
Ren nodded.
Very slowly, she rose from the table. Czarn and Ryś stood with her. Claws pushed out of her fingertips and dug into the table, where her long human hands rested. Two of the Leshonki made little eek sounds and slipped under the tablecloth. The wolf and the lynx pulled their lips back and growled at every human and monster at the table.
It occurred to Ren, for the first time, that she didn’t know which of those things she was.
“No games,” she said quietly.
She saw Lukasz swallow, but his expression was unchanged.
“No games,” she repeated. “You promised to do what you said. You asked me to forgive you.”
Tears started in her eyes.
She could feel them brimming, spilling over. She didn’t care. It wasn’t fair. She should have seen this coming. This man shared blood with the creatures who had thrown rocks at her. With everyone who had happily laid the sins of the forest at her feet. With every bloodthirsty, rotten-hearted, selfish human who had come before him.
With her.
“You shook my hand,” she said, and her voice trembled.
Lukasz’s gaze wavered. Then it came back to her. His dark brows were still raised a little too far over hollowed-out eyes. The hungry gleam had intensified. Ren instinctively knew that all the enchanted lanterns in the world couldn’t have taken the darkness out of that face.
“I had to,” he said. “I had to find my brother.”
Ren blinked.
“What difference would it have made?”
He opened his mouth, as if to speak, but it seemed that he could not find the words. Ren watched, feeling her eyelashes growing wet and sticky.
“I see,” she said at last. “You thought that if I found out, I would leave. You thought I would be so upset, I would break my promise to you.”
She looked up to the open sky, took a breath, and met his gaze again.
“You thought . . .” She paused and wiped the tears out of her eyes. “You thought I would act like you.”
“I’ll do anything for my brothers,” he said, unapologetic. “Anything.”
Ren laughed, and the sound was brittle. It had a hysterical edge to it.
“Well, if this is how you treated them,” she said, “then I’m not surprised they left you.”
She instantly knew she had gone too far. Lukasz dragged in a harsh, rattling breath. Ren had never seen such fury in his eyes. They were practically black. Then he laughed. The sound was cold and dark and Ren could hardly believe she’d ever liked his laugh before.
“You need me to kill that Dragon,” he said at last. “Tread carefully, Princess.”
Before Ren could stop him, he turned and walked away.
“If you think this changes anything,” said Ryś, pacing the grass, “then you’re crazy.”
“It changes everything,” protested Ren. “I’m hum
an, Ryś. My parents were—”
“Your parents are lynxes,” interrupted Czarn.
The three of them had gathered on one side of the field, and the humans had grouped themselves away on the other side. Only now, even as she looked across the expanse, Ren wondered if she was in the wrong group.
The Leszy had dismissed them after the disaster at the dinner table. They’d left the food to his animals, and the raccoons had been quick to gather the leftovers in their bandit hands.
“You don’t understand,” said Ren, wrapping her arms around her knees and rocking back and forth. “This—this doesn’t make any sense. Why would my parents have left me in the castle?”
“You don’t know they did,” protested Czarn. “Maybe they thought you were dead.”
“And why do I have claws?” she insisted. “If I’m human, why—”
“Maybe the forest changed you.” Czarn shrugged. “Maybe you got the magic you needed to survive. Maybe you aren’t completely human—”
“Ren,” interrupted Ryś. “Ren, it doesn’t matter.”
How could he say that? How could he say that after they’d spent seventeen years together? She’d saved Czarn from a human hunter. They’d made the unofficial promise to hate humans forever. They had hunted monsters, and hadn’t Ren said it herself?
I do not like the monsters that were once human, she’d said to Jakub. I think they are the most terrible of all.
“Ren.” Ryś bumped his furry face against her shoulder and purred. “Ren, it doesn’t matter.”
“It does,” she whispered.
“Do you know what our parents said?” he asked her, purring. “They brought you to me when I was just a cub, and they said: Ryś, this is your sister.”
Ren knew she was being sappy, but that made her wipe away a tear.
He’d been so against asking the help of the humans. He now knew her provenance and had dismissed it in four words.
“You are my sister,” he said. “You are always going to be my sister. That’s all that matters.”
There was a small cough above them, and Ren looked up. Felka was standing over her, and behind her, Koszmar and Jakub lurked nervously. Lukasz was not with them. He’d disappeared into one of the Leszy’s tunnels, probably to lick his wounds.
Ren tried not to miss him.
“May I sit down?” Felka asked. She cut a very awkward curtsy.
Ren rubbed her hand across her cheek.
“Why are you doing that?”
Felka blushed.
“Well, I—”
“I’m a queen, not a princess,” she said a little hoarsely. “I’m what I always was.”
But that wasn’t true. Now she was a human. She watched the three of them sit down. She had always taken a very special kind of pride in being different from them. She’d ranked herself equivalent to the vila, the rusalka—even the nawia. A good equivalent, opposing their evil, but equivalent nonetheless.
But now . . .
“Did you know?” she asked.
Felka shook her head. Felka, maybe, was her only friend. It hurt. She’d thought Lukasz was her friend, too.
“I suppose . . .” Ren gave a small shrug. “I suppose I’m more human than I thought.”
“With all due respect,” said Jakub with a smile, “I’ve never met a human with your . . .”
He struggled to find the right word.
“Dentition,” supplied Koszmar.
“Lukasz was right. We did suspect,” said Jakub, ignoring Koszmar and seating himself. “Forgive us.”
“Still,” said Koszmar, lowering himself to the grass, only to do an awkward half-standing crab scuttle when Ryś growled at him. He tried to salvage some of his dignity, adding: “You shouldn’t have said those things to Lukasz.”
