by Anna Burke
“Avery says that if the Huntress really did take you, then you must be bewitched.”
“I’m not,” I said, thinking of the rose in my palm.
“He said you wouldn’t know it, if you were. Don’t you see? Why else would you return, almost a year from the day you were taken?”
“Because the old woman told me father was dying. Do you think I’m bewitched?”
“I don’t know. I am so happy to see you, Rowan, but it feels too good to be true. Just like the dreams I had right after mother died, and then I’d wake up, and she’d still be dead. What am I supposed to think?”
“That I’m your sister,” I said, grasping her shoulders in my hands and looking her in the eyes. “And that I’m back.”
She blinked up at me through tears. “Okay,” she said. “I believe you. But what are you going to tell Avery?”
I took strength from her presence and gritted my teeth.
“The truth.”
The wolves howled outside the keep, calling to her.
She did not answer.
The window in the tallest tower commanded a view over her entire world, from forest to lake to sheltered glen. Somewhere down there was Rowan.
Rage built.
The tower room had served another purpose, once. She did not remember what it had been, only that it was irrelevant, now, but this high up it still preserved the voices of the dead, echoing in the soft stir of flower and vine.
Queen among the bones.
She would have ruled these mountains with the same cold fury she felt now, stretching her territory to the foothills and beyond, raiding all the way to the coast. That had been her destiny, another thing the witch had stolen and replaced with ice. She reached for a storm, willing the clouds to roil into snow, but the sky refused to answer.
The breaking of her power rolled over her like the storm that had not come. Below, the wolves howled on, speaking in a language that felt as foreign to her now as the tongue they spoke across the sea. She slid to the ground. She did not remember the stones being this cold, or the cost of each breath so high.
I am dying, she realized, lifting her face toward the light. I am dying, and I cannot outrun this fate or fight it off. I am the hunted now.
Chapter Nineteen
“Avery Lockland.” My words reverberated in the darkness as I pounded on the Lockland door. A storm was coming. I felt it in the sharp cold of the air and the silence in the trees. The scent of roses flooded my nostrils, and I could hardly hear the footsteps coming to the door for the rustling of those hidden leaves.
Avery answered. He was still dressed for the day’s work, his dark shirtsleeves rolled up over corded forearms. “What do you want, Rowan?” he said.
“I want to see my father.”
“You should have thought about that before you ran away from us.”
“I did not run from you,” I said.
He let out a bitter laugh that reminded me of the Huntress. “I would have been good to you, you know,” he said.
It was not what I had expected him to say. I thought about Juniper’s words, and wondered how far Avery would go for the sake of injured pride. “You would have tried, Avery, and you would have grown to hate me. You do see that, don’t you? Aspen was always the better choice.”
At my words, she appeared behind him, her hands on her pregnant belly and her eyes wide with fear.
For me, or for Avery?
“Yes,” he said, some of the darkness lifting from his face as he looked at my sister. “But we were never given much of a choice, were we?”
“No.”
“I will let you see your father. But you have to tell me the truth.”
“The truth,” I repeated. That was, after all, what I had come here to do.
“About where you’ve been all these months, and about what happened to my father and brother.”
“You know where I’ve been. My father told you. My sisters told you. Tell him, Aspen.”
Aspen remained mute, her knuckles white on her stomach.
Her fear is not for me or for Avery, I suddenly understood. She is afraid for her child.
“Fine,” I said, pulling off my mitten and stepping further into the light. I held up my palm for Avery to see and watched the color drain from his face as he saw the rose bloom beneath my skin.
“This is the truth, Avery Lockland. Your father and your brother crossed the boundary. They did not tell my father what it meant, and so he plucked a single rose for his oldest daughter while your family killed two of the Huntress’s wolves. She killed them for it, and she spared my father, not knowing about the rose he had hidden in his cloak until he had returned. She came for the rose then, and she took me, too. Do not blame my father for the mistakes of yours.”
Rage twisted his handsome features. “It was your father who led mine into the mountains. Your father who poisoned him with empty promises.”
“Yes,” I said, lowering my hand. “But my father did not know what else roamed the snows.”
“Or perhaps he didn’t listen.”
I flinched, considering this possibility, then caught Aspen’s eye. Please, her face seemed to say.
“Avery,” I said, trying to soften my voice and reminding myself that in the end he had lost more than I. “I am sorry for what happened to your family, but my father did not lie to you. Please, let me see him.”
“She speaks the truth.”
All four of us started, turning to peer into the darkness. A woman stepped into the light, her weathered face familiar beneath its hood.
“You,” I said, recognizing the woman from the boundary.
“You know the old stories, Avery Lockland. She is marked by thorns.”
Avery looked horrified, for a moment, and then something in his face changed. “Her hand,” he said, pointing at me.
“Show me, child.” I turned over my naked palm, a warning prickling the hairs along the back of my neck. “There is only one reason why the Huntress would let this woman go, Avery Lockland, and you know it as well as I.”
Avery looked from me to the old woman. Comprehension dawned on his face slowly. “You may see your father.” He moved aside. “Aspen will take you.”
