Riika screams. Nándor topples back, a soft gasp escaping his lips. Blood washes over his ruined dolman, spilling onto floor like strewn flower petals, the precise color of poured wine. The light begins to drain from his eyes, a white moon slivering away, and he raises his hands. I think he might beg me for mercy and I smile at the prospect, in spite of my own dizzying pain.
Instead, he clasps his hands together and utters a quiet prayer.
The wound on his chest stitches itself back up, an invisible needle strung with invisible thread. Where his face has gone gray with lost blood it flushes pink again, the vibrant pallor of a living man. His skin is as immaculate as a frozen lake on midwinter’s coldest morning. Slowly, Nándor gets to his feet.
“Didn’t I tell you I was holy?” he rasps, as if death has not yet receded from his throat. “Would you like to try and kill me again?”
I search his body—what I can see of it—for evidence of sacrifice, any small ruination that will help me make sense of what I have seen. But I find nothing. No missing eye like his brother, no scars like Szabín. No lopped finger like me. He is unmarred by the toll that power usually takes.
It’s more terrifying than a thousand scars.
I collapse onto my hands and knees, quashed by fear and pain, as Nándor approaches me. He grasps the collar of my dress and hurls me onto my back, my wound flattening against the stone floor. My heart thrums so loudly in my ears that I can’t even hear my own scream.
“I’ll come back when you’re cold, wolf-girl.” Nándor’s voice floats above me, his face blurring and doubling behind the glaze that’s fallen over my eyes. “And then I’ll bring my brother to weep over your corpse. Or perhaps I’ll kill him first—if Godfather Death wills it.”
I try to make a sound, any sound of protest, but my lungs are like shriveled violets. I hear Nándor’s boots make their way toward the door, and then a softer set of footsteps, Riika scuttling after him. My vision ripples into black. Then there is the slide of a lock.
I don’t know how much time has passed, as life eddies from me. With every breath I can taste the metallic tang of my own blood, suffusing the air like a red mist. Through the lattice of my wet lashes, I can see the hearth, the stone floor, my abandoned wolf cloak and plum dress. My own arm, stretched out limply like a fallen branch, still swathed in pale-green silk.
Ever since the moment that Virág had her vision, I knew that I would die here in Király Szek, cold and alone. But how could I have known what would happen in between? The stretch of snowy road between Keszi and the capital, flecked with bright moments, like fires in the dark. Gáspár holding me in the cradle of tree roots, his breath damp and warm against my ear. All the nights we spent on the ice, and his arm around my waist as he pulled me up out of the freezing water. His mouth on mine, the red juice staining both of our tongues. The way he kissed my throat so gently that it felt like he was apologizing for any pain I had ever felt, whether it was his fault or not. Zsigmond embracing me, Jozefa smoothing the skirt on my lap, Batya feeding me challah. Seeing my own name etched on paper for the first time.
I try to hold each of those moments in my mind, like a butterfly in amber, encasing them in timeless suspension. But when I die, they will die with me. And it seems so terribly unfair, to leave Zsigmond and Gáspár, to leave Batya and Jozefa, alone with only their bitter memories, carrying a pain meant for two people.
And then, skimming underneath all these mortal contemplations, is the unadulterated animal instinct: I don’t want to die. Not now, not yet, at only five and twenty.
It is stubborn, bitter strength that forces me up, onto my knees and then my feet. I clamber toward the door. Pain is dragging at me like a wet dress. The door locks from the outside, to keep me in, a cow in her barn after all. I fumble at the iron handle, gathering all my will like kindling, and then setting it alight. The handle crumbles, and with it, the lock on the other side. The door groans open.
The relief of that small victory threatens to undo me. I slump against the wall, catching my breath, trying to make my vision steady. The hallway in front of me is feathering away between strands of black.
My plan forms in my body before it takes shape in my mind. I stumble down the corridor, one hand against the wall, blood painting a streak on the floor after me. I remember the way to Gáspár’s room hazily, as if I learned it in a dream. When I reach his door I half collapse upon it, my knees weakening under me.