This gets her attention, and she whirls around. But her eyes don’t look at me—she peers into the snowstorm behind me, her gaze waiting and on guard, more owlish than ever as she searches for something on the horizon that I can’t see.

And then she grips my arm, her fingers digging like ice daggers.

“I still need you to protect me,” she murmurs, face taut. Fear? Why would the Laughing Daughter fear here, at the precipice of all her goals realized? At the cliff’s edge of becoming the world’s most powerful person, what is there to be scared of? I turn and look to where she’s looking.

Three shadows cut out of the ice and snow, their cloaks whipping in the wind. Humans. I expected leagues of bonemoths, thousands of giant condors.

“Just three?” I step forward and crack my neck leisurely. “This will take only a half, Princess. Keep my heart warm and ready.”

Varia says nothing, her whole body stiff. For a moment I think she’s frozen over, and then, as the shadows grow closer, she calls out, “You can still turn back.” Her words are almost instantly swallowed by the snow. The three figures show no sign of slowing, and she raises her voice. “Go back, now, and I will forgive you.”

My brows twist. Who is she—?

I don’t know who or what does it. It could be the Tree, or Varia herself, or the people approaching, or perhaps even merciful nature. Regardless, the wind suddenly dies. It doesn’t just stop—it keels over dead in its tracks, the snow flitting down in soft tufts once more and silence echoing in the wake of so much howling.

Without the storm, in the midst of the peak at peace, it is easy to see the faces of the three.

A girl with mousy curls on the left, her nose and cheeks like rosebuds, her hand gripping a valkerax-headed cane. A tall, white-haired, slender beneather on the right, his eyes gleaming crimson, like two pinpricks of blood amid the snow.

And there, in the middle.

Black leather. Black hair. Black eyes. A hawk, shrouded in shadow.

Prince Lucien Drevenis d’Malvane.

25

25

The Six Eyes
of the Wolf
and the Wyrm

The snowstorm has moved inside me.

It tears at my innards with razor ice, stupor freezing me in place and making me an easy target.

Lucien? Here? He followed us all the way here so fast? But that means—

The three come to a stop just before me, not close enough to touch but close enough to hear. Fione stares straight ahead, to Varia, Malachite staring at the Tree. And Lucien looks right at me.

“Do not,” the prince calls, his gaze never moving from my face, “put your hand on that Tree, Varia.”

“I told you to go back, brother!” I hear Varia shout, her voice wavering. “This is my responsibility, not yours!”