As if watching it was going to do anything.
The Festival of Frost. Lilah had half a mind to ask Aunt Bess about it, because it seemed like the sort of thing that crazy old bat would know about, but to ask was to confess her own doubts, and she had no doubts, because it was a childish superstition, that was all, meant to scare little kids into going to bed early and eating all of their vegetables.
It’s a coincidence.
A vora comes to warn you about the Festival of Frost, and the next morning, we’re in a winter wonderland, but yeah, Li. It’s probably a coincidence.
Juli was falling down across the table from them both, looking cross. “Fucking Fin,” she muttered under her breath, not bothering to look up at either of them.
At last.
Sweet little Fin had finally disappointed her.
That was what people always did, and Juli would be better off learning that sooner rather than later.
“What happened with Fin,” Lilah whispered under her breath, gloating.
“Him first,” Juli snapped back, thrusting a spoon at Grayson. “You’ve got hay in your hair.”
But Grayson’s pale eyes were distant beneath a furrowed brow. His mouth fell open to speak, but nothing came out, and he just shook his head, eyes tearing up.
Oh, Gray—
A shout from outside broke the moment, though, and Lilah was on her feet, eyes wide.
Calm down.
It’s nothing.
You’re jumpy from a night of poor sleep, that’s all.
CLANG
CLANG
CLANG
Three bells—trouble. Wolves in the barnyard, foxes in the coop, and it wasn’t nothing, that much was apparent as she followed the shouts of panic out of the cabin and down towards the barn, her brother and sister at her heels.
“I—I was going to tell you,” Grayson was half-whispering, having to run a little to keep up with her long strides. “Li, brace yourself…”
A massacre.
There had been a massacre behind the barn.
Winter provisions—they’d needed that livestock, if they had any hope of making it through the winter months, and now…
Grains would only get them so far. Forget the milk, eggs—that’d been enough to see them through to spring, at least, when they could send more wagons south for provisions.
Someone was speculating loudly, voice carrying across the settlement, drawing out the rest of the people from their morning duties. “Had to have been one of them rockwolves—they’ve been creepin’ around…”
“That wasn’t a rockwolf,” Grayson whispered, giving Lilah’s sleeve a sharp tug to get her attention.
Juli frowned. “Li, there was a vora nosing around the settlement—”
“I saw her, too,” Grayson nodded. “Reed, right? Talking about the Festival of Frost?”
Lilah frowned, jerking her arm back from her brother’s grip. “Get a hold of yourselves. This isn’t…” What it wasn’t, though, she didn’t know.
A few people were trying to scavenge what little meat remained from the carcasses. A woman was crying as she watched from the split-rail fence.
Juli was right. It couldn’t be a rockwolf.
Even a pack wouldn’t have demolished an entire settlement’s worth of livestock, not with such silent ease.
“I saw it,” Grayson was saying softly, now, pulling both of his sisters out of earshot of the congregation.
“You…saw what did this?” Juli asked, watching him. “Gray, why didn’t you say something?”
“It—I—you wouldn’t have believed it,” Grayson snapped back.
He wasn’t wrong.
Too much romance in that boy’s head, and a bit too much whiskey of late, too, and Lilah half-wondered if she’d been at the drink, looking at the carnage around them.
It scared her.
“It doesn’t matter, though,” Grayson was saying, dropping his shoulders in resignation. “The vora was right. There’s something wrong with this place. We have to get out of here.”
Lilah sucked her teeth, watching her brother. Grayson, as a rule, wasn’t overly fond of decisiveness. He mostly took Juli’s cue, followed her lead. He was comfortable on the side-lines.
“So, what, if she was right? What if this is the—the Festival of Frost beginning? How are we possibly going to be safer somewhere else,” Lilah asked, trying to keep the chill from her voice.
“I don’t think that was what Reed was trying to say,” Juli countered. “The bit about the berries and stones and such? That sounded like a ward to me.”
“Berries?”
“Three things,” Grayson echoed, nodding. “Pebbles, berries, and leaves. Jules is right, it sounded like the wards Bess talks about in her stories.”
“Wards and—and monsters?” Lilah scoffed. “Listen to yourselves. These are children’s stories!”
“You know what, Li?” Juli had her hands on her hips, glaring. “I’m getting kind of tired of this condescension—”
“It’s called being reasonable—”
“It’s going to be called ‘being dead,’ if we don’t do something,” Grayson muttered, voice low. His pale eyes flicked between them, uncertain.
Lilah’s breath was catching angry in her throat, heat rising.
But there were no words, because he was right.
Grayson was right.
“What is father going to do,” he pressed, glancing between them. “Write to the Capital again? At the very least, we can make it to another settlement, ask someone else to help us get supplies. That’s reasonable, isn’t it? Get someone to talk to the Capital on our behalf? And Jules and I can find the wards on the way. You don’t have to help. Hell, Li, you don’t even have to come. But I can at least make sure we’ve got food, yeah? I can hunt? And you’re unbeatable with flint and steel. But what do we have, keeping us here for the winter? Food? Father’s excuses? I’d rather die trying to do something than waiting for someone to save us.”
