“They are not dead,” she said. When she hesitated, Ren saw the lazy, feline elegance falter. It was subtle: just in the tremble of her eyelashes, in the slight waver of her voice.
Outside, thunder rolled.
“I was waiting,” she said. She kept her eyes on the desk. “I was gathering my army. They did not listen to me, seventeen years ago. I became terrified they would not listen to me again. But while I waited, the evil kept growing. And now I worry—I fear—my forces will not be enough.”
She looked up, and gold stared into green.
And at the pain, suddenly stark on her face, Ren saw the queen with new eyes. As a queen, she had been helpless. She’d taken one leap of faith, sacrificed everything in one act of courage, and then found herself trapped once again.
Ren had only ever known loyalty from her animals. She’d never been afraid any of them would refuse her. She might have been raised in a war, but she’d never been scared of battle.
“It’s too late now,” said Queen Dagmara. “Strzygi are advancing on this Mountain, even now. We are under attack. No army is enough.”
And just like that, like the images in the glass walls, everything slid into focus. No human could understand how to battle these monsters. No human queen, Ren realized, could rally the forces to defeat this. But Ren wasn’t just a human. She was raised by beasts, made into a monster.
This was her world. This was her battle.
“It’s not too late,” she said. “Call up your army. They didn’t listen to you seventeen years ago, but you’re not the same queen you were back then. And—and anyway, they loved you. They sacrificed themselves for you. And I have my own army—animals and monsters. Even a few humans. We can still win.”
Queen Dagmara shook her head. She was almost painfully beautiful.
“You are just a girl,” she said.
Ren held up her hand, long and white and so ready to turn back to monstrosity. The silence filled with rain.
“I am so many things,” said Ren. “I am mostly terrible things, honestly. But of one thing I am sure: I am not just a girl.”
Queen Dagmara shook her head. The glass gown chimed with the movement.
“It would have been better if you had not come,” she said. “Left us to our own war. Better if you had stayed safe and sound in the castle. But you didn’t. You had to come looking for us.”
Ren drew the glass sword.
“Well.” She grinned. “I’ve been told I go looking for trouble.”
53
REN AND HER MOTHER WALKED out onto the glass bridge.
Out in the open, Queen Dagmara’s glass dress looked almost like armor. She had decorated her shoulders with a cloak of white Faustian fur, and her long dark hair was pulled back in a plait and woven with gold. The rain made everything slick and gray. The rain came down like dull thunder, bouncing off the glass sides.
She was beautiful.
Ren wore a similar gown, but her hair was once again too matted to braid properly, and it haloed her head in a giant tangle. Personally, she also found the glass itchy, but she wasn’t about to take on a pack of strzygi with nothing but a sword.
Maybe she was more human than she’d thought.
Behind them, the castle glowed against the dull gray clouds. Ahead, the golden trees emitted the same golden shine as dragon bones. And there, silhouetted among the trees—
“Lukasz!” Ren shouted. “Lukasz!”
He broke into a run at the same time she did. They hurtled toward each other, met beneath the golden branches, and Ren threw her arms around his neck. He staggered and almost slipped on the wet glass. Ren pulled away from him for a moment, trying to catch her breath.
“You—”
Lukasz interrupted her, smoothing the wet hair back from her face and kissing her forehead.
“You—” she repeated, gasping.
“Thank God you’re all right,” he said, pulling her close. “What happened? Did you kill it?”
Ren finally caught her breath. Then she shoved him off.
“You pushed me into the moat!”
Water was running in rivulets down his cheeks and dripping off his jaw. He laughed, held up his bare hands. No gloves anymore.
“Necessary evil,” he said unapologetically. “And I’m fine, thanks for asking. Now, did you kill the Dragon or not? Franciszek’s waiting for us. Had a devil of a time climbing up here, mind you—”
Lukasz seemed to suddenly realize something had changed. He stepped back and stared at Ren. White Faustian fur, glass gown. Then at Queen Dagmara, striding swiftly through the golden trees.
“Wait,” said Ren. “Let me explain—there’s so much to tell you. The Dragon—it’s on our side.”
