Reaching the top of the stairs, I only have minutes to wait before Stellen reappears, pulling the coffin behind him, a web of ropes secured around his shoulders and, as if it were effortless, proceeding up the steps behind me.
Nara waits for us outside and allows Stellen to attach the second satchel and then the web of ropes to her torso, forming an additional harness soshe can pull the coffin.
“Is the gravesite near enough for us to walk there?” I ask. “I don’t want to burden Nara by riding her.”
Instantly, the white wolf gives me a sharp growl, and Stellen chuckles. “Easy, Nara.”
I take a quick breath. “Did I offend her?”
He inclines his head. “Nara was born in the wild. She’s stronger even than most white wolves.”
I’m suddenly reminded of the moments when I first flew from the coastal village with Antony. Nara had sped up a steep mountainside and leaped so high into the air that she’d carried Stellen close enough that he could have cleaved Antony’s head from his shoulders.
“Well, in that case…” I alight onto her back and she rumbles happily.
Stellen slips on behind me.
Our journey is quiet, filled only with the soft swishing of the coffin dragging through the powder behind us and the quietly whispering breeze.
I haven’t eaten for hours, but my stomach hasn’t protested. I’ve quickly adapted to consuming food only in the morning and at night.
The midday sun sits high in the sky by the time we pass over a final ridge and down onto a vast plain covered in snow.
For a few moments before we descend down the incline, I make out the colossal mountain range far ahead of us, the boundary between Frost and the lands that lie in the east.
When I flew in that direction with Antony, my view had been filled with forest-covered mountains, but now the bare, stark ridges send a shiver down my spine.
According to Antony, and confirmed by what I saw in both the Chronicle and my blade visions, the far east is nothing more than an expanse of charcoal-colored dust, a land where nothing survived the False Queen’s curse.
As we descend toward the snowy plain, the faraway darkness is hidden by the slope on the other side of this vast field.
I’m unable to rationalize a new prickling at the back of my neck because I’m certain I’ve seen this field before…
Stellen’s arms slip around my waist. At the same moment that he pulls me closer, a single object in the distance becomes clear to me.
A jagged, dark-gray stone.
I remember this rock.
I saw it during the blade vision I experienced in the bloodlands, right after Antony sank his fangs into my neck. I welcomed the vision, grateful that it took my mind away from what was happening to my body.
But now, I fight against the sudden chill within my heart.
In that vision, I stood alone in this field, shivering, my feet bare. The dark-gray stone rested in the snow ahead of me, closer to me in the vision than it is right now. I couldn’t see what was inscribed on the rock, but I made out a yellow ribbon fluttering on top of it, as if the material had been caught in the stone’s rough surface.
Whatever the vision means, I’m nearly certain it isn’t happening now. My feet aren’t bare and there’s no yellow ribbon in sight.
When Stellen moves to slide his arms away from me, I quickly catch hold and pull them back around me, conscious of the tension in his chest and his increasingly ragged breathing.
“It can’t be easy,” I say, “coming back here.”
“It isn’t.”
He’s hurting. I don’t need his powerful hearing to understand the impact of this place on his heart. “You don’t have to do this. We can turn back.”
“No.”
Nara’s ears are pricked and to her, I say, “Nara, go slowly.”
