“Let me pass.” My voice is overloud in the unnatural stillness of the wood.
The wolves clamp their jaws down on my arms and drag me forward, astonishingly fast. I stumble trying to keep up with them. The wood passes in a blur; the chatter of the tree sparks grows louder. I wish my hands were free so I could clap them over my ears and block out the noise.
As the wolves pull me deeper into the forest, the pines become tangled with other trees, elms and oaks and aspens, until the pines disappear altogether. The ground rises steadily upward, and it grows increasingly more difficult to catch my breath. The light dims as if we’re approaching night, though I know it can’t be more than an hour or two past dawn—can it? The glints in the trees illuminate our way.
We come to a break in the wood, step into the clearing I know so well from my dream. Starlight burns cold overhead, and the unnatural hush redoubles. Here is the hall of twining trees: the Wolf Queen’s court.
The wolf guards drag me on, across the clearing to a door in the hall.
Two other wolves stand guard here, their eyes flashing as my guards bark at them in their strange language.
The new guards step aside, pulling the door open with a creak and snap of twigs, and simultaneously my arms are released and I feel teeth at my back, propelling me forward. Pain makes my head spin. There’s a blur of light. Silent dark shapes sit on one end of the clearing, and the scent of honey and fire is stronger than before. There’s a thin, eerie music. Starlight.
I’m forced onward, and my vision clears. Beyond the trees the moon is rising, a huge disc of white silver.
“Hello, Echo,” says a voice at my ear.
I look up into a large pair of violet eyes that I know very well, even though I’ve never seen them set in this face.
“Mokosh,” I whisper. I can’t help but stare. She’s very like her mother, the same furred hands and moon-silver hair, but her head is almost entirely lupine, those eyes her only human feature. She wears a gold breastplate and wrist guards over a thin gown the same color as her hair; two pale, human feet peek out from underneath it. There’s a sword at her hip. “I will escort her from here,” she growls at the guards. And then to me: “It’s time you met my mother.”
She strides forward and I stumble after her.
The dark shapes on the edge of the clearing focus into a maze of thrones, occupied by cold figures I realize with horror are people, or what used to be people. We pace through them, and it takes everything I have to keep from being sick. All of them are dead, heads tilted forward or to the side, vines coiling tight around them, eyes staring vacantly into nothingness. Some are little more than brittle bones, some just dust in scraps of cloth. There are hundreds of them, both young and old, men and women. Every one has a crown on their head.
This is Hal’s fate, and mine, if I fail.
Mokosh doesn’t even glance their way.
Beyond the sea of thrones is a group of—I can only call them children. They run on two legs and some have human feet and hands and faces, but the rest of them is wolf: ears and snouts, flashing teeth and flagging tails. I get the feeling they’re Mokosh’s siblings. They run back and forth, howling and laughing, carrying a long vine between them that bursts with those red flowers. They weave the vine around themselves as they run, and the vine looks to have a life all its own, an evil, vicious snake.
Mokosh growls as we approach, and suddenly we’re caught in the midst of their frantic, teeming ranks. They coil the vine tight around us, the red flowers catching at my sleeves and my ankles, hidden barbs stinging like wasps.
“Get off!” Mokosh barks. “Wretches, get off!” She pushes them away, none too gently, and they yip and whine and let us pass, shedding flowers like red snow in their wake. Tension pulls tight between Mokosh’s shoulders.
I forget how to breathe.
Ten paces in front of us stand three more thrones. Two of them are empty.
But on the third throne, a circlet of gold pressed onto his hair, sits Hal.
The sight of him pierces through me, as cold and sharp as the wind over the frozen lake. He is worn and thin and filthy. There are bruises on his face and a small, angry scar on his right cheek, like—
Like the burn from a spot of oil.
He is chained to the throne, a silver band around his throat, matching manacles on his wrists and ankles. He doesn’t speak. He doesn’t even look at me.
I am sorrow and rage and hope. My fire burns brighter than the Wolf Queen behind my bedroom door.