Chapter 8
JULI
Juli's pack was dumped carelessly at her feet, stuffed to overflowing with bread and hard cheese. She’d wear what clothes she wanted, and had looped what she needed into a sort of bed-roll. With the weather shifting colder as the day wore on, she wouldn’t have to worry about suffocating beneath her thick winter cloak.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
Lilah, on the other hand, looked unwilling to let go of summer. She only snipped, though, when Juli had said something about it.
“I tried to talk to Father,” Grayson sighed, coming around the side of the house, his own bag slung across one shoulder, bow and quiver over the other. Stubble roughed his cheeks, tired circles beneath his eyes.
“And,” Juli prodded.
“Er, ‘tried’ would be the operative word, Jules. Everyone wants his ear.” Grayson shrugged. “I left him a note. He’s not going to miss us.”
That much was true. Even before their mother had passed, their father had a knack for disregarding his children for the sake of soothing his own sense of importance. Truthfully, Juli couldn’t recall the last time she’d even seen him, walking about the settlement—or maybe she couldn’t recall the last time he’d seen her walking about.
She saw him all the time.
At dinner, talking up whoever had complained the loudest that day.
On story nights, sidling up to Bess.
In the mornings, giving hearty claps on the backs of farmers tired of his lollygagging.
He never saw her, though.
“What’s the plan,” Juli asked, heaving her pack up.
Grayson nodded towards the foothills. “North.”
“North?” Lilah’s screech of outrage stirred the flock of ravens cawing in a nearby tree. “North, Gray? Why? There’s no settlements that direction!”
Lilah was here resentfully.
Here, because of terror she didn’t want, because of bloodshed she hadn’t wished to see, and here, because through
the fear and the worry, she knew as much as Juli and Grayson that blood and frost would not be all that drenched the Basin floor, for if they had been hopeless before, Juli couldn’t say what it was they’d be, now.
“There are settlements,” Grayson corrected. “Just not human ones. That’s where the vora came from.”
“We can get some answers,” Juli cut in.
“Exactly.” With a small shrug, Grayson looked each of his sisters over in turn. “Let’s go, while there’s still daylight left.”
Juli’s eyes lingered on their brother, though, and she made no motion to move. “What about Nik,” she asked quietly. It was less of a question and more of a confirmation, because she saw plain enough.
Grayson, who had the night before been a mess, his heart tangled with the thought of Nik. Grayson, who’d disappeared with Nik, and Grayson, who’d showed up the next morning a mess, and though he tried to hide it beneath whatever fear the beast in the barnyard had sparked, he was hurting in a way that had little to do with the cold reality of the winter ahead.
“Nik’s leaving,” Grayson breathed. It was like the words gutted him. “Told me last night. He’s going back to the Capital with his father. Thought it wasn’t worth staying here.” He glanced over Juli’s shoulder, eying the movement as the others tried to drag the corpses from the field, already a pyre going in the south lot. “He’s right, though,” Grayson sighed, turning for the mountains. “There’s no point in lingering.”
It wasn’t hard, sneaking out of the settlement, nor could it truly be called sneaking, by any reasonable definition of the word.
Really, they just wound around the back of the house and followed the game trail through what might, if they all survived to see the spring, become fields someday.
Only when they’d left the earshot of the settlement, with all the hemming and hawing, and the silence had settled over them all, did Juli realize it’d been a long time since they’d been together. Just the three of them. Alone.
It’d last been the funeral, now that she thought about it.
Two years ago.
They’d all gathered to sink their mother into the ground, and afterwards, Lilah had locked herself in her room. Grayson had gotten drunk at the wake, and Juli…Juli had just sat there, by the grave, waiting.
Not ready to say goodbye.
“I miss Mom,” Juli said softly, breaking the quiet.
Grayson glanced over his shoulder, brows knit, as they always seemed to be. “Me too,” he nodded quietly.
Only Lilah said nothing.
Just glared at the ground, blinking back tears.
She’d been too young for death.
They all had, clearly, but Li especially. Fourteen when their mother had died, and Lilah had a difficult relationship with her, anyway. She and Grayson, they threw to their father’s side of things, something they both seemed to sort of resent, with their fawny skin and taupe-and-umber hair. Only Juli bore any passing to the woman she’d called mom.
From the Coastal Reaches, she was beautiful.
Not beautiful, the way the women in the Capital tried to be, beneath their whale-bone corsets and frumpy frocks.
Eva didn’t ever have to try.
She woke up beautiful. She met the day beautiful. She faced council meetings beautiful, balanced the ledgers beautiful, and she’d died beautiful, too.
Two years between each of the kids, and that’d left Grayson of age, when she’d passed. He was poised, too, to take over the family, until their father had rallied and bought the Basin.
Some sort of rallying.
More like failing on an epic scale never before seen by humankind.
But they would do this.
They would find help for the settlement. Find the ward, prevent another massacre.
And they’d do it together, like their mother would’ve wanted.
Chapter 9
GRAYSON
Juli had thrust their mother back into Grayson’s thoughts.
He watched Jules, feeding the fire in their feeble camp, Lilah brooding, huddled beneath her cloak.