His expression snapped from incredulous to unreadable.
“What?”
“This is the queen,” said Ren, half turning away and pointing back at her mother.
Lukasz and Queen Dagmara gave each other a calculated once-over. Lukasz took another step back, eyes narrowed. Then he repeated, his voice perfectly flat and without the inflection of a question:
“What.”
“Lukasz,” said Ren with a meaningful look, “this is my mother, Queen Dagmara. Queen Dagmara, this is Lukasz. He’s . . . the Wolf-Lord.”
Queen Dagmara didn’t say anything.
Lukasz wasn’t wearing his coat, and he was soaked to the bone. Queen Dagmara’s eye lingered on the tattoo, slightly visible through his shirtsleeve. Her expression hovered somewhere between horror and disbelief.
If Lukasz noticed, then he didn’t care. He turned to Ren.
“Just listen,” she said. “I can explain.”
She spared the details. When she finished, he put his hands in his pockets. Then he looked at her, rubbed his chin. She realized he looked just like he had the day they’d met.
He repeated, for the third time:
“What?”
“My God,” said Queen Dagmara. “What a remarkable vocabulary.”
“Are you serious?” he demanded. He looked over Ren’s shoulder at the queen, and his accent was thick with rage. “What kind of queen are you? Do you realize what you’ve put this kingdom through?” He took a step forward. Ren put a warning hand on his chest, but he pushed it away. “What about your daughter? You left her behind in a world full of monsters—”
“She was protected,” said the queen. Her expression was stone.
“She was alone!” roared Lukasz.
“Don’t talk to me like that, boy,” said the queen coldly. “Your family falls under my kingdom’s purview. You are my subject.”
“Bullshit,” spat Lukasz.
“Oh my God, Lukasz,” growled Ren. “That’s the queen.”
Lukasz rounded on her.
“No. You’re the queen.” Ren had never seen him so angry, and it scared her. “This woman abandoned her family. She left you with the likes of the Leszy and the Baba Jaga. And if those lynxes hadn’t found you . . . And you know what?” He turned once more to the queen. “While you were busy with your pet Dragon, we were looking for you. Your husband died for you. And my father and mother. And my brothers. How did you feel, watching us all die at the foot of your precious Mountain?” There was a snarl in his voice that Ren had never heard, and it was climbing his face. Getting into his eyes. He looked demonic. “All I had in this world were my brothers. And they died, one by one, coming for you. To help you. Eight of my brothers are dead because of you.”
They would never know what the queen had to say to all this. Because at that moment, a musical voice cut across the rain and the glass and the golden trees.
A voice that Ren knew all too well.
“Actually,” said Koszmar. “Nine.”
54
REN WATCHED, SUSPENDED IN DISBELIEF, as Koszmar crossed the glass mountaintop. He had changed. It was like she was looking at him through warped glass. Strangely distorted. Still familiar, not quite right.
For one thing, he was taller. His limbs
were oddly graceful, and he took long easy strides, almost unnaturally surefooted on the treacherous glass. A glittering, slightly reddish beard wreathed his thin jaws, ran smoothly down his throat. His clothes were torn, braid hanging off his coat like sinews. His greatcoat was shiny with water, and the vila-hair plume of his dented helmet was stained red. His eyes were silver-blue, with the black pupils of an animal.
“Kosz.” Lukasz looked momentarily relieved. “Kosz, thank God, you’re alive—”
He froze, and Ren knew he was processing what Koszmar had said.
Actually. Nine.
Ren pushed the queen behind her and Lukasz. Ensured her mother was protected. Even though Ren knew, instinctively and sickeningly, that Koszmar was after a different queen.
“Kosz,” she pleaded. “Please. You have to understand—”
Koszmar smiled. There was a broken-off pipe in his mouth, and now he reached up and flung it away. More glittering red fur covered the backs of his hands; the long fingers were twisted into claws. He smiled, white teeth behind pale golden lips. He uncurled his claws.
Koszmar didn’t have to shout. His voice carried over the torrent.
