A familiar, sick vertigo spins in my head. My hand, thick and clumsy in my mitten, wants to find my hair, to twist, to pull. I clench my fist inside the wool instead, my nails biting into my palm.
I am a curse. I am a fool. I have done it all again. I’ve brought the fire, and now, I’m running from it.
But this time, I’m not running alone.
"Come on," I whisper, my voice a white puff of air that the wind snatches away. "We have to go."
We move. I lead us past the last hovel, past the splintered, broken palisade that Threk’s fury saved. My feet are heavy, my boots crunching loud in the snow.
The mountains loom, a jagged black wall of teeth against the pale, bruised sky. They look like they could eat us alive.
This is a hopeless quest. Maeve’s “legend” is a desperate prayer, a story told by a woman who needed us gone. I am leading a wounded creature on a fool’s errand, all to soothe a guilt that will never, ever sleep.
I look back at him. He is still limping, favoring the leg that the raider’s blade bit. The wound on his shoulder is a raw, dark patch on his gray-green skin. He will die in the snow. I will find him frozen, just as I found him bleeding. And it will be my fault. Another one.
My breath hitches, a small, painful sob that freezes on my lips.
I turn my gaze forward, focusing on the grueling, uphill path. I am a ghost. A woman waiting for my penance.
But Threk… Threk is not a ghost.
As the weak, watery sun begins to stain the sky, I realize I am not leading him. I am just the one walking in front.
He moves with a purpose I do not have. In the hovel, he was a giant in a shoebox, all clumsy limbs and pent-up, vibrating mass.
Out here… he is magnificent.
He moves like a great, stalking cat. His massive, clawed feet, which should have been crashing through the snow, are placed with a silent, deliberate care. He is still a mountain, but he is a mountain that glides. His head is on a constant, slow swivel, his brutish face turning this way and that. His nostrils flare, deep, rumbling inhales of the frigid air.
He is reading the world in a language I cannot speak. He is not a thing. He is a predator. He is in his element. The hovel was his cage. This… this is his home.
And I am the one who is clumsy. I’m the one who is weak. I am the liability.
He stops; more like he freezes.
In one half-step, he becomes a statue of granite and ice. His head is cocked. He holds up one massive, clawed hand. Wait.
I freeze, too, my heart leaping into my throat. "What? What is it?"
I hear nothing. Only the high, thin whine of the wind through the barren trees.
Threk’s growl is so low it is not a sound. It is a vibration I feel in my chest. He is not looking at me. He is looking past me, down the slope.
I am about to ask again when he moves.
It is a blur. He is not a predator now; he is a force. His hand, the size of a shield, slams into my chest. He pushes me, a non-verbal, urgent command that knocks the air from my lungs and sends me backward.
I cry out, falling, tumbling into a deep drift of snow behind a towering granite boulder. I’m half-buried, my face packed with ice, sputtering, a hot, angry protest on my lips.
And he is on me.
He looms over the drift, a shadow blotting out the sky. His other hand, vast and rough, slams over my mouth. His palm is calloused, scarred, and smells of pine and old blood. It covers my entire lower face, from my nose to my chin.
Terror. My heart hammers, a wild, trapped bird.
His red eyes are burning. Not with the red haze of battle. With a fierce, intelligent warning.
He presses a single, black, dagger-sized claw to his own misshapen lips.
