We leave then, making it to the path faster than I expect. Again, we travel the way Hel says, avoiding the mountains, but after several hours,the snowfall blurs the world once more, and the miserable cold in my bones returns.
We keep going, struggling to see through the blizzard swirling around us. Alexus stops and tries to light the lamp using flint, steel, and tinder, but he can’t get a spark to catch with such strong wind. Eventually, using the blanket to shield the wind and snow, the lamp lights, giving off soft illumination. We ride on, but we won’t have that light for long. The lamp has little oil.
Like before, I call out to Nephele from my mind.Tuetha tah, if you can hear me, help us. Bring us through this wood, bring us to Winterhold. Please do not let me die here.I try again, in Old Elikesh, every single word.
Nothing happens, and I find myself fighting back tears.
But my attention snags on a bough hanging over the path. The tree it belongs to is massive and crooked, bent hard to the right, with knotty bark that looks like a face peeking through the snow. I noticed it earlier. It’s the same tree.
I’m not the only one who notices.
“We’re going in circles.” Alexus draws back on Mannus’s reins. “We need to turn around. Head for the fork in the path and take the route toward the mountains. You’ve walked that ground, Hel. Can you lead the way?”
“Why don’t you confer with your witches?” She stops the mare, jerking on the reins too hard, her voice cutting with a razor’s edge. “I can’t know how they manipulate this construct.”
I watch Alexus from beneath my hood as he lifts the lamp to better see Hel. His chilly stare lingers on her, but he slides his eyes my way and speaks to me alone.
“We aren’t continuing like this.” He raises his voice over the whistling wind. “I’ve been more than patient with ourguide, but this stops now. Are you with me or not?”
Alexus Thibault is still such a stranger, but I know beyond doubt that what he didn’t say is that if I’mnotwith him, I’m on my own. He’s already proven that wrong once, much as he probably despises it, because I’m sure I’m still slowing him down. But the ultimatum has been delivered regardless.
Before I can take my hands from Hel’s waist to reply, she answers for me.
“Of course, she’s not with you. She’s withme. And we’re not going into those mountains, Witch Collector.”
I can’t pinpoint what it is that strikes me so wrong—her words, obviously, and her tone. But there are so many other warning bells ringing when I consider the last several hours with Hel as a whole.
I finally let go of my friend and swing down from the horse. My boots sink into the snow. An expression of irritated surprise takes over Hel’s face. Her lip curls back on one side, her nostrils go wide, and the skin around her eyes draws tight.
“Get back on this horse, girl.” Her words strain around clenched teeth, words that Hel wouldneverspeak to me.
Tuck snorts and jerks her head, stamping in the thick snow. But that isn’t what roots my feet on that horrible, wintry path. It isn’t even Hel’s eyes, clouded by a white haze that moves and slithers, swallowing her pupils.
It’s the scarlet-tinted shadows that leak from her body.
Whorls of foul darkness suddenly seep from her mouth and nose and radiate from her skin. Save for the stench, it reminds me of the Prince of the East.
I take a step away, and another, stopping only when something metal crashes behind me, followed by the thud of boots striking snow.
A nervous glance reveals the still-burning oil lamp on the ground and Alexus standing steady behind me.
He slips his hand across my hips to my waist and draws me close while the ring of his sword hisses through the night. “Leave the girl’s body now, and return to the Shadow World you came from, wraith.”
My heart stutters. It can’t be. Wraiths are just scary stories passed around bonfires in the summertime. There are no gods left to walk the Shadow World to free such an abomination.
Except…maybe a god wasn’t needed this time. Maybe the guilty party is the one man made of shadow himself.
The thing inside Hel tosses her head back and laughs, the sound an ear-splitting shriek. “Myprincewouldn’t be very pleased to findthat I disobeyed him.”
No. I shake my head. It can’t be.
The shadow wraith dismounts Hel’s body in that same awkward, stiff manner. It comes ever closer, smiling, but then stops and removes the gambeson, tossing it aside. Like before, it slides Hel’s hand along her thigh, but this time, it drags Hel’s destroyed dress up a sleek, dark leg until the buckle of one of Finn’s dagger belts comes into view.
Fast as a heartbeat, the wraith unsheathes a weapon.
A long moment passes as I grasp what I’m seeing, all wrapped up in shadows, the reason the waters showed me so little back at the stream.
The pit of my stomach bottoms out because, according to this demon, the Prince of the East is indeed not dead.
