It is a mangle of what I feel for Gáspár, like a Woodsman’s severed nose or my lopped finger, small and ugly by comparison. But love, I think, all the same. It’s that ugly and awful love that sends me skidding down the hill after her, just as Nándor jerks his horse’s reins and turns her way.
Their blades meet, but there’s power behind Nándor’s swing that she hasn’t yet seen, that she doesn’t understand. With the force of the impact Virág topples off her horse, sliding to the ground with a guttering thud.
I scream her name, but either Virág doesn’t hear or she doesn’t care enough to turn. Nándor’s lovely face is blood-flecked, and there’s a sheen to his gaze that looks half-mad. His eyes are nearly as white as Virág’s hair, the pupils shrunken and colorless. He seems to scarcely even see Virág as he leaps from his mount, sword smiling down at her. He will kill her the way the Woodsmen have killed all the other wolf-girls, without ever knowing their names. He will never know the stories that live in her marrow and blood, will never know how once, when I was bitten by a snake in the woods, Virág sucked the venom out of the wound herself, extra eyeteeth gritted against the skin of my wrist.
She’ll die the way the turul did, as if it were just any bird to be eaten. That’s all I can think of as I throw myself between her and Nándor’s sword, its blade burying itself deep through the muscle of my left shoulder.
Nándor blinks as he pulls the sword from me, as if he has just woken from a deep slumber.
“Oh, wolf-girl,” he says, almost wistfully. “You must have learned this sort of stupid nobility from my brother.”
And then he’s gone again, swallowed up by the fray. The pain is like the lick of a thousand heated blades, and my heart gives a stubborn, feeble quiver. My vision tunnels, plunging me into darkness and back out again. Through the feather of my lashes, Virág’s face is hovering over me.
“Why did you do that, you fool of a girl?”
Blood burns in my throat. “Why did you save me, way back then?”
“Perhaps I saw that one day you would save me,” she says. Her face ripples like a reflection on water.
My vision is narrowing again. “So then you know why I did it.”
She always knew everything before I did. As she mutters something unintelligible, Virág’s hand is on my wound. The pressure is unbearable at first, another fiery ribbon of pain. Then it begins to recede, in throbbing increments, the blackness clearing from my gaze. I think I hear the whisper of a song on her lips, but when I pick my head up again and the world comes roaring back, I realize it’s not a song at all.
“Honorable girl, foolish girl,” she’s murmuring, almost with the rhythm of a prayer. “Both of us will live to see another winter.”
There’s an odd tightness in my shoulder as Isten’s invisible needle works through my wound, guided by Virág’s hand. I try to stutter out a thank-you, but Virág’s mouth only twists into its familiar scowl, the same face she made at me whenever I cursed or lied or burned her broth.
“There,” she says. “What you have given won’t be forgotten.”
A tremor goes through me, and I shudder with the pain’s vicious ebbing. “Won’t it all be forgotten, if we die here today?”
“We won’t die,” she says. “Isten won’t allow it.”
I wonder if her vision showed her that too: the Woodsmen spent, the pagans victorious. It seems too much to hope for, too simple and neat. The hillside is littered with bodies in wolf cloaks. But by my hasty count, there seem to still be more of us standing, and fewer Woodsmen.
A gleam of white catches the corner of my eye. Nándor is stumbling up the hill, swordless and blood-drenched, his dolman hanging half open. He reaches the mouth of the tunnel and lets the darkness swallow him. Wounded, but alive. And seeing how wounds mean very little to him, I know he’ll only return to fight again unless something is done. I rise to my knees, shocked by how light I feel, how strong. I give Virág a hasty kiss on the cheek before scrambling up the hillside after him.
I follow a trail of blood through the empty Woodsman barracks, down the corridors of the palace, and out into the courtyard, still arranged for Nándor’s coronation. Pale flower petals have peeled off the dais, floating through the air like listless snow. The tapestry is still draped over the burnished throne, its tassels fluttering in the wind, and the cape of white feathers is abandoned on the cobblestones, as sleek and flat as a spill of water frozen over. Nándor is limping down the makeshift aisle, blood splattering with each heavy-footed step. I hear him whisper something to himself, too low to make out, and then his back straightens, as if his spine has been fused with steel. His gait grows steadier as Godfather Life heals him.