“What are we doing?” he shouted. “We have to go! We have to find her! We can still catch them!” He fumbled his tether free of the saddle, and gathered himself to dismount.
“Rune, don’t,” Náli snapped. “The snow is—”
Fwoomp. The snow swallowed him whole save an inky tail of hair that flicked out over the topmost crust. He shouted something unintelligible, and Náli sighed.
“Pull him out,” he instructed, and Valgrind burrowed his head down into the snow. He withdrew a moment later, hauling Rune out by the back of his tunic.
Rune sputtered, and kicked, and swung his arms, and showered snow everywhere.
Valgrind craned his neck around so Náli was face-to-face with Rune’s spitting, cursing, red-cheeked visage. Close enough that Náli could slap him—which he did.
His hand left a gratifying red mark behind, each finger distinct, and snapped Rune’s head to the side. When he turned back, he no longer looked panicked, but, thankfully, furious. Good: an angry man was a man who could take action. Fear and panic were nothing but wasted effort.
“Shut up and listen to me,” Náli said, not as himself, but as the Corpse Lord. His was a laughable sort of authority, but by some miracle, Rune shut his gob and went still in Valgrind’s grasp. “We can’t go after Tessa because Tessa’s nothere.”
Rune blinked at him, uncomprehending, and then scowled. He pointed toward the capital, somewhere beyond the peaks. “Of course she’s not here. That Sel took her! Which is why we need to give chase! Our drakes are faster than the big one, and…what?” He broke off, frowning, when Náli shook his head. “You turn back if you want to, coward, but that’s my wife! I’m going after her!”
Náli almost slapped him again. He said, “That Sel opened a portal and took her through it. We can’t go after her, because it’s not a matter of flying faster. She’sgone, Rune. And we can’t follow.”
“What…but she…and he was…thedrake…what?” He closed his eyes and shook his head so hard Náli thought he might dislodge something important. “No, no. You don’t know that. You can’t. Did you see a portal?”
Why Tessa had chosenthisbrother, Náli would never understand. “I didn’t need to. I felt it.” When Rune gathered breath to argue, expression bewildered, he said, “I was born with magic. I might not be able to use it the same way the Sels can, coming and going through portals, but I can feel when they do it.” Like in the clearing the night of the ambush, all the fine hair on his arms and the back of his neck had stood on end; a headache had blossomed, a sharp point like a dagger tip in each temple; the diamond around his neck had tugged sharply at him, answering the call of power without being able to channel it usefully. “The moment she fell, he opened a portal, and then it closed again, and they’re gone. He took her.”
Náli allowed himself to soften a fraction, when Rune’s expression broke. “I’m sorry. I know this is difficult.”
“What do you know?” Rune snarled, eyes glistening with unshed tears. “What do you bloody know?” he repeated, and started struggling to get loose, kicking and thrashing again.
Valgrind dropped him.Fwoomp. Back into the snow. This time, a lone braid was all that stuck up out of the hole, diamond-studded beads glinting like ice in the harsh, upper-atmosphere sunlight.
Muffled shouting issued from the snow.
Náli pulled his leg up and hooked it over the swell of the saddle, getting comfortable. “I’m not helping you this time. Use those big, Frodesson shoulders to dig yourself out.”
Rune floundered long enough that Valgrind trilled an inquiry, and Náli began to worry that he might suffocate down there. But, finally, a gloved hand emerged, and then another, and Rune hauled himself up and up, panting and red-faced, before finally flopping delicately back across the fragile ice crust atop the piled-up snow. “Fuck you,” he huffed. “You fucking brat.”
Yes, Náli reminded himself. Angry was useful.
He said, “Would youpleasegather what few wits you have and actually listen to the words I’m saying to you?”
“I am listening,” Rune said, sourly, still out of breath. He dragged a damp sleeve across his eyes and nose and breathed clouds of vapor up to join the tumbling quilt of actual clouds overhead. “She’s gone. There was a portal.”
“Yes.”
“A portal towhere?”
“I don’t know,” Náli said, with true regret. “To some secret, safe location. Perhaps even to Seles.”
Rune cursed, quietly.
Nali hesitated. “For what it’s worth, I don’t know what it’s like to have a wife, no. But I know what it feels like to love someone so completely that thought of losing him is…intolerable.”
Rune lay still on his back, but his lashes flickered as he glanced down his body toward Náli. His jaw tightened, and his throat worked as he swallowed.
“And you haven’tlosther,” Náli continued. “Not in a final sense.”
“But I have no idea where she is.”
“No. But we know that the emperor is in Aquitaine, and that’s where we’re headed.”
