He beckons to Lajos, who has been pressed against the wall, half a shadow himself. The Woodsman strides forward and gives the king a low, silent bow.
“Your face,” the king says.
I think I might be sick as I press my blackened hand to Lajos’s cheek, to the gory remainder of his nose, the scar that cleaves his brow in two. All the while Lajos is breathing like a riled bull, his throat bobbing and his own hands closed into tight fists, certainly wishing he could wrap them around my throat, instead.
But no new muscle rises up to make his nose whole again; no new skin stretches over the crags of his wicked scar. Lajos rips away from me, spitting and heaving, and I fall back on my heels, staggering in front of all the Patritian guests.
The king draws in a sharp breath. “What is your magic, wolf-girl?”
“Why does it matter?” My voice is hoarse and useless. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”
A hopeful murmur runs through the crowd. They want to see me slaughtered like a deer, a bird, a wolf. A girl.
“I cannot allow pagan deception to go unpunished,” King János says. “Keszi promised me a seer, and they delivered me some barren thing instead. Would you rather I take my vengeance on your village?”
Murmurs of approval again. Nándor leans forward in his seat, eyes shifting like water under ice.
I almost laugh. I remember Gáspár giving me the same threat, on the shores of the Black Lake, both of our masks torn off. If nothing else, I will make him speak before I die.
“Did your son tell you?” I ask. “Is he the one who told you that I couldn’t see?”
“My son . . .” The king’s gaze turns blearily to Gáspár, and then he speaks to me while looking at him. “My son has all of Géza’s wisdom, and none of István’s fire.”
Géza was the king’s own father, who died young and sickly, and is remembered for little more than that. Even now the king’s words still coax an ache into me, like a limbless, phantom pain. Gáspár swallows, and I think he might finally open his mouth, but he only looks down at his plate.
Betrayal lances through the hurt, shattering it like glass. Nándor’s head whirls.
“Father, she is a wolf-girl,” he says, just a thread of petulance in it. “If she refuses to repent to the one true God, and renounce her false ones, slay her here and prove that the people’s clamoring for justice has not gone unheard. It is a great affront to King István’s memory, to shelter a heathen here, in the very palace that he built, on his name day.”
His voice goes high and reedy by the end of it, summoning renewed whispers from the crowd. Justice, justice, justice.
The king gives a feeble twitch, as if he is trying to right something within himself that is in danger of tipping over. “Is it true, wolf-girl, that you have no magic?”
Yes and no will both doom me, so I say nothing.
King János turns back to Gáspár. “Have you ever seen the girl perform an act of magic yourself? You said yourself she cannot see, but is she truly as barren as she appears?”
Gáspár’s jaw clenches. I know this look of his, that miserable effort, like a toothless dog realizing the futility of its own bite. He may sit at the king’s table, but he has scarcely more power here than I do. I think, with a rush of damned, traitorous tenderness so sudden that it frightens me, how steadily he is staring down the man who stabbed out his eye.
“Father,” he says, the word low with its beseeching, “there are other ways—”
“Enough of this,” Nándor cuts in. “My softhearted, weak-willed brother has grown too friendly with the pagans in his time away, and his judgment is therefore compromised. King István’s memory ought to be enough to guide the swing of your blade, not to mention the will of your subjects, your people. The wolf-girl must die.”
The guests purr their approval, and in that moment I hate them so much I can scarcely breathe, more than I ever hated the monstrous Woodsmen. They can see me here, see how pitifully human I am, no less human than they are, and yet they still slaver for my death. I have never wanted more to scream in fury at Gáspár, for all his stupid nobility, his impotent wisdom, his desire to save his people from Nándor. If Nándor is truly the king they yearn for, then he is the king they deserve.
Maybe I am just as much a fool, for wanting to save Keszi. Maybe, even now, I am still eating from the hands that struck me.