After my prayer, I scour the ravine for weapons, but best I can tell, in the dim light, nothing was left behind. Not here at least. I’ll need to move northward like Rhonin said, back toward their camp, and hope to find something there.
When I hear my name on the wind at my back, I’m sure I’m imagining things. I stop, tears building on my lashes. I’ve heard Finn’s voice so many times since the fire. When I was with the Eastlanders, I kept expecting my big brother to appear and save me, but he never came. I could hear him laughing at me, telling me to stop being a baby and get up and save myself.
And I tried. I think he would be proud of me for making it this far. I still miss him with my whole, broken heart. I miss my mother, mysisters. My father. He might still be out there. Another reason I have to stop crying and keep moving.
So I trudge onward, but again, I hear my name, drifting on the wind.
Slowly, I turn a glance over my shoulder and wipe a half-frozen tear from my cheek. In the pale light of early morning, one of the bodies I left behind moves.
With his long, dark hair and shredded tunic, the Witch Collector pushes his hulking form to his knees. He struggles to stand, but after a long moment, his body unfurls, shoulders rolling back, feet spread wide, hands fisted like hammers at his sides.
A cold wind snaps through the ravine, and a funnel of snowflakes whirls around Alexus, whipping through his hair and tunic. Behind him, a mist rolls into the gorge, slipping around him. It takes the shape of a man—or perhaps something more than a man. Whatever or whoever it is, it’s standing a few feet away from the Witch Collector, a snowy figure in white.
From within the mist, three white wolves emerge with predatory grace and howl like they mean to wake the dead as they fall in line behind the Witch Collector like a fanged army.
And the earth rumbles.
Iopen my eyes to the sound of cawing crows and jerk like I’m falling. At first, I think I’m still draped over the back of the horse that carried me from the ravine and through the forest, but perhaps I’m still dreaming. Only my dream was of Alexus, me lying in his arms in the cave.
That isnotwhere I am now.
I’m in a tent, on my side. The air is bitterly cold, freezing my breath in soft plumes, the light gloomy yet bright to my eyes. I turn my ear, listening to the crows and the tent canvas whipping sharply in the wind.
“Ah. I thought you’d never wake, lovely.”
That voice sends a hard shiver through my bones. It isn’t the voice I long to hear, but it’s familiar, nonetheless.
“Make her face me.”
Suddenly, Rhonin looms above me. My instinct is to punch him right in his perfectly angular nose, but my wrists are tied in front of me, restrained even further by a rope that connects my hands to my feet.
With one hand, he grabs the knotted mass at my wrists andhauls me up, making me gasp around the pain settled deep in my shoulders and injured arm. Without a second glance, he returns to his station.
At the Prince of the East’s left hand.
“Welcome to Winter Road, Raina Bloodgood,” the prince says. His face appears gaunt under the faint illumination of a nearby oil lamp, and even in the weak light, his crimson shadows are visible, a twitching and squirming halo.
He sits two feet away on a tall, thick piece of chopped tree trunk, elbows on his knees. He wears the bronze leathers of his men, stained with so much blood they’re nearly the color of the Eastlander flag leaning in the corner behind him. His long hands are covered with cuts, like he punched through glass, and his fingertips and ears are black with frostbite. At his right side stands General Vexx, hands behind his back, looking too pleased with himself as he stares down at me with a smug expression I want to rip from his face.
They’re all here. The three men I want to end. So very different from the men I thought I’d have killed by now when all of this began.
The prince stands then squats in front of me, close enough that I note the scent of ash, and the spicy aroma of ground yarrow root, packed into the gash that travels across his face. Black hair stubbles his chin and jawline, but the skin around the wound looks corrupt and fevered.
Inwardly, I laugh. It looks like misery.
I hope it is.
The prince’s eyes are soft and roving like he knows me. It dawns on me that he knows me far better than I wish.
He reaches to touch my cheek, but I jerk away. Surprisingly, he lets his hand fall as a wicked grin curves the undamaged corner of his mouth. “You should get very comfortable with me, Raina,” he says. “We’re going to become the closest of friends.”
Like our first go around, I spit at him. This time I hit my mark, right on his face.
Nostrils flaring, he takes a deep breath and exhales slowly, tempering the anger burning in his eyes. Without breaking the stare that pulses between us, he holds his hand out at his side. Vexx hands him a kerchief, and the prince carefully wipes away my disrespect.
“I’d planned to kill you,” he says. “Painfully. But now you have use.” Again, he moves to take my chin, and again, I draw back. But this time, he doesn’t let me. He ensnares my jaw and—with fingertips digging painfully—yanks me within an inch of his rotting mouth. “The reality you need to understand, Miss Bloodgood, is that you are mine now. Keeper. Healer. I’m sure there are more mysteries to discover behind that beautiful face and all those pretty witch’s marks. You can reveal your skills willingly, or I will find ways to unearth them myself. I can be kind, or I can be your worst nightmare. Your choice.”
He shoves me away and flicks his hand at his shoulder. Vexx moves to the edge of the tent and draws back the flap, stepping outside where daylight fades from the sky.
