“Tired,” Kyle muttered as we left ash and bone behind. The snow turned to slush, and we walked faster. Through the trees I caught glimpses of the wider road that would lead us back to my town. I rubbed the leather around my wrist. Soon we would be home. What would we find when we got there?
Something at the meeting of the path and the road caught the light, something slick and liquid. I slowed my steps, squinting for a better look. Karin moved to my side as I realized what lay there.
No. “Get back, Kyle.” I didn’t want him to see this.
I forced myself to keep moving forward. The afternoon sun seemed distant and cold. I didn’t want to see this.
Johnny lay on his back, hands clasped around the knife—my knife—that was plunged through his heart. A smile was frozen on his face, and he’d clearly been dead for some time.
Chapter 13
Blood spread like a bright red flower from the wound, glinting in the sun. More blood stained Johnny’s wrists and his throat.
Kyle howled and threw himself at his brother. Elin screeched and flapped from Karin’s shoulder, her injured wing, with its torn feathers, straining. She missed the branch she aimed for, landing on a lower one instead. Karin scarcely seemed to notice. Her face held no expression as she knelt and thrust her hands into a clump of mud and brown grass.
I ran to Kyle’s side. He was shaking Johnny as hard as his small hands could. “Wake up,” he said. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”
“Johnny!” I called, but I knew I was too late to bring him back. “Jonathan!” I couldn’t look away from the smile on his lips. He’d been glad to do what the Lady wanted, even as he’d died.
Kyle stopped shaking his brother and looked at me. “Sleeping?” he asked.
I couldn’t lie. I knew it beyond doubting now, because I wanted to so badly. “Not sleeping.” My throat hurt.
Kyle’s lip quivered. He couldn’t lie, either, couldn’t deny what was true—it was too much. I knelt and reached for him, and he threw himself at me, fists raised. He punched my chest, again and again, with surprising force for such a small child. I let him. I could handle this, could handle it better than the way Johnny’s eyes stared at the sky.
Kyle’s howls turned to shuddering sobs. I drew him closer, remaining alert for anyone whose approach might mean us harm, all the while knowing I wouldn’t hear the Lady if she chose to attack. I couldn’t do anything about that, so I did what I could: held Kyle until he cried himself out.
At last he fell hiccuping against me. I rubbed his back and looked over his head at Karin. She drew her hands back from the dying plants. “They passed this way sometime before noon.”
We were too late. Anger burned in me. Elin sat on her branch, watching us through unblinking eyes. This was her fault. She’d led us to the Lady. If not for her, Johnny would be alive.
“Elianna!” I drew away from Kyle and scrambled to my feet. “Elianna, come here!” Elin trembled on her branch. I didn’t call her out of the hawk this time. I only called her to me.
She fluttered down to my arm, her injured wing forcing her to take a jagged path. I glared into her yellow hawk’s eyes. She glared back, matching hate with hate, but she didn’t leave my arm. She couldn’t. I felt my command, cold and glimmering between us.
“Liza.” Karin stepped toward us.
Right here, right now, I could be rid of Elin. I might have been powerless with the Lady, but I wasn’t powerless now. I could command Elin to go so far away she would never wake again.
The trees creaked softly. Elin’s talons tightened around my jacket. If I let go my control, even for a moment, she could shatter bone with those claws. “Tell me why I shouldn’t do this.”
“You must decide for yourself what needs doing.” Karin held her hands out in front of her. “I tell you only this: there is a difference between acting out of anger and acting out of need. Which is this, Liza?”
Kyle held Johnny’s bloodstained hand, whispering words too low to hear. Who would dare take chances with this magic that controlled actions and thoughts? How could we not go to War against such power?
“It is all right to be angry.” Karin had stopped moving toward me. “It is all right to be frightened.”
“So long as you don’t let your fear show.” I repeated Father’s old lesson automatically.
“No. So long as you don’t let your fear control you.” Karin looked toward Elin, then me. She held out her fist.
I looked into the hawk’s eyes. Did she know fear, too? “I’ll still kill her if there’s need. I won’t hesitate.”
“I know,” Karin said.
My arm trembled as I whispered, “Go, Elianna.” She half hopped, half flew from my arm to Karin’s glove.
Karin kept looking at me. “Save your blame for the one who most deserves it. My mother often tired of her human toys and sent them to horrible fates, but this is something more. With this death she tells us to turn back, knowing full well we will not heed her warning. That’s part of her game.”
“Is that all human lives are to your people?” Anger was with me still, in my every word. “A game?”
“Your people played no games, that is true.” I couldn’t read Karin’s expression. “They were always in earnest, from the moment they asked to meet with us. Perhaps they wept when their fire fell from Faerie skies. Perhaps they did not laugh as my people did. Their tears saved no lives.”
I looked to Kyle, who clutched his brother’s hand in silence now. “We have to stop her.”
“Oh, yes.” Karin’s voice was cold as falling ice. “I am through playing my mother’s games. She will be stopped, no matter the cost. You have my word.”
“Good.” But I took a step back, uneasy beneath her hard gaze. Just then, I didn’t doubt she’d once commanded the forest to attack.
Kyle was crying again. I knelt by his side. Both footprints and paw prints turned onto the road, leading away from this place and toward my town. The wolf is merely a toy. How long did we have before the Lady decided Matthew’s life was worth no more than Johnny’s?
I laid my hand on Kyle’s shoulder. “We have to go.”
Kyle looked up, nose running, eyes rimmed with red. “Take him with us.”
“We can’t take him, Kyle.”
Kyle pressed his lips together. “Carry him.”
“We can’t. I’m sorry.” Johnny was too close to my height and weight. I couldn’t carry him for long.
I thought Kyle would argue, but he only said in a small voice, “Later?”
“Later. I promise.” I eased Johnny’s hands from around my knife, then hesitated. Would carrying a knife put us in more danger, should the Lady use glamour against me? The power she’d have over my magic would be far more deadly if it came down to that. Until then, I would wield every weapon I could. I pulled the knife free.
It slid cleanly from Johnny’s chest, as if he were no more than a deer felled on a hunt. I fought a wave of nausea as I wiped the blood from my blade in the mud. For an instant some hint of shadow seemed to cling to Johnny’s cold skin. I blinked hard, and it was gone.
I sheathed the knife in my belt. Kyle took the frog from his pocket and set it carefully on Johnny’s chest, over the wound. “Later,” he whispered, then looked up. “Carry me?” His voice was forlorn, as if he knew it was too much to hope for.
I was so tired—it didn’t matter. “Carry you,” I agreed. I knelt so Kyle could wrap his legs around my waist and his arms around my neck. He sighed and leaned wearily on my shoulder as I stood.