Now that the danger has passed, I am suddenly aware of his bare skin under my hands. His chest is bronze and well muscled, with three long bands of scar tissue running along his abdomen. The mark of the creature’s claws, I remember, from what seems like so long ago by the edge of the lake. I stare down at him, blinking, and then I realize Gáspár is watching me stare and I snatch my hand away, feeling weak in the knees for far too many reasons.
He pushes himself up onto his elbows and buttons the dolman closed over his chest, though I can still see snatches of skin. A flash of his hip bone. I swallow.
“I thought you were going to die,” I say, as if making some defense, though I’m not sure for what. My voice is trembling shamefully.
“What happened?” Gáspár asks. Though his face is still ashen, a stubborn pink creeps over the tips of his ears. I feel so glad to see it I almost laugh. “The last thing I remember is the woman—she wasn’t a woman . . .”
He trails off, eye wandering over the mound of hair and dirt behind me. A white finger bone is knuckling out of the soil.
“A witch,” I say. “She was a witch.”
Gáspár shifts onto his knees, brushing dirt from his suba. When his gaze draws back to me, there’s a furrow in his brow. “How did you stop her?”
I hold up my hand, splaying its four fingers, and try to pin a smirk on my face. “？rd?g can do more than snuff out flames.”
My attempt at a smirk falls flat, and Gáspár only frowns at me in return. I have spent so much time studying his expressions that I can tell when he’s truly vexed, and when he’s only scowling because he feels like he’s supposed to. When he’s looking at me like I am just a wolf-girl, and when he’s looking at me like he wishes I were only just a wolf-girl. This time, I can see his lips quivering, as if he is trying to decide whether to scold me or to thank me, and which will damn him more.
To spare us both more of his miserable wavering, I say, “I wasn’t going to let you die before you could atone for the sin of saving my life.”
He only makes a noise of reproach, shaking his head. Gáspár rises to his feet, and after a moment, so do I. I can see the ripple of muscle in his chest as he walks, through one of the gaps between the buttons of his dolman, and I press my lips together, grateful that he cannot guess at the indecent things running through my mind. Wishing that I was not thinking such indecent things about a Woodsman at all, and certainly not after we both nearly died. I imagine him berating me for my single-minded vulgarity. I imagine Katalin sneering at my doomed, unrequited desire, her blue eyes mean and laughing. A rabbit might as well lust after a wolf that plans to eat it.
Gáspár climbs back onto his mount, watching me as I straddle my silver mare. His expression is unreadable, but he cannot miss the flush on my cheeks. I have long since given up waiting for his gratitude when he brings his horse close to mine, their flanks nearly touching, and says, “Thank you, évike.”
I am so surprised to hear my name on his lips that I can’t think of how to reply. The wind unspools over us, howling softly. I give a stiff nod, holding my chin up, and then Gáspár urges his horse forward, toward the river’s edge. I hold the echo of his voice in my mind for a moment, and then follow after him.
Chapter Twelve
The afternoon light wends its way across the sky, the sun pale and cloud-wreathed. The élet River foams beside us, carrying water all the way from the Half-Sea, through Kaleva, and past our southern border with Merzan. We have seen more winter villages along the riverbed, their sod houses like rock outcroppings, small windows orange with firelight, but we have taken care to avoid them, diverting our path through the scraggly brush instead. Gáspár has lapsed back into silence. I don’t know what has rattled him more: that the witch nearly killed him, or that I saved his life.
Our horses’ footsteps are hushed in the soft, damp soil. There is only the low churning of the river, oddly companionable as it threads through the slopes and valleys of Szarvasvár. In the aftermath of our encounter with the witch, a giddy relief has cracked open inside me, muffling many of my previous fears. I keep thinking about the way her body came apart in my hand, hunks of red clay and dust, still painted into the creases of my palm. Having spent so long being afraid, sublimating myself to the magic of the other wolf-girls, this sudden fearlessness is like a song that begs for singing, the words and the melody bubbling up in me boldly, loudly.