“Wait,” I said, the feeling of apprehension growing stronger. “Avery.”
My sister reached for my hand and pulled me into the house.
“This way,” she said. “Father doesn’t have much time.”
The lodge was nearly empty at this hour, and she led me to a small room at the back. The air was heavy with the smells of smoke and herbs, and Aspen lit a candle to illuminate the sickroom and the man sleeping on the narrow bed against the wall. My stomach turned. This was not my father. This was an old man, with hair the gray of dirty snow and his back bent beneath the weight of tragedy. His skin, even in the warm glow of the candle, looked ashen, and his eyes, when they opened, were cloudy.
“Father,” I said, falling to my knees beside him.
“Rowan?” His rheumy eyes searched for me in the darkness.
“Father, I’m here. I’m safe.”
“Rowan. I am sorry for all the trouble I have brought you.”
“It’s all right,” I said, fighting back tears. “I am safe. I am happy even, except to see you suffering.”
“It’s all my fault, child. All my fault. The rose . . . a rose for my Rowan, I thought, but . . .”
“You couldn’t have known.”
“Couldn’t have known?” His voice hardened. “Everything I touch is damned. First your mother, then my ships, and then my daughter, all taken from me, all cursed, all gone.”
“No.” I squeezed his hand. “I’m here now. I forgive you, father.”
“You look so much like your mother,” he said, once again wandering into memory.
“She would want you to live. We all want you to live.”
“Live. How can I live, without my Rowan?”
“I am here,” I tried again, but he did not seem to hear me.
“The rose . . .” He broke into a fit of coughing.
The rose.
I placed my hand on my father’s thin chest, feeling the rasp of his breathing, and spoke, my voice carrying echoes of a power rooted high up on the mountain. “I forgive you, father. I was angry at you once, but the Huntress was right. A rose for a rose, a thorn for a thorn, only it didn’t mean what she thought it meant. You can’t have a rose without thorns. It wouldn’t be a rose. You can’t have love without loss or happiness without sorrow, and I didn’t understand that. You gave me that rose for a reason. The Huntress let you go for a reason.”
The rose stirred in my hand, putting out vines.
“You gave me that rose because you wanted to make me happy, and you did. I was scared at first, and I missed you all so much, but I never belonged here. I found where I belong. It’s with her. I know that’s almost impossible to believe, but it’s true. I love her, father. I love her in a way I could never have loved Avery. And she has so many books, and a library you can’t even imagine, and I can shoot a bow and throw a spear now.”
The tendrils spread over his chest, and Aspen gasped behind me.
“You didn’t lose me, father. I forgive you, and you have to forgive yourself. We need you. Aspen needs you. She’s going to have a child soon. Don’t you want to meet your grandchild? Juniper needs you. I need you.” Tears rolled down my cheeks. “I learned something in the snow. Death is easy. Living is much, much harder, but I promise you this: if you let yourself die, you will miss out on so much that is beautiful.”
A single, white rose bloomed, and the soft fragrance filled the room.
“Rowan?”
Aspen burst into tears at the sound of my father’s voice, no longer threaded with madness.
“I’m here,” I said. The rose lost its petals, one by one, the vine shriveling as the magic faded, its task complete.
“Rowan. I have missed you.” He looked around the room, then down at his shrunken body. “I hardly know myself.”
“It doesn’t matter. We know you,” said Aspen, squeezing his other hand.
“Seize her.”
The command took the three of us by surprise, and I struggled against the arms that grabbed me, hauling me from the room and dragging me down a hallway. I was strong now from a year in the mountains, and I broke free long enough to catch a fist in my face and another in my ribs before I was thrown into a cold, dark pit that I recognized as the village jail before the door was shut and barred behind me.
“No,” I screamed, beating my fists against the bars. Someone shoved a torch into my face, and I barely recognized Avery. His face was twisted with hatred, and his eyes blazed with dark intention. At his side stood the old woman.
“Tell her what you told me,” he said, and I heard triumph in his voice.
“The curse is broken,” she said.
“The curse?” Fear filled my mouth.
“The Huntress has lost her power.”
“No.” My voice barely rose above a whisper.
“She is weak,” Avery said, and past him I noticed the mob, dressed for the mountains and armed to the teeth. “She is weak, and we will at last be rid of her. I shall avenge my father and my brother, and the wealth of the mountain will belong to us. Your father was right, Rowan. We will hunt her lands, and with the wealth of her furs we will prosper, and you will never look down on me again.”
“Avery,” I said, but the madness that had left my father had taken root in the man in front of me.
“I will kill the Huntress myself.” His eyes bulged, and the crowd behind him cheered.
“Please, Avery,” I begged.
He laughed in my face.
“You scorned me, Rowan, and you chose to love a monster over me. This is the price.” He turned to face the crowd. “Who’s with me?”
A hundred voices roared their approval, and I watched my sister’s husband march off into the woods to kill the woman I loved.
“You’ll never find her,” I shouted after him.
