There was nothing waiting back home.
“Nik.” Grayson’s eyes found his, watery.
“You’ll be okay,” Nik was saying, brushing himself off, moving for the ladder. “Really, Gray. And if you’re ever back, look me up, we can, er…” He gave a half-laugh. “We can do this again, sometime.”
Do this again sometime.
Grayson let himself dissolve as the barn door closed.
You could only do something for the first time once.
There was no doing this again.
When it was over, it was over.
Nik was gone.
And Grayson was alone.
Chapter 4
LILAH
There were eyes, glowing in the dark, and Lilah was alone.
Rockwolf.
There’d been one, picking off goats, until Grayson shot it through the leg with an arrow, making a yowling mess of the whole damn thing.
So much for the archery tutor.
So much for leading by example.
There was no Grayson now, though. No anyone.
Lilah stooped to the ground, fingers groping for something—anything—
Gotcha.
The stone was still warm in her hand as she rose, eyes fixed on the flashing irises bobbing towards her.
With a quick exhale, she hurled the stone towards the beast. “Go on, scram—”
“Ouch!”
Lilah’s hand fell limply to her side.
Impossible.
“Truce, truce—I surrender,” someone was snickering, sounding more amused than hurt. “No more rocks!”
“Who are you,” Lilah snarled, taking a step back.
An orb appeared a moment later, pulsing in the palm of a young woman’s hand.
She’d pulled the moon from the sky itself, this woman, burning it molten as she held it in her hand, and yet, it seemed the most ordinary thing.
Like anyone could pluck a gem from the velvet sky.
“My name’s Reed,” she grinned, eyes nevertheless flashing, tossing the ball of light up and down with a playful air. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Thought you heard me coming.”
Pointed ears, coming to slender tips beneath easy, brown hair.
Night-eyes of a beast.
Fingers, filed to points, devious as the sharp rows of pearly teeth forming that mischievous smile.
“You’re supposed to be a legend,” Lilah whispered, eying the mountain elf with cold derision. The time for magic had passed. It was fading, and the elves would do well to remember that. “What are you doing here?”
“I might ask you the same question, human,” Reed mused, taking a step forward, ball of light still in hand. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
“This is our place—”
“It is not,” Reed snapped. “It belongs not to you.” Her smile had faltered into a snarl, teeth barred. “You would do well to leave,” she hissed, “leave, before the Festival of Frost.”
Lilah scoffed, turning on her heel.
In the Capital, whispers of the Wilderness were fading into the stuff of legend, but in the outer edges, where life was simply beginning, everyone knew better.
Here, magic had not yet learned that its place was in the annals of history and the long-dead memories of those who’d fought.
And the elves had not learned their disappearing trick with the fluency of their southern siblings.
“It is old magic,” Reed warned, following behind, sending the grass hissing once more. “That’s why I’ve come. Your father—”
Lilah spun around, anger sparking “You’ve spoken with my father?”
“He will not heed my warnings—”
“Warnings? Of berry-lovers and nut-gatherers? You descend from the mountains to stir trouble,” Lilah bit back. “Go. Fade away. Your time is done, vora. Your era is over. They might believe in your superstitions, still, in the south, but that is all they are! Superstitions!” Her breath caught angry in her chest.
The vora were tricksters.
That much, she’d learned from Bess.
Mostly, they stayed in the rumors, hiding in whispers, but this one had been brave, venturing down from their mountain caves, descending to the foothills no doubt to terrorize the new arrivals.
That her father hadn’t heeded the warning—perhaps it was the only thing he’d done right.
“It will come,” Reed said quietly, backing away, “whether you believe it or not. The Festival of Frost is encroaching. It strikes, like a coppermouth snake, when you are not looking, without so much as a rattle. Run, Lilah. Run fast. Don’t look back.” And with that, the vora turned, departing in darkness.
Lilah was left standing alone in the field with the grass and the stars and her own disturbed thoughts.
Juli would take the vora at her word.
Grayson would laugh it off, but secretly, he’d be scared, and would probably follow Juli’s lead.
Nobody would listen to the youngest sister. Nobody would listen to Lilah.
So she wouldn’t tell them.
It was a trick, most likely. The vora did that, sometimes. Tricked humans. It was probably a trap, because there was nowhere to run, here, in this bowl of a Basin. The nearest settlement was weeks away, at best, and that, if they went on horseback. Between them and the settlements, though, lay miles and miles of Wilderness, full of what, Lilah did not care to imagine.
Rockwolves would be the least of their worries, though.
The Wilderness lay untamed. Unchecked.
Coppermouths and grass-skuttlers would be nothing. There were the Sleeping Stones, the ones that could swallow a person whole without them even knowing, and the Fire Lilies, oozing oil from their tender leaves, oil that could burn a person’s skin clean off, if they weren’t careful, and that didn’t even account for what sort of foul creatures the vora had dredged up from gods knew where.
It was nonsense.
All of it, nonsense.
The Basin might be the butt-crack of Aerdela, but it was a hell of a lot better than what else was out there. At least here, there were known dangers. Cold. Starvation. Out there lay the same—and more.
