“I’m sure that part is just a story.” I put my chin on my knees. “And we will.”
“All right,” he said. “Say that we do—what if she can’t help us?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” I replied, hedging.
“No?” He sat back, regarding me with those pensive brown eyes. “Because I have.”
“What do you think we should do if we can’t break the blood bond? Just let Zan die, and take our chances with the Malefica?” I shivered. “You know I can’t do that.”
“No,” he said. “I was going to suggest that . . . well. We go together.”
“What does that mean?” I asked suspiciously.
“For most of both our lives, I’ve been responsible for protecting you. If you’re going to save the world, I want to save the world with you.” His voice dropped. “I can’t think of a more honorable death.”
“Death isn’t honorable, Kellan,” I said, touched. “It’s just . . . death. The world would be worse for your sacrifice.”
“You don’t understand,” he replied. “This is my life’s purpose. To fight, and die, for the Renaltan crown. For the common good. For you.” He cleared his throat. “I just want you to know that now. That no matter what happens here, I will remain by your side. Even if the witch bakes us into a cake. At least you’ll have company.” He paused. “Though if we can figure out a way for us both to survive . . . that might be preferable.”
I could hear my reflection’s whisper in my ear. At the red moonrise, one of two dies. There was no escape from this fate. Not for me. But I could see his earnestness, and I sighed. I didn’t want his company heading into death. It was hard enough letting him be here now. “Kellan,” I said, “I—”
But his eyes had slowly moved past my face to the forest beyond.
“What is it—?” I asked, turning, but he pressed his fingers to his lips to quiet me.
We were being held in the incisive gaze of a watchful fox. Against the charcoal tones of the forest, she stood out like a bright brushstroke of color—rich red-orange fur, white-stained feet, and yellow eyes that shone like the moon at midnight.
I threw out an arm and caught a handful of Kellan’s cloak. “It’s her,” I breathed. I had seen those eyes in this forest before, just after Toris’s betrayal. I’d cried to a fox about Kellan, and he had ended up on Greythorne’s doorstep days later, a fox sighted nearby. It was too uncanny to be mere coincidence. “It has to be her.”
The fox turned tail and bolted into the wood.
I crashed through the trees after her, with Kellan close behind. “Wait!” I yelled. “Wait, I need to talk to you!”
And then, without warning, she reversed her course and launched herself right at me, transforming mid-leap, her bones shifting with a snap and crack, flesh re-forming over elongated limbs, shimmering silver in between. In less than a second, the fox was gone and a fierce, feral girl with flaming hair lunged in its place, her hand coming around my mouth to stifle the scream about to escape it.
“Quiet,” she whispered, her voice dark and drifting, like autumn woodsmoke. In her other hand, she held a knife of leather and bone.
Kellan had been right on our heels, but when he saw her knife, he skidded to a stop. “Don’t hurt her,” he said, dropping his sword. “Just let her go.”
“What in the Ilithiya’s name are you doing?” she hissed. “Pick up your sword, you idiot!”
That’s when I saw them—lurching shadows between the tree trunks all around us. The girl muttered a string of creative expletives under her breath.
“Too late. They heard us. Do you have a sword? A dagger?” she asked me, releasing me to brandish her bone blade at the advancing silhouettes. “Anything?”
I procured my luneocite knife from my boot. As the shadows began tightening their circle, we heard a single soft growl.
The growl came again, deeper and closer. Unease rose inside me like a tide; I could see the wolf’s eyes now, glowing a preternatural color of red. Its jaw was hanging slack, unhinged on one side and with a swollen, rotting tongue lolling out of it. It stalked around us, even more pieces missing from its decomposing hide than the last time I’d crossed its path.
“It’s the Tribunal’s,” I whispered.
Beside me, Kellan strained away from it and its putrid smell.
“Don’t run,” the girl said. “And no matter what, don’t turn your back to it. Protect yourself first, your horses second.”
As if in response, the wolf grinned a half grin and lunged.
I held up my knife to fend it off, but not high or fast enough to get a good slice of it. It clawed at me as it fell back, shredding my sleeve and my arm underneath it. Blinded by pain, I lashed out instinctively. “Uro!” I shouted, and sent a blast of fire across its rotting flesh.