A soft chuckle of laughter disagreed with me. “On the contrary, child. You’ve led them right to her.”
The old woman had not followed the mob, and I craned my neck to see her through the bars.
“How?”
“The roses do not give up what is theirs so easily. They bloomed in your footsteps as you came down the mountain. Even a child could follow them.”
“Why?” I asked her.
She gave me a piercing look. “Why what, child?”
“Why did you tell him?”
A smile flitted across her ancient face. “The same reason I cursed her.”
I screamed a wordless cry of rage, lunging for her through the bars.
“Do you not want to know the reason?” she asked, stepping just beyond my reach.
“Because you are a bitter, evil old hag?” I guessed, still trying to claw her face with my hands. Behind her, I saw the gleam of a pair of golden eyes, and I grinned, for the first time understanding how a person could murder another and enjoy it.
Kill her, I willed the pup.
The wolf pup sat at the witch’s feet, tilting her head to stare at me as the witch answered.
“To save her.”
The air left my lungs in a painful whoosh, and I hung from the door, panting. “How could a curse save her?”
“The woman I cursed was not worthy of your love, child. She was cruel and careless with the hearts and lives of others. A woman like that could not rule the mountains. A woman like that would have destroyed us all, and the loss would have meant nothing to her. So I condemned her to an eternity of winter, until she learned what it was like to lose one she loved more than her own life. It would seem that is you.”
“She hasn’t lost me.”
“She thinks she has, and that is what matters. She believes she understands the curse, but she only sees what she fears.”
“Tell me. Tell me the curse you placed on her.”
“First, I must tell you a story.”
“There isn’t time. I have to stop Avery. I have to warn her.”
“Once, a long time ago, there was a woman.”
I closed my eyes, her voice overriding my panic as she told me the story the Huntress had revealed only in fragments, about a boy and a hunt and a woman who would have crushed her chiefdom beneath the heels of her boots if it pleased her.
“What will happen to her now?” I asked when it was over.
“That, child, is entirely up to you.”
“What can I do against a mob of rabid villagers?”
“Do you love her?” The old woman’s eyes were as bright as the wolf’s.
“Yes.”
“Then you will have to find a way.”
She woke with her Hounds around her. Brendan, Masha, Neve, Lyon, and Quince, dressed for the hunt and laughing, bows and axes at their sides and blood on their clothes.
“The game is so much better in the lowlands,” Masha was saying as the Huntress opened her eyes. “And their hunters are lazy. We should raid this spring.”
“You always want to raid,” said Neve, polishing the head of her axe. “Why raid when we could just hunt?”
“If we raid, they will be afraid. Then we can start tithing them for protection,” said Lyon. “Game and grain. Think of how fat the horses will be.”
“Think of how fat I will be.” Brendan smacked his stomach. “What say you, Isolde?”
The Huntress looked at Quince, who had not yet spoken. There was something wrong with her face. She was grinning a wolf’s grin and her teeth were too sharp.
“Quince,” the Huntress said, but as she spoke her Hound faded, and where she had stood was the alpha female of the pack, her tongue lolling over ivory jaws. The wolf snarled once, then trotted out of the room.
“Wait,” she called after her, but the wolf did not heed her, and the fire sputtered in the grate, casting strange shadows on the wall.
Chapter Twenty
So
mething wet and warm brushed my cheek. I pushed it away, thinking it was the wolf, and met resistance.
“Hush, Row,” said a familiar voice.
I tried to open my eyes. One obeyed. The other was swollen shut, letting in only a sliver of light. My head throbbed with the sort of ominous intensity that promised to only get worse the longer I remained conscious, and so I closed my eyes again. The pup could wait to eat. She was almost fully grown, and she knew her way to the stables where there was always a carcass to be had.
“Rowan.”
It was so like the Huntress to wake me when I wanted sleep most.
The Huntress.
Avery.
My good eye snapped open and Aspen stared back, holding a damp cloth in her hand and wearing an anguished expression.
“Aspen?” I said, my panic momentarily replaced by confusion.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“I have to go. I have to warn her.”
Aspen looked over my head, and I turned, braving the new lance of pain that shot through my skull to see Juniper sitting on my other side. We were in a small room, decorated with rugs and sporting its very own washbasin. I squinted. I seemed to recall losing consciousness in the cold darkness of the jail, not the house.
“You can’t,” Aspen said, pressing the warm cloth to my face again. “You need to rest.”
I pulled myself into a sitting position, then swore. It was not just my head that hurt. My chest felt as if it had been kicked by a horse.
“What happened to me?”
“You . . .” Aspen had an awed, almost reverent expression on her face. “You did not go quietly when Avery ordered you locked up. You don’t remember?”
I shook my head, instantly regretting it.
“I was able to convince them to move you back in here once Avery left, but I think that’s mostly because the villagers who didn’t go with Avery felt a little guilty about what happened to you.”
“I have to stop him.”
“You’ll never catch them, Row.”
“Aspen.” My sister flinched at my tone, and I saw her press her hand to her swollen belly. “Do you really think Avery can stop her?”