Lilah found the house emptied, when she finally dragged herself up the cabin steps.
She’d missed story night.
Juli would talk her ear off as they lay in bed, no doubt, recounting all of Bess’s tales, talking about Fin, and how cute Fin had looked tonight, and how sweet Fin was, and on and on and on, as if Lilah didn’t have better things to do with her night than listen to Juli drone on about her petty little romance.
Like that was the only thing in her fucking world.
The bedroom was empty, though, the bed still made as Lilah struck a match, lighting the room.
Maybe Juli had decided to start holding grudges.
Not that she had any right to.
Not when it was her fault Mama was dead.
The fever had left their mother with ashen skin and charcoal lips and dead, so gods-damned dead. It was supposed to be a relic of their grandmother’s time, but it’d found them, all the same, and what did Juli do but walk away with but her life.
It didn’t matter what Juli said. In that girl’s hands lay healing, and she’d had a choice, Juli did.
Lilah didn’t bother to strip off the cotton shift before collapsing onto the bed, exhaustion in her bones.
Juli wasn’t coming back tonight, so there’d be nobody to complain that she was gross and sweaty and smelled sort of like garlic gone bad. She’d rise early, take a dip in the river before the rest of the settlement awoke.
The thought sounded rather pleasant, actually.
Letting the chilled water take her.
It was with these thoughts that she let herself drift into uneasy sleep.
The cold chased her dreams, shooing away traces of the hot, late summer night. She dreamt she could feel the water, ice against her skin. That it could send goose-prickles all up and down her arms. That it burned her toes to freezing
, that it turned her nose to ice.
When Lilah awoke, she was huddled beneath the blanket, curled tight into a ball.
Dawn was just now peering through the window.
The window, Lilah realized with a jolt, that was covered in a fractal pattern of white, crawling along the glass.
Her breath frosted on the air as she pulled the blanket tighter, panic starting to rise.
Dreaming. You’re just dreaming.
The breakfast bell clanked down below, though, and still, her fingers felt numb with cold.
Outside, the chill had coated the grasslands, the barn, everything, blanketed in hoarfrost.
The Festival of Frost, Lilah thought, rising from her bed.
Impossible.
Chapter 5
JULI
A glistening white blanket coated the Basin as dawn met the day.
Like someone had dusted sugar crystals across the settlement.
“It’s odd,” Juli murmured, thinking aloud. She gave Fin a side-long glance, pulling his jacket tight around her shoulders as they walked.
The neighbors were staring—though not at her, this time. No, this time, they didn’t care that she walked proudly across the settlement in the dress she’d disappeared in last night, Fin’s hand in hers.
Just as well.
It was none of their gods-damned business.
“That’s the Basin, though, isn’t it,” Fin shrugged, glancing around. “I mean, goes from sun to rain in minutes—weather’s more than liable to change overnight, Jules.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Juli eyed the droves starting to wind their way towards the house, looking for breakfast. The rest of the shelters could only laughably be called proper houses, really nothing more than something to keep the rain and wind off their backs. Smokestacks were left cold, Basinites opting to seek their comfort in the warmth of the Commissioner’s house rather than light up their own stoves.
Their father had manufactured an astounding level of dependence in a relatively short amount of time.
But he loved to feel important.
He loved when the people turned to him, even if he had no answers.
He wouldn’t love it so much, she mused, when they realized he could do little more than offer empty reassurances.
The wagons will be here soon.
I’ve written for supplies, and I know they’re on the way.
Ah, the lies he told to stroke his ego.
“Well,” Fin edged. “So much for leaving before the first frost.” He gave her a side-long glance, brow creased in worry. “Jules, I dunno. I just—I have a bad feeling about taking off. If the weather’s already shifting, we’re not going to have much of a chance to get our feet on the ground, and then what? What if we can’t hunt, or—or find another settlement?”
“Then don’t come with.” Her eyes flicked back to the dirt path.
There was no room in the world for cowards. No time for second guessing.
“What if you just didn’t go?”
“What if,” Juli countered, picking up her pace for the house, “you just minded your own gods-damned business?”
Fin gave a sigh of exasperation, having to jog a few steps to keep up with her. “Jules! Please! Maybe if you just explained why it is you wanted to go so badly? And you don’t have to invent stories, just tell me, I’ll understand—”
Anger was rising in her heart.
She wasn’t inventing stories, but it made sense that Finley would go on accusing her of things like that.
People didn’t believe, anymore.
They didn’t have any proper reverence, for the things of this world.
That vora girl, Reed, had said as much, when she’d warned of the Festival of Frost.
I told your father, Reed had said. But he didn’t listen.
That fool. Of course, he hadn’t. He clung to his rationality like it would save him, in the end.
This was the Wilderness.
This wasn’t the Capital, where balanced ledgers and clean-swept stoops meant you’d live to see another day.