I found him.
And now I will save him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
SO, ECHO ALKAEV. YOU HAVE FOUND your way to my wood.” The Wolf Queen’s voice resonates behind me, clear and cold and brittle as ice.
She sweeps past me and Mokosh to settle on the central throne and I let my eyes follow her. This throne is the largest, made of twining vines and tree branches, more of those red flowers blooming bright from its edges. She looks the same as she did in my dreams, silver hair and clawed hands, angular face and lupine ears. She looks more human than her daughter, but Mokosh is more beautiful.
I look her square in the eye, and hold fiercely to my fire. “I have come to free Hal.”
She regards me with a cool indifference, and the scent of the red flowers growing from her throne burns strong. It’s cloying, too sweet. It chokes me. “Free him? He dwells willingly in my court, according to the terms of our agreement.”
“Is that why you’ve bound him where he sits?”
I don’t take my eyes from the Wolf Queen’s—I don’t dare—but I can feel Hal watching me, and it gives me strength.
“He will be more than willing when his time is fulfilled, and that is soon now. Quite soon. I am surprised you have gotten here before it expired.”
“I came on the back of the North Wind.”
“If that were true you would have gotten here faster.” She taps her clawed fingers against the arms of her throne. “But I fear your journey has been in vain. I cannot release him, and even if I could I would not. You are human. Frail. You have nothing to offer me.” Mokosh grunts, throwing me one swift, piercing glance, before going to sit on the third throne, tension in every line of her body. For the first time, I wonder what deal she made with her mother, what she could possibly want so badly she would barter her life away to get it.
Everything within me yearns to look at Hal, but I fix my gaze on the Queen. “What are his terms? What are the rules you have bound him under?”
“What do you know of terms and rules but what I have told you?” She stands from her throne and strides over to Hal. He trembles as she approaches him, and bile rises acrid in my throat.
“I have much to thank you for.” The Queen brushes one claw across the scar on Hal’s cheek. He flinches back from her, but the silver band keeps him from moving very far. “I thought you would take him from me. But now he is here, forever. He will marry my daughter and become immortal. As I am.” She smiles, and I try not to shudder at the sight of her jagged teeth.
I dare a glance at Mokosh. “What did she promise you? What deal did you make?”
But Mokosh doesn’t answer, and I turn back to the Queen. I fight to keep the shake from my voice. “I won’t let you have him. I won’t let you damn him forever.”
“Won’t let me?” She draws her hand away from Hal’s cheek. “What do you even know about this boy before you?”
“His name is Hal, and you cursed him. To take the form of a wolf by day while his human self was trapped in the books and to resume his own shape by night.”
“Echo.”
Hal’s voice comes, ragged and hoarse, and I turn toward him like my heart is drawn on a string.
The Queen strikes him across the face and his head jerks back against the silver band. A line of blood appears on his neck—the band is knife sharp.
The Queen straightens, any pretense of a smile fled far from her face, and hatred coils tight inside me.
“His na
me is Halvarad Perun Svarog Wintar, youngest son of the Duke of Wintar who lived, oh—four centuries back, or so. Halvarad was the curious son. The beautiful son.” She brushes her human-wolf hand across his shoulders and he shuts his eyes, his skin blanching paler than before. “He found me in the wood. Came to me every night. Loved me dearly. He wished me to come home with him, to meet his father, to declare me as his prospective bride.” I stare at Hal, willing him to please, please open his eyes. I can bear anything, even the Wolf Queen’s awful story, if he will just look at me.
“And so I showed to him my true form: half wolf and half human, imbued with greater power than any human this world or any other has ever possessed. He was not afraid.” She smiles, wrapping her clawed fingers about Hal’s throat. He sits perfectly still, but I can see a muscle jumping in his jaw. “He wanted to be like me, one of my own kind, but he said his father would not understand such a transformation. And so we struck a deal: for him to be partly with me in the wood, and partly at home with his father. A hundred-year trial: a wolf by day and a man by night.”
