“Runt, it’s time I made good on my promise. I’m taking you to the Well of Talents.”

Chapter 31
Myrthe

The first snowfall of the year brought a blue midnight. I was used to watching the snow come through a windowpane. Now it swirled around me like a tossed cloak of stars. Cold but also filled with promise of freezing canals and the winter culture of Fairhoven I so craved.

I loved how it reflected the moon at night and made everything brighter. A defiance against the darkness. It allowed me to travel longer. Later. Which was good because it kept me moving, sweating, warm against the air that had become cruel and needled as the temperature plummeted. Every time I pinched my lips against the knives in my inhale, I reminded myself that the cold was also delaying Sven from finding or following me.

The second night after I fled his camp, I left the horse on the banks of Canal Vier and skated north toward the Well of Talents. He’d likely learned by now the wish was fake. Or maybe the entire camp had slaughtered each other over the little glass vial.

I prayed not.

If that had happened, I prayed I never learned about it. I couldn’t handle that guilt.

I sat on the edge of the canal at dawn, debating whether to catch a few hours of sleep or get in another leg of skating. According to Sven’s map, which lay over my lap like a blanket, I’d be taking a smaller branch off the Vier northwest, which led to an even smaller canal, and then I’d continue on foot from there.

A distant schck! of blade on ice jolted me upright. I paused my breathing, my movements.

Schck! Schck!

Winter’s breath, they’d caught up.

I scrambled to fold up Sven’s map and tighten my skate laces. No, never mind the laces. I burst out on the ice and away from my pursuers with renewed energy—fear numbing me to any pain in my legs.

Over the cut of my own blades I heard a shout. My heart leaped into my throat and I skated even faster, though my muscles trembled from strain, cold, and lack of proper food the past two days.

I glanced over my shoulder and thought I saw a form skating.

That was the last time I looked behind me. It only slowed me. I could veer off the canal and hide in the trees, but due to the recent snowfall, my tracks would be clear to anyone with a sharp eye. If they’d followed me this far, I had little chance of losing them that way.

I could only outskate them.