“I understand perfectly,” he said. “You little monster.”
The silver eyes found her, gleaming with hunger. This was not the Koszmar she had once known. This was not the same man who had lain by a fire and told her about his home. This was not the man who had chosen death over monstrosity. This was not the man who had shot himself to save her and Lukasz.
This was a strzygoń.
“Koszmar,” she whispered. “Please. I know you’re in there. Somewhere. You’re a good person, Koszmar. You’re my friend.”
Ren felt her heart break.
“Friend?” repeated the thing wearing Koszmar’s skin. “Friend? You left me there. You decided your precious Dragon was worth more than me. You—” He rounded on Lukasz. “You could have saved me. But you chose her, when I was dying.”
In that moment, ragged and unshaven with his black hair glued to the back of his neck in the driving rain, Lukasz had never looked more like a wolf. He spoke in a low voice that carried over the rain.
“I will always choose her,” he said.
The thing that used to be Koszmar sneered.
“Your brother is dead,” he said.
Lukasz’s face hardened. Leather scraped, and he drew his chipped sword. “Would you like to join him?”
“Charming.” The evil in Koszmar smiled. His teeth were long and pointed looking. “But I already died once, Lukasz. I’m not interested in doing it again.”
Then Koszmar stretched out his arms, palms to the sky. Before any of them could react, his claws twitched into fists.
And they came.
Beyond the golden trees, the edge of the Mountain shifted. The air was filled with a low mewling cry. It was angry, whining. Ren drew the glass sword. Dozens of feathery beasts gathered. Bald heads and hanks of red fur. They lined the Mountain’s edge in every direction. They parted through the trees like a scaly river. They squalled and growled and paced.
Strzygi.
They were hungry.
They were always so hungry.
Lukasz spoke over his shoulder, addressing the queen.
“Where’s your goddamned Dragon?”
“I don’t know,” stammered the queen. Her collected facade had cracked. “I don’t know—”
Koszmar flicked his new fingers a second time. The strzygi lurched. Then, as Ren’s heart slammed into her throat, they clambered, unsteadily, to their feet.
Some were burned beyond recognition, others had whole limbs hacked off. Some had parts of their skulls cleaved away, bits of gray brain and viscous blood spattering their shoulders. Their faces, frozen, still stretched into the tooth-baring, agonized grimaces of death.
With every twitch of Koszmar’s fingers, the strzygi jerked and unbent. Elbows flung out. Heads swiveled and cracked. Jaws dislocated, relocated. Teeth gnashed. Knees jerked in the wrong directions. Spines bent at unnatural angles.
All these strzygi had already been killed once.
One lurched toward Lukasz, and his sword flashed out. The strzygon fell, but Koszmar flicked his wrist, and then the same creature, now lacking a top half, lurched back to its feet. Gray-brown entrails spilled over the glass.
Lukasz swore.
“We don’t have a demon’s chance in a church,” he growled. “Damn. We are gonna die up here after all.”
Both of Koszmar’s new hands danced as he manipulated the strzygi. So what if he was a monster?
“No,” said Ren. “He’s mine.”
She was one, too.
“Ren—” started Lukasz.
She smiled. Licked her lips.
I am human. I am animal. I am monster.
There it was. The rain was pounding, the strzygi were closing in, and fury burned her veins and tore through her blood. Power welled up in her legs, and strength seized in her jaws, and sound rained like music down on her ears. Her blood burned.
She leapt.
The glass gown exploded as she transformed midair. The sword crashed to the ground. Broken glass and Faustian fur cascaded over them. Ren collided with Koszmar, and he buckled. They hit the ground. A bone snapped, and Koszmar howled.
Their eyes met.
Her teeth grazed his shoulder, and she felt fabric tear. Then his clawed hands were around her throat. They thrashed, rolled over. Koszmar was on top of her, pinning her with his knees. He still had one of the old revolvers and struggled to load it while Ren twisted. He gave up, smacked her once with the unloaded gun. Ren hissed as pain splintered through her skull. Her vision blurred, stars dancing. She lunged up, blindly flinging out a paw. Koszmar yelped and she heard the gun skitter across glass. He jerked back, and at the same time, his knee slipped out from under him. Ren saw her chance.
