I couldn’t bring myself to answer in words. Instead, I set forward on my assigned path, glad to let the snow whip into a cold wall betweenus.
Within five feet, the men’s voices behind me had turned into a low, indistinguishable rumble. Within ten, I could hear nothing but the soft, inhuman hiss of snow and wind all around me, and every muscle in my shoulders eased in gratitude at the pure relief ofit.
The sky was a mix of pale grey and white. The snow rushed past my bubble of protection, leaving me dry and warm and perfectly, beautifully alone withinit.
For the first time in four months, there was no one at all to witness me—or to overhear me, either. I could have screamed or raged or finally wept with full abandon for everything that I had lost through my own recklessness, and everything that would have been so different by now ifonly…
No.I took deep, steadying breaths and forced all thoughts ofif onlyfrom my mind. I would not allow myself to be that pitifulanymore.
I had given up all of my last, desperate hopes of ever retrieving my magic two long months ago. I might never again recognize myself without my magic...but there was only one way to survive the bleak, powerless future that lay before me. I had to lock away my simmering fury, grief and fear and think only of what lay around me now, in each instant, without ever letting my mind travel to what might happennext.
So I held my lantern high before me and crossed the bare white landscape with long, ground-eating strides that stretched my skirts with every step. I breathed in deep, and I let myself glory in every hiss of snow against my borrowed boots as I strode further and further from the suffocation of the house party and everything that awaited methere.
I was free for this single, icy interlude, and I would absorb every moment of it as agift.
The pebbles and crushed shells of the Cosgraves’ long front drive crunched beneath the snow at first, but they were soon replaced by the elegant gardens that encircled the house, framed with sculpted knotwork hedges for protection. Snow clung and glittered on the bare brown branches, all carefully maintained in their ancient patterns. This deep in the elven dales, only the most reckless landowner would fail to add such protections to her property, no matter how old and how entrenched the treaties between our twinned nations mightbe.
Luckily, the fairies had already made their own annual pilgrimage deep underground after Samhain, so there were no dangerous fey lights to glitter and distract me from my path across the countryside, nor mushroom circles to carefully avoid. As for the elves…well, who ever knew what the elves were doing in their ancient halls within the hills and dales of this county? Nothing that they ever cared to share with humans, that was certain. We paid our tolls to use their land and lived in peace, as we had for centuries. That was all thatmattered.
Perhaps there were scholars who could have told me more of the elves’ secrets, but I realized now that I had never thought to ask in all my hard-won time at the Great Library of Trinivantium. After all, I’d grown up outside these dales, with nothing in my own daily life down south to pique my curiosity…and back then, I’d had my own magic to focus on without worrying over theirs.That, as far as I was concerned, was ancient history—and it was my brother who was the historian in ourfamily.
As I left the knotwork gardens behind, the landscape ahead turned rough and rocky, and I found myself, for the very first time, rather regretting that lost opportunity forknowledge.
The reality of elves might be lost in the mists of time in my own home county, but here, I could quite easily imagine a pair of elven riders, white and glittering as the snow themselves, emerging from a hidden doorway in any one of the high, sprawling hills that rose aroundme.
There were no neat, plowed fields in this area; only sheep and cattle roamed the bleak beauty of this land, and they were all safely enclosed for the winter. Lady Cosgrave’s tenants themselves were, too, in tightly shuttered cottages scattered here and there along the rocky ground. Lights glowed through the thick cloths that covered the windows, but not a single curtain twitched to mark mypassage.
It all felt astonishingly freeing. I found myself swinging the lantern in my hand as I walked up the rocky hills, crunching my way through the thin layer of snow and humming a scandalously bawdy old magicians’ ballad—one that I had never been meant to learn from my fellow students at the Library when I’d finally, reluctantly been admitted to theircompany.
I had learnt it, though, of course, absorbing that knowledge with the same greedy joy as the spellwork that I’d fought so hard to master. I still remembered the night I’d first heard it—in Trinivantium’s local coffeehouse, which we’d all tumbled into for the evening, collectively tipsy with jubilation from leftover magical residue and the exhilaration of a challenging project well-mastered. As we all found our places along the two long, battered tables in the dark, crowded room, my black academic robes covered every inch of my gown every bit as neatly as the others’ robes covered their own trousers and coats; and I think several of them had nearly forgotten by then, after all the initial noise and drama of my arrival, that I wasn’t one of their gender as well as theircolleague.
It was by far the best evening I had ever had in my life. Free of all chaperones and disapproving tutors, we all sang together late into the night and sent spells crackling with sparkling showers of light over our heads. Andthen…
When the coffeehouse owner finally, pointedly began to extinguish the candles around us, well after midnight, Rajaram Wrexham had detached his long, lanky figure from the opposite wall, where he’d spent all evening absorbed in conversation with the other scholarshipstudents—
—or at least, he hadseemedto be utterly absorbed, every time I’d sneaked a secret glance in hisdirection—
—and walked with unmistakable purpose straight tome.
“We’d better escort each other home, don’t you think, Harwood? The streets are dark this late atnight.”
“You think I can’t protect myself?” Idemanded.
His dark eyebrows shot up in response. “Hardly. I’ve seen you at work,remember?”
Aha. Adelicious frisson of satisfaction ran through me as I met his intent gaze and finally realized:hehad been watchingme,too...
Crack!
The unmistakable sound of a branch snapping came from directly behind me, startling me out of my reverie. My heart juddered uncomfortably in my chest as I scanned the rocky hillside around me through the shimmer of falling snow, taking in my surroundings for the first time in far toolong.
There were no trees on this barren spot of land. So where had that snapping branch comefrom?
The last ones I remembered passing had been…Oh.
I turned with mingled dread and anticipation, already knowing, somehow, what I wouldsee.
Wrexham stood three feet behindme.