There were rules, here, rules that had to be followed. Their father didn’t see that, and Lilah wouldn’t, either. They’d been made from the same mold, those two. Too stubborn to see outside their own navel, too gods-damned incompetent to clean out the fuzz therein.
But Juli knew.
Juli knew what had to be done.
Find for me, these things three.
First, the pebbles, white as snow, round and smooth and brought from below.
Second, the berries, yellow as day, sweet and juicy and out of the way.
Third, the leaves as green as spring, winter’s bounty to me you’ll bring.
And when you gather your sacrifice three, only then, they’ll leave you be.
Juli had frowned, listening to the rhyme. Who’s they, she asked.
But Reed had disappeared.
No matter. Juli took no chances.
And it wasn’t like there was anything better to do around here, not anymore. Not when Fin wouldn’t take her seriously.
Writing her off, as if she was making up fairy tales—as if she had no right to believe. As if she, on principle, had no right to that world.
And, she thought, stomping up the steps of the cabin, yanking her hand away from Fin as he tried to grab it, if he wanted to stay here and die, that was his prerogative.
But she didn’t have to.
Chapter 6
GRAYSON
Dawn crawled through the slats of the barn, rousing Grayson where he’d drifted off in the hay.
Shivering as he unburied himself from the horse-blanket-and-hay bed he’d made for himself, he found his thoughts drifting back to what he’d done the night before.
Lilah always teased him for being soft. Or, she had, before she’d ensconced herself in that hardened, impossible shell of dislike.
But maybe she’d been right.
Maybe he’d fallen too hard for a boy that didn’t really care.
His first time was supposed to be better. Last longer, too, he thought resentfully. Hurt less. There was supposed to be other things, oil, and the like, but in the moment, it hadn’t mattered, because he’d just wanted Nik, and wanting was supposed to be enough.
It hadn’t been.
The only solace, in Nik’s leaving was that…well, that he was leaving. At least Grayson wouldn’t have to see his stupid face again, avoid him awkwardly over breakfast, try and dodge him on story night.
The thought wasn’t as sweet as he wanted it to be.
Hardly a consolation.
Nik took what he wanted. And he was gone.
It would be Grayson, like always, to pick up the pieces.
He’d done the same, when their mother had died. Grieving and torn apart, he felt like he’d been fucked badly, then, too. His father retreated. The ledgers went to hell. And who had been left, but Grayson and his sisters.
At least Lilah and Juli had been there, that time, sort of.
Now, though, he was utterly alone.
But maybe he didn’t have to be.
Sliding haphazardly down the ladder, he hit the barn floor, knees jarred with the impact, but it didn’t matter. Lilah—her condescension would run wide. She’d want to know why a barn, of all gods-forsaken places, why Nik, of all gods-forsaken people. But in the end, she’d purse her lips, wrapping her arms around his waist all the same. His baby sister. Juli—Juli would laugh, incredulous, that he’d been so reckless, so hasty. She’d lecture him about the art of intimacy. That it couldn’t be rushed, that she, with her one lover, knew everything about how these things worked. But her smile would falter, after a time, and she’d lean her head on his shoulder, sympathetic.
Things could be sweet, again.
Time didn’t have to tear them all apart.
Grayson opened the door to the back of the barn.
And froze.
Stupid. Stupid boy.
He’d been fucking in the hay loft,
and that vora had been right. She’d come to warn him, and she’d been right, and it had sort of worried him, but he wanted Nik more than he wanted to worry, and she’d been right.
The barnyard was a slaughterhouse.
Littered with feathers and blood, the chicken coop had been eviscerated, feet and half-eaten chicken heads scattered on the frozen earth. Bloody carcasses of now-felled sheep were left, gruesome markers across the hill behind the barn, evidence of a clash, and in the distance—
Grayson’s heart almost stopped.
A single cow, lowing in fear.
A flash of blue, spindly fingers splitting the earth apart, a flurry of white, a flash of fangs, and the cow fell, dead.
The creature licked its bloody lips, spidery hands working to de-flesh the poor beast, licking the raw strips of meat clean before sucking them down. Drawn of icicles, limbs splintering out in fractals, it was a nightmare come to life.
Grayson didn’t move. Didn’t dare to breathe. Would’ve stopped his own heart from pounding in his chest, if he could.
No pebbles. No berries. No leaves.
Maybe it was superstition, but he’d have given anything, in that moment, for even a fighting chance.
The morning bell clattered across the settlement, and the creature’s long, narrow head snapped to attention, bloodied fingers stroking the air in agitation.
And then it vanished, in a puff of fog.
Gone.
Gone, and Grayson was reeling.
The Festival of Frost.
It was real.
And it was here.
Chapter 7
LILAH
Lilah glanced up, watching as Grayson sank down on the bench beside her before an almost-cold bowl of hotgrain. “You stink,” she muttered, wrinkling her nose. The smell of horse and hay was strong, bits of each still clinging to his tunic.
He said nothing, though, eyes vacant as he pulled a glass of water towards him.
The kitchen had mostly emptied out, most everyone else gulping down their food, disappearing outside to watch the unmelting frost glisten in the morning sun.
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