She swiped, claws extended. Koszmar howled.
Five cuts blazed over his face.
He fell into the ground, writhing. Blood poured through his fingers. It was everywhere: spilled over the glass, smearing across his face. He crawled back onto his knees, then to his feet. When he turned back to her, one of his eyes was gone. The other hung from its socket, its animal pupil swiveling, constricting and dilating.
Ren circled, growling.
He hissed. Half his tongue was gone. He was madness. He was terror. He was nightmare. Whatever he was, he was not Koszmar. Not anymore.
Ren fell back, dug her claws into the glass. Then, with a strength she’d never had before, she leapt.
That was when she remembered: Koszmar had two guns.
Koszmar pulled the second revolver from his belt. For a moment, iron glittered. Fire flashed. Thunder cracked and her chest splintered. Ren heard, rather than felt, herself hit the glass. Pain. Unimaginable, blistering pain. People were shouting. And then—
Silence.
55
LUKASZ WAS FROZEN.
Ren didn’t change back. She stayed what she was: a wet, battered lynx. Blood spread under her body and diverged in red rivers along the smooth surface.
There was a soft click as Koszmar returned the gun to its holster. He was staring down at her, half turned away, face partially hidden. His blood dripped steadily onto Ren’s body.
Lukasz leaned down, never taking his eyes from Koszmar, and picked up the glass sword. When she’d transformed, the belt had slipped off her body. There was a soft hiss as he slid the glass blade free, and it glowed gently on the rain-swept Mountain.
For a moment, they were still.
The queen grabbed his arm.
“This is my fight—” he growled.
“Don’t be stupid,” she snarled, sounding a lot like her daughter. “This is my fight, too.”
Koszmar moved. They both froze. His head twitched up, golden hair a little redder at the edges.
It’s not him, thought Lukasz.
He turned fully toward them.
Ren had destroyed his face. Five gashes
scored his pale skin, from hairline to jaw. They were worse than Jakub’s. One cheek gaped fully open now, long yellow fangs showing through the shredded flesh. One eye hung from a a single fiber, dangling near his mouth and twisting in every direction. The other was completely gone, the socket ringed with dark red blood, dribbling off his chin.
This is not my friend.
Koszmar’s second soul stared out of an eyeless face. Then he tugged at the golden emblem where it hung against the rags of his uniform. It was the exact gesture Koszmar had made the day they’d met.
Koszmar’s claws flickered.
The strzygi danced back to their feet. One stumbled in to attack, and the glass sword arced out. This time, when the strzygoń fell, it did not rise again.
Thank you, Leszy, thought Lukasz. Finally something that could kill these horrible things.
Koszmar’s fingers sprang up. The strzygi lurched toward them. Lukasz swung again, and four more fell and did not get back up.
There was a loud snap behind him; Lukasz spared a glance after chopping through another strzygoń. The queen had reached up and broken a branch off one of the golden trees, and now she wielded it like a club. When she met his eye, for the first time, he saw Ren in her.
Ren . . .
“What did I say?” he snapped. “This is my fight—”
“Bullshit,” interrupted the queen, coming back to stand with him. “Crush that little cockroach, Wolf-Lord.”
There was definitely a family resemblance.
Strzygi corpses flew aside as he carved a path to Koszmar. The glass was slick with rain and guts, but Lukasz had fought worse monsters in darker caves, and besides, he had already almost died once and come back from it.
Koszmar smiled as Lukasz approached.
Koszmar snapped his fingers. Suddenly independent, the strzygi turned on the queen as Koszmar drew his saber. The aristocratic blade sparkled in the gray.
Lukasz grinned.
Koszmar grinned back.
They lunged at the same time. Steel clanged off glass, the glass sword looking heavy and old-fashioned next to the saber. Koszmar was strong. Stronger than Lukasz had remembered. But he shouldn’t have been surprised. He wasn’t Koszmar, really. Not anymore.
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