Czarn folded his elegant paws and watched the blond soldier through narrowed blue eyes. He said:
“You shouldn’t have lied.”
Koszmar frowned. “I don’t like it when they talk,” he said to Ren.
“Now you know how we feel about you,” muttered Felka under her breath.
“Please, Ren,” said Jakub, ignoring Koszmar. “You have to see it from Lukasz’s perspective, too. He’s desperate to find his brother.”
“If he’s even still alive,” said Ren without thinking.
Silence fell over the group, and Ren knew that she was the first to voice what everyone else had been thinking. His skull could have been set in the riverbank, doomed to watch an eternity of souls have their skin stripped away. His eyes could have been staring, petrified, out of the recesses of a psotnik nest. His headless, black-coated body could have been piled somewhere, rotting away, in the field of the mavka.
He could be at the bottom of the Glass Mountain, consumed by golden flames.
He could be a strzygoń.
“Don’t tell Lukasz that,” said Koszmar, and tried to laugh, but no one joined in.
Ren was angry with these humans, and she was angriest with Lukasz. But it made no difference to the tiny part of her heart that broke at the thought that his family might be gone. In Ren’s experience, everything wanted to live, and nothing wanted to be alone.
It was Felka who changed the subject.
“How do you think he knew?” she asked. “The Leszy, I mean.”
“He’s the god of this forest,” said Jakub. “Traditionally, the kings of this kingdom have asked for the forest’s blessing at the baptism of their children. Perhaps the king called upon him for . . . yours.”
Lukasz’s words came back: Someone named you, didn’t they?
“I’d never heard of a Leszy before today,” said Ren, squashing the memory.
“I can assure you he exists,” said Koszmar.
Ren rounded on him, but Ryś intervened.
“Listen,” he said. “Nothing’s changed, all right? We still need to get to that Mountain and kill that Dragon. And last time I checked, we need the Wolf-Lord to do that.”
He turned to Ren.
“You need to get to that Mountain, Ren. You need to get that Wolf-Lord, find that sword, and kill that Dragon.”
Ren watched the animals playing in the grass.
“I am angry with him,” she said quietly.
“Good,” said Ryś. “But he owes you. He promised.”
For a long time, they were quiet. Three humans, two animals, and someone who lay in between. Someone who had been left to die in a crib seventeen years ago. Someone who had been abandoned and who had been called a monster, and who now held the fate of a forest in her hands.
24
FAR BELOW, LUKASZ WANDERED THE dark tunnels of the Leszy’s cave. He was furious with Ren. He would have loved to confront her. Shout at her. Shout that she knew nothing of his brothers, of his people, of his world. But he didn’t. Firstly, he was pretty sure that Ren could have killed him—even drenched in bylica with her hands tied behind her back.
Secondly, she was right.
If this is how you treated them, then I’m not surprised they left you.
If only she knew how cruel he’d been to Franciszek. For seventeen years his brother had taken care of him, and for seventeen years, Lukasz had resented it. He couldn’t blame Franciszek for leaving. Not when he had spent most of his life being mad at him.
Ren. Irena. Once the princess. Now the queen. Jakub had been right all along, and Lukasz had convinced them all to lie. . . .
And then he heard it.
A dull clanging rang through the tunnel, like someone banging metal on metal.
He knew he should turn back, but light flickered at the end of the passage. It seemed to pull him forward. He suddenly felt groundless. It was as if darkness and earth had sealed out the rest of the world. There was magic here. Thick, dark, dangerous magic.
Lukasz hesitated at the tunnel’s end. His shadow flickered on the wall behind him.
It was a forge.
Glass sheets hung from the walls, shimmering in a dark rainbow. Curling in the heat, enormous
scrolls of parchment lay strewn across workbenches. At the far end, a forge the size of a house glowed like the gates of hell. And in the center stood a little shadow. A little shadow with bandy legs and a cap that dragged on the ground.
The Leszy danced from coals to anvil, gripping huge iron rods, bending them with superhuman strength. Lukasz watched him stab a particularly unwieldy rod into the forge. The metal rapidly changed color: purple, red, orange with a heart of vivid yellow. . . .
The hammer banged on. Steady as a heartbeat, dangerous as dragon wings.
The Leszy stopped suddenly. His shadowed face turned toward the door, and Lukasz caught the gleam of animal eyes.
“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” trilled the Leszy. “I see you, I smell you, come out, come out.”
Lukasz emerged warily from the black, moving into the glow of the forge. The heat was unbearable. The Leszy licked his lips.
“You smell like death,” he said.
He had hammered his piece of iron into a curve. It took Lukasz a moment to recognize what he was creating—the iron frame for stained glass windows. It struck Lukasz as an odd choice for a forest god in an underground castle.
But Lukasz didn’t say that out loud. Instead, he willed himself to appear relaxed, and he leaned against the worktable and crossed his arms to hide how they shook.
“I got attacked by mavka.”
“Tut-tut,” chided the Leszy. He abandoned the rod in the forge and stood, bandy legs apart, skinny wrists poised against his round middle. “Clumsy, aren’t you?”
Lukasz shrugged. The Leszy thrust a new rod into the forge, humming. Purple, red, orange . . .
For some reason, Lukasz flinched as the orange gave way to yellow. It glowed, sizzled. Looked, for a moment, like those burning pits. And like those pits, Lukasz imagined, it could burn down the world. He spoke, still staring.
“Will I make it to the Glass Mountain?”
“I thought you were looking for your brother,” said the Leszy snidely, without looking up. “Not the Dragon.”
Lukasz didn’t answer. The Leszy was right, of course. He was only going as far as Franciszek. He wasn’t even capable of fighting a Dragon. Even if he’d wanted to help her.
Which he didn’t, he reminded himself.
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