The locket. Still waiting.
If she died here, the construct won. Kept existing. Kept feeding on fear. Eventually grew strong enough to leave Hollow Oak and wear her face in other towns. Other lives. Other people who'd never know they were harboring something that shouldn't be real.
Maren bit down hard on her tongue. Pain flared, sharp and clarifying. Blood filled her mouth, copper and salt.
She spat it in the doppelgänger's face.
The construct recoiled, shrieking. Where blood touched, its form destabilized, smoke rising from contact points.
"Blood magic," it hissed. "You'd use blood magic?"
"I'd use anything." Maren dragged herself backward across ice. "Anything to stop you."
"Then you're what they say you are. Dangerous. Cursed. Wrong."
"Maybe." Maren's hand found the discarded branch. "But I'm still here."
She swung upward, catching the doppelgänger under its jaw. The blow connected solid this time, destabilized by blood, driven by desperation.
The construct stumbled back, its form wavering.
Maren pressed forward, swinging again. And again. Each impact bought seconds. Bought distance. Bought time for something, anything, to shift in her favor.
The doppelgänger recovered, reforming fully. "You can't win this."
"Don't have to win." Maren's vision swam but she kept her feet. "Just have to survive until someone finds the locket."
"No one's looking for it."
"He is." She said it with certainty she didn't quite feel. "Tristan's looking. And he'll find it."
"Your soldier?" The construct laughed. "He's back in town. Probably facing the Council right now, defending a witch who abandoned him at dawn. Explaining why his judgment isn't compromised while everyone watches him lie."
The words hit harder than shadow strikes. But Maren held her ground.
"He'll come," she said. "And when he does, this ends."
"Optimism." The doppelgänger circled again. "How disappointing. I thought you'd learned better by now."
It struck fast. Shadow-claws raking across Maren's ribs, tearing through cloak and shirt and skin. She hit the ice hard, breath knocked out, blood spreading dark against white snow.
The construct loomed over her, solid and terrible and smiling.
"Last chance," it said. "Give in. Let me end this quickly."
Maren's hand pressed against the ice beneath her. Cold. Solid. Real.
Somewhere under this frozen surface, her mother had hidden the locket.
She just had to survive long enough for someone to find it.
Tristan. Please.
The doppelgänger reached for her again.
30
TRISTAN
