The monk’s face fell.
“Don’t worry,” I told her briskly. “I’ll manage.”
She glanced up at me. “I hope you’ll tell the Warden what’s happened here. Errik may be dead, but others will rise to take his place. And after tonight…”
She didn’t have to finish. I saw the hollow acceptance right there on her face. If anyone had seen her help me, she was finished. Someone would kill her that very night.
“I’ll tell her. You have my word.” I paused. It seemed cruel to leave her, but Gareth’s breathing was growing shallower by the minute. I couldn’t linger.
“What is your name?” I asked her.
“Serra.” She smiled a little. “Serralin, but my sister called me Serra.”
“Serra.” I touched her arm, gave it a slight squeeze. “Thank you for what you’ve done tonight.”
Then I gathered Gareth as close as I could and plunged into the storm.
Chapter 24
The cold slammed into me like a giant frigid fist, but the wind was worse—so strong and howling that if I’d been anyone else, it would have blown both Gareth and me off the cliffs and into the sea. Not even my father could have kept his footing.
I plowed through the snow, which reached just past my knees, and kept a close watch on the ground. My eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness, but even my keen sentinel vision kept taking us too close to the cliffs. The shrieking wind tried to push me off course, and the shivering weight of Gareth in my arms made me cold with terror. I couldn’t look down at him. I couldn’t, or I would see the blood darkening his neck and lose my nerve.
Finally I came to a creaking wooden dock piled high with snow. I thought it was the same one we’d arrived at before, but I couldn’t be certain. The snow hid everything except for my ragged tracks and the vague looming shape of the Cloisters up on the hill, far behind us. Squinting across the water, I thought the dark island in the distance looked familiar, but in truth it could have been any other island in the world.
There was no time for doubt. Gently I lay Gareth in the snow, stillnot looking at him. He’d gone deathly still, a fact I chose to ignore as I kicked through the drifts around the dock, looking for a boat. Any boat, even if it had holes in the hull. I could row fast enough to get us to that island before it sank.
My foot hit something hard and hollow-sounding. I dug through the snow with my bare hands, heedless of the stinging cold, and unearthed a rickety dinghy. I didn’t even take the time to sound it; oars lay inside it, and that was enough. I tromped back through the snow to retrieve Gareth—still not looking at him, Iwould notlook at him—and put him in the boat, wrenched it out of its snowbank, grabbed the frozen oars with my frozen hands, and rowed.
The wind was worse out on the water, but my power warmed me, and I pushed through the gale as fast as I could move the oars through the rough black sea. Waves sloshed over my feet and sprayed me in the face, and by the time we reached the island I’d been aiming for, I was breathing hard, every muscle in my body screaming in pain. I drove the boat hard into the shore, jumped out into the freezing water, and gathered Gareth into my arms once more. My traitor eyes glanced down at him, saw his white face, the ice crusting his wet hair, the blood soaking my makeshift bandage.
I gritted my teeth, turned into the wind, and began to pray—angry prayers in an angry rhythm.He will not die. Do not let him die. If he dies, I will hate you forever. He will not die.
As I prayed, my mother’s face came into my mind. The image made me even angrier, gave me a boost of energy.If he dies, I will hate you forever.
There was a little town on this island, far off to my right through the whirling snow—a cluster of dark buildings and a few warmly lit windows—but I didn’t trust it. Someone there might be loyal to Errik or to Kilraith. They might have helped murder the Blessed Abbot.
I turned away from the town and kept pushing through the snowuntil I found another dock on the far side of the island and several fishing boats laden with nets and crates. I chose the sturdiest-looking one and threw its gear into the water to lighten the load, then settled Gareth against the hull’s shallow wall, climbed in, and started rowing.
With each pull of the oars through the water, I repeated my angry prayers, but the distance between this island and the next one was longer, the water choppier. By the time we reached the shore, my fingers and toes were burning from the cold and my prayers had become wordless bursts of desperate feeling. When I lifted Gareth’s still body into my arms, I bent to kiss his frozen head, a sob trapped in my throat.
I began to lose all sense of where I was, how many islands I’d rowed to and trudged across and rowed away from. I could no longer feel my burning fingers and toes, which frightened me—I’d seen frostbite before, and I already had one maimed hand—but I couldn’t allow myself to think of that. I had to get us to the mainland and then find shelter, a fire, a healer. I had to save Gareth. Iwouldsave Gareth. That was all I knew. And even when I finally lost my footing and pitched forward, my mind was calm, and my thoughts came slowly.You’re going to fall. Then you’re going to get back up and keep going.
But I didn’t fall; something warm and solid caught me. Golden eyes flashed at me from beneath a furred hood, and a voice I knew said, “Give him to me.” Then another voice—deeper, also familiar—said, “Mara, my girl,” and I saw my father’s face through the snow.
I clutched Gareth to my chest and stumbled backward. I was hallucinating. “Who are you?” I demanded. My tired mind made quick calculations. I’d have to drop Gareth into the snow, hope the landing was soft enough, then dispatch whoever this was with a roundhouse kick and a swift blow to the head. I wouldn’t hold back. I drew myself up, summoning every scrap of power I could find.
“He’ll die if we don’t hurry,” said the first voice. “Only revenantscan resurrect the dead. And if it comes to that, he will not be the same man he is now. He will be like your friend Nesset—half alive, half rotten. A walking corpse.”
I blinked hard, willing my vision to clear. But the woman was still there.
“Mother?” I said sharply.
She came closer and touched my arm. Her hands were so warm I wanted to cry. I caught her scent—mint and rosemary, one of the few lingering scent memories from my childhood—and nearly relented. But I had to be sure.
I stepped back from her. “What did I whisper to you on that day the Warden took me to Rosewarren?”
“That you had taken my emerald brooch, not Gemma. It was hidden on your shelf behind your favorite book,The Secret of the Willow Tree.” She hesitated, gave me a sad smile. “That you weren’t angry with me. That what was happening wasn’t my fault.”
