A startled laugh cracked out of her before she could strangle it. The sound felt foreign in this place, a flare of light in all the shadow. She tried to turn it into a scoff, narrowing her eyes at him, but the edges softened anyway.
“Idiot.”
“Pot, kettle.”
Ten
The Peaks did not hurry to greet them.
They loomed on the horizon, jagged and spectral, their crowns pale with snow despite the season. The closer the road bent toward them, the quieter the world became. Birds abandoned the branches. Even the air thinned, edged with a steely tang that tasted like old coins.
Maude rode in silence, her chin tugged low against the rising chill. Her focus stayed on the path. On the way the shadows deepened in the underbrush, stretching into strange, too-long shapes.
Bailey had taken her this way once. Years ago, before his hair had gone entirely silver, before her sarcasm had hardened into a weapon. He’d pointed out the signs—the way moss clung heavier on one side of the trees, how the wind carried wrong in the hollows. Places where magic lay thin as parchment, easy to rip.
The Duskmire had always been hungry.
Now she felt its hunger pressing against her skin.
Ahead, Wesley rode straight-backed, easy, one hand loose on the reins. She hated that he hadn’t cracked a joke for miles. The absence of his usual chatter left her unsettled.
Idiot, she reminded herself.Not a bastard.
Idiot was safer. Bastards could wound. Idiots you could dismiss.
Still, when his head tilted slightly, sunlight catching on the line of his jaw, she felt something traitorous stir in her chest. Not attraction, she told herself firmly. Just nerves. Just the strangeness of being here, of not being alone.
Pickles snorted, and Maude muttered, “Traitor,” under her breath.
The road dwindled to little more than deer tracks, trees knit close together, branches clawing across the sky to blot out the last of the light. The horses stepped carefully, their hoofbeats muffled by packed needles. The Duskmire Peaks didn’t welcome strangers. That was Bailey’s first lesson, and Maude felt it keenly now.
“Charming place for a stroll,” Wesley murmured at last, his voice pitched low.
“Don’t get cocky—it’s not impressed with you either.”
He glanced over, and there it was—the twitch of his mouth, that smirk she’d been waiting for. But it didn’t land the way it usually did. It looked like armor, not amusement.
They pressed deeper until the first sign emerged from the mist. It rose pale from the earth, tendrils coiling around tree trunks like restless spirits. And then it moved. Fast.
A shape coalesced in the fog, lupine, with eyes like lantern coals. Another followed. Wolves, their bodies half air, half shadow, their teeth bared and glinting wet though nothing solid moored them.
Maude’s hand flew to the pouch at her belt. “Spectral beasts,” she hissed. “Don’t let them surround us.”
Wesley’s horse danced nervously under him, but his hands stayed steady. “Tell me what to do.”
The words did something unhelpful to her chest. The immediate trust.
“Salt,” she said, digging in her satchel. She tossed him a small pouch. “Circle wide. They can’t cross it.”
They split without another word, riding opposite arcs through the ferns and damp bracken. Maude leaned, scattering a pale ribbon that hissed where it touched the ground. The mist wolves stalked sideways, testing for gaps. One lunged and struck the white line. The impact rippled the fog that made its chest, then recoiled as if shocked. It snarled, a sound like breath dragged over glass.
“Left!” Wesley called.
She adjusted, closing the loop between a jut of stone and a fallen birch. He mirrored her on the right, salt streaming steady from his fist. Then he wheeled his horse inside the incomplete circle and cut hard left.
Two wolves overshot, momentum carrying them straight into the not-quite-visible mesh. They hit the ring and howled—an awful, splitting sound—as their forms fizzed against the salt like fat on a griddle.
Wesley glanced at her—hair wild, eyes burning green, salt flashing from her hand like lightning in a storm. His mouth curved, breath ragged. “Pretty.”