“You tricked him,” says Mokosh quietly from her throne. “You always trick them. It isn’t the deal he thought he’d struck.”
“I didn’t know we even made a deal at all,” whispers Hal, from inside the Wolf Queen’s grasp. “And the hundred years were not a hundred—three centuries spun away in your wood the night you cursed me. My father was already dead before my curse had even started—”
“Fool!” barks the Queen. She releases him, leaving five spots of blood on his neck where her sharpened nails cut him. She stalks angrily away.
I don’t follow, just watch her, waiting for the rest of her story.
“As soon as the deal was struck he seemed unhappy with the arrangement.” The Queen stands calm again, resting one hand on the side of her throne. The red flowers stir and whisper at her presence, dipping their heads in reverence. “And so I offered him a way out of his promise: a human girl must live with him for a year without glimpsing his human face in the night. Fulfill this requirement, and he would be free of me. If not, the century would spin on, and he would belong wholly to me at the end of it.”
Hal shudders in his bonds, a bruise purpling on his cheek where the Wolf Queen struck him.
“And so you see, Echo Alkaev, the way out was yours to give him, or not, and you failed to uphold your end of the bargain.”
Anger roils inside me, a wave against a ship, deep water under ice. “I refuse to accept that.”
“Refuse to accept what?” The Queen plucks a flower from her throne and drinks deep of its nectar before she shreds it with her claws and lets the ragged remains fall to the ground. “That you betrayed him? That your journey was entirely in vain?”
“No.”
One silver eyebrow arcs upward. “What then?”
“I refuse to accept there is no other way to free him.”
She brushes her fingers against another flower, but does not pick it. Instead, she strides over to where I stand, coming so close I can feel the heat burning in her eyes, and smell the blood on her breath.
“I can help with these, you know,” she says, so quietly I’m not sure I hear her correctly. She grazes her claws down the scars on the left side of my face, gentle enough that she doesn’t cut me, but I can still feel the cold points of her nails.
“I can make them vanish. I can make you beautiful.”
I stare straight into her fire-eyes. “My scars don’t control me anymore. I don’t need to get rid of them to be beautiful.”
“Don’t control you anymore? This from the girl who prayed to God every night since she was seven years old to make her pretty again? This from the girl who bought a jar of cream worth more than a shipment of books from the city, then buried it in the back garden when she found it had no effect on her? Don’t control you anymore indeed.”
The rage is burning me up from the inside. My eyes snag on Mokosh, and suddenly I know what deal she made with her mother. “You want to be entirely human. That’s what she promised you.”
Mokosh ducks her head, ashamed. “You don’t know what it’s like, Echo. To be a monster, to revile your very existence, to not belong wholly to one world.”
“Oh Mokosh. I wish you would have told me. Of course I know.”
“But how could you?” she whispers. “You are so beautiful.”
My heart tears. “It may not even be in her power. You know you can’t trust her. Why would she make you wholly human when she hasn’t done the same for herself?”
“She doesn’t need to be human. She commands all the magic of the world.”
A strange wind breathes through the clearing, stirring through my hair and smelling of ice. “Not all of it.”
The Queen has been listening to our exchange with a kind of bemused scorn. “Are you quite done?”
I turn back to her, my voice clear and strong. “I am here to free Hal, and I’m not leaving without him. I invoke the old magic.”
The Queen releases a breath and steps back from me, like I’ve slapped her. “The old magic?” she echoes uneasily.
“I told you, Mother,” says Mokosh. “I told you she has the power to defeat you.”
The Queen doesn’t even acknowledge her. I dare a glance at Hal. His eyes are shut and his lips are moving as if in silent, desperate prayer.
Words pour through me.
The wolf’s, in the Temple of the Winds: Once, I had something precious. I should have held it tight, should have guarded it with my last breath, but instead I let it go.
The East Wind’s, in the book mirror: When you have found the oldest of magics, you must not let it go, not even for an instant.
