My short jaunts in the saddle with Gavin had not transformed me into a horsewoman. My legs ached after the first day, and by the third I thought I might never be able to sit down again. But that was nothing compared to the cold. The moment we climbed into the foothills the air thinned, sucking the warmth from our lungs and leaching the color from our cheeks. Soon, sheer snow-draped peaks loomed above us like stone castles, forbidding against the roiling sky. Luca and I had no camping gear to speak of, so we barely slept, only stopping to rest the horses. Then we huddled together beneath my fur cloak, sharing body warmth and forgoing speech, because the wind just stole our words and wailed them around the mountaintops.
But the horses weren’t bred for this terrain. Their thin coats stood no chance against the frigid winds; their shod hooves slipped and slid on steep icy paths. At last, Luca reined his mount to the edge of the path and began untacking her.
“What are you doing?” I shouted through the sheeting snow.
“Sending her home!” he hollered back. He unloaded the saddle and his near-empty pack. “One more day of this, and she’ll be nothing but tiger food. Or worse, she’ll slip off a cliff and kill us both.”
The vapor of my curse turned to ice on my lips. He was right. I slid out of the saddle, ungainly, and began tugging at my gelding’s bridle. Before long, both horses were disappearing into the white blur down the mountain. Part of me wished I could go with them.
“What now?”
Luca looked up from fashioning a kind of cloak out of the horses’ saddle blankets. His hair and stubble were frosted white. He pointed a finger into the blizzard. “We go that way.”
I squinted up. “How can you tell?”
“Once I’ve been somewhere once, I always know how to get back.” Luca shrugged, and hoisted his pack. “Bit of Tavendel magic, I suppose.”
After that, we didn’t talk. Luca led, and I followed. There was something resembling a road, for a bit, but that fell away into a jumble of knife-sharp boulders that sliced the soles of my boots. The blizzard blew itself out at last, leaving drifts of thigh-deep snow piled beneath a clear ruby sky. The cold that fell after drove blades into my chest and made me forget I had fingers.
That’s when I got scared.
I wished I could say I looked death in the face, and smiled. I didn’t. I begged the elements. I pleaded with nature. I made promises I couldn’t keep to gods I didn’t believe in.
And when the endless waves of white finally broke around a platoon of black-cloaked soldats on huge black horses, it felt like salvation.
They saw us before we saw them. Their heavy chargers bore down on us, clouds of vapor blooming from their noses. Pale faces behind ruffs of fur; metal eyes and emerald signats and naked dristic swords. I pushed my hood back with shaking, frozen fingers, and coughed frigid air into my aching throat.
“My lady?” One of the soldats nudged his mount forward. I recognized his grey eyes and boyish dimples.Calvet.I sagged with relief.
The captain cocked her head. “You recognize her?”
“She’s the Duskland Dauphine.” Calvet’s voice shifted from surprise to urgency. He reined his horse toward me, then leaned down and clasped my numb forearm. “Hurry—let’s get them out of the cold. Or the commandant will have our emeralds.”
I waited to see Luca lifted up behind the captain before I surrendered to Calvet’s grasp. He dragged me onto the saddle in front of him and wrapped his fur cloak around me. For a moment, I sagged into the blissful warmth. Then every nerve in each of my numb extremities woke up. Pain vaulted up my arms and needled my legs. And as we swept away across the colorless plain, I suffered in excruciating silence, because I knew—I knew this was the price of being alive.
White snow, black mountains, red sky—a hypnotic rhythm of color flashing by in time to the broad muffled hoof-falls of the horses. I must have slept, because when I woke it was to sounds and smells I hadn’t learned to miss this past tide: the shriek of metal machinery, the clang of tools, the bitter-black scent of smelting fires running hot on coal, men’s dank voices echoing from the earth.
The Loup-Garou had brought us to a mine.
I sat straighter as we cantered through a rough, semi-permanent camp. Snow had been cleared away for rows of canvas tents and shanties of ice bricks and shale. A huge bonfire glowered at the center of camp; the smell of roasting meat made my mouth water. Beyond, a gaping hole had been blasted into a looming rock face. Metal rails led away into the shadows with the rattle and ring of distant contraptions.
The platoon reined to a halt in front of the pit.
“My lord!” Calvet called out.
A blot of darkness at the mouth of the cavern moved. My chest contracted. Sunder stepped out into the ruddy light. Although he wore thick furs, his head was bare—his pale hair was a knife against the darkness yawning at his back. As always, he was more fathomable here, in the mountains of his birth; as though he had been crushed beneath the weight of stone and ice and been transformed into something stronger, harder, brighter.
“Yes, Calvet?” His eyes slicked over us without much care—he seemed far away. “What is it?”
“Lord, it’s—” Calvet swallowed nervously.
“It’s me,” I finished, pushing out of Calvet’s furs and sitting straighter. Part of me didn’t want Sunder to see me like this—chapped and windblown and frozen half to death—but another part of me reveled in it. Let him see my strength. Let him see my resilience. Let him seeme. “I come to beg sanctuary of Belsyre.”
His eyes stuttered on mine. He froze, then strode quickly toward us. I threw my leg over the pommel of the saddle, trying to look haughty as I slid to the ground.
“My lady—” Calvet cautioned.
“Demoiselle—”