What would Mom say now. Father, off the deep end. And me, dragging her daughters through the wilderness.
His sisters.
For all Li protested, she’d come along all the same. Maybe she didn’t want to be left alone, waiting for their father to eventually notice his children had vanished. Or perhaps the morning massacre had been enough to convince her that staying in the settlement wasn’t a guarantee of safety.
If anything, it was proof they couldn’t stay.
The creature had spent most of the day lurking in the back of his mind, pushed aside by his tumbling thoughts about where to make camp and whether they should keep to the game trails or follow the setting sun, but as darkness encroached, the spindly beast came crawling forward one more.
He’d described it to his sisters as a monster.
They did not need more.
Juli had met his eyes, then, as he told them what he’d seen, coming out of the barn, and it seemed like she knew he couldn’t have summoned the words to describe it in all its terrible splendor, anyway, even if he’d wanted to, which he didn’t.
He wondered, picking at a piece of bread, if Nik and his father had left yet. They didn’t have much to pack up. They could’ve been gone in ten minutes, if they wanted.
No horses—not if they’d left today—and it’d be a month on foot to the nearest settlement towards the south. They might be able to bum a ride from someone, or else trade some work for a couple of horses, maybe, but more likely they’d try and start something else. More than likely, they’d never quite make it back to the Capital.
It’d been stupid.
This idea, the one he’d toyed with, where he saved himself for Nik. Where his whole life of failed relationships and pitiful flirtations had been for a reason, and that reason was the blacksmith’s son.
“So,” Juli said, voice hollow. The fire was roaring, now, the heat a pleasant armament against the chill that was settling down around them. “The wards.”
Lilah scoffed, pulling her cloak tighter. “I still think we need to find another settlement. Why should we take the word of the vora? If they knew this—this Festival was coming, why didn’t they tell everyone? Why only warn us?”
“If the ward is as simple as some rocks and berries, maybe they thought they didn’t have to,” Juli shrugged.
“Rocks and—ugh!” Lilah rolled her eyes. “It’s not like all that was just rolling around in a kitchen drawer! She didn’t even tell us where to find any of it—”
“She did, though,” Juli countered, glaring. “First, the pebbles, white as snow, round and smooth and brought from below—that’s got to mean downstream, right? And the berries—sweet and juicy and out of the way—that means they’re rare, hard to find. As for winter’s bounty—not that much could be green, this time of year.”
“That’s my point exactly! ‘Below’ and ‘out of the way’ are such obscure instructions—they’re meaningless! It’s a clever rhyme…”
Lilah’s voice trailed off, the girls continuing to bicker back and forth, and Grayson let his thoughts overtake him.
Nik was leaving.
Nik…was leaving.
“Maybe she didn’t just tell us,” Grayson said softly, and Lilah shot him an incredulous look. “No, listen. Nik’s leaving. But he and I—we had plans, Li. We made promises. There’s no way he’d just break his word, not unless there was something else going on. And there was something pinned to his shirt, this little cluster of berries and leaves, all tied in this bulky twine—I’d bet anything there were pebbles there, too, only I didn’t look.”
Juli’s expression was one of pathetic sympathy. “Gray…”
“No, I—I know how this sounds,” he said, and he could hear the pitiful hope as his voice cracked. “But Nik wouldn’t just leave! I’d bet anything that Reed talked to him, too. If we could find him, figure out where he got the wards from—”
He ignored the remark, though, glancing to Juli. “What about Fin? Something happened with you two. Did he say anything about leaving?”
She shook her head. “He accused me of making up stories. We…” Her shoulders sank, her golden eyes locking onto his. “We were planning on leaving anyway, him and me. He asked me to tell him the real reason. Didn’t believe what I’d said about Reed.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t talk to him,” Grayson countered, glancing to Lilah. “Li talked to the vora, too—it’s not a requisite for believing.”
For whatever reason, Lilah’s glare seemed to soften at the remark, eyes drifting from angry study of her brother to the ground at her feet.
“The question remains. Do we go look for Nik, and see if he’s willing to give up how he got the ward? Or do we keep going north?” Juli asked.
It wasn’t even really a question.
“We’re not that far from the settlement, still. If we circle back, we can still catch him and his father before they’re too far gone.”
“Or we can find the wards ourselves.” Lilah was watching him with fire in her eyes.
Juli’s head snapped over to her sister. “What?”
“What kind of lover believes destruction is coming, and leaves you behind,” Li said softly, not breaking Grayson’s stare. “Jules didn’t. Doesn’t matter how foolish it is, believing this nonsense. You don’t leave people you love behind like that. I know you’re hurting, Gray. I know you want to believe there was a reason for why he left. And there is. He’s a jackass. We should go north. Trying to find the vora, track down the wards…” She shook her head. “I think it’s bullshit. But it’s more reasonable than believing Nik did what he did out of necessity. It’s more sane than thinking he had a good reason for hurting you.”
Chapter 10
LILAH
Curled up beneath her cloak, Lilah listened to the rise and fall of Grayson’s steady breathing.
Festival of Frost Page 3