And Isidor’s, in Ivan’s tent: If you love something you will not give it up, not for anything. It belongs to you, it is part of you. If you grab hold of it and never let it go—no one can take it from you. Not even the Wolf Queen.
“The old magic is stronger than you,” I say. “It has the power to break your curse. I have the power to break your curse. Now. Tell me. How long until his hundred years is fulfilled?”
She doesn’t answer, her expression cold, aloof. And yet I can feel her anger.
“How long?”
“Three days,” says Mokosh, rigid on her throne. “His hundred years are fulfilled in three days.”
“Careful, daughter,” growls the Queen. “You overstep yourself.”
Mokosh says nothing more.
“I want to make you a deal,” I say.
The Wolf Queen turns to me, silver brows raised, and Mokosh is instantly forgotten. “What deal?”
“Give Hal to me for the remainder of his century, and I will hold onto him. I won’t let go even for an instant, no matter what you do, no matter how you try to take him from me. I will hold back your curse. And when the three days are over and his hundred years are fulfilled—he won’t belong to you anymore.”
“He will belong to you, I suppose,” the Wolf Queen scoffs.
I look at Mokosh, who crouches miserably on her throne, and I am sick that the Queen thinks I would want to own anyone. “He will belong to himself. The old magic—the first magic—will free him.”
She considers me. “And if you fail, girl-child?”
I stare her down, hold my head high. “I have set my terms. You set yours.”
She smiles, deep and dangerous. “If you fail, you both will belong to me, and be bound to my court for all of time.”
“Echo, no.”
I look over at Hal. Tears slide down his cheeks. He throws himself against his knife-sharp bonds, struggling and swearing as he tries to get free. Blood seeps into the hollow of his neck, pours down his arms. “Don’t bargain with her! She’ll trick you. With her it is always a trick. You have to run. You have to go now, and don’t look back! I’ll not have you trapped here, too. I couldn’t bear it. Please, Echo. Please go.”
“You hear how he pleads with you,” says the Queen. “But time slips away. Choose now, what you will do
.”
“I’m sorry, Hal, but I’m not leaving here without you.”
He sags where he sits, his whole body shuddering. “Please, Echo. Please.”
But I turn once more to the Wolf Queen. “I invoke the old magic. I accept your terms.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
RELEASE THE BOY, MOKOSH,” SAYS THE Wolf Queen, without a sideways glance at her daughter.
“Release him yourself. I will not be your pet. You do not own me.”
In one swift movement, the Queen sweeps to Mokosh’s throne, and grabs her daughter’s muzzle with one clawed hand. “I do own you, just as I owned your father, just as I own your filthy half-siblings. You will do as I say.”
Mokosh’s ears are pinned back flat against her head. “You don’t have any intention of keeping your promise to me, do you?”
The Queen digs her claws in deeper, making Mokosh flinch. “You could never be anything more than a hideous creature in a beautiful dress.”
Mokosh jerks away, the Wolf Queen’s claws tearing at her face. Blood grazes her silver fur. “I should have known better than to make a deal with you.”
The Queen smiles, her white teeth curving up over her lips, and touches Mokosh’s wound with one finger. “Now do as I command. Release the boy.”
Mokosh growls, but obeys, stepping down from her throne and over to Hal’s. She frees his neck first, loosing the band with a metallic click, then his wrists, his ankles. She steps back, her furred hands balled into fists. She’s trembling. “I’m sorry, Echo.” Her voice is so quiet I barely hear her. “Save him. If you can.” And then she slinks back to her throne, bows her head into her hands. Her shoulders shake.
“Well?” says the Wolf Queen. “Stand, boy. Meet your fate.”
Hal takes a ragged breath and tries to stand, but his legs fold underneath him and he collapses to the ground. I am beside him in an instant, my arms around him, hoisting him back to his feet. I wonder how long he has sat bound to the Wolf Queen’s throne.
Echo North Page 22
