King János stares vaguely into the middle distance, eyes glazed. Then he says, “Bring me my sword.”
I lurch to my feet, but Lajos and Ferenc are at my back instantly, axes drawn. It is Nándor who steps down the dais to retrieve the king’s sword, a huge, heavy thing with a pearl-enameled hilt. Its scabbard is carved with an elaborate tracery of leaves and vines that at first I mistake for a coil of a hundred vipers, all of them devouring one another. Thorns snarl around the seal of the king’s great house. Nándor places the blade in his father’s hands.
“Father—” Gáspár starts, rising from his seat. Quick as a whip, Nándor stands, too, one of the king’s forged knives in his grasp. Below the line of the table, where even I can barely see the gleam of it, he presses the blade against the inside of Gáspár’s wrist.
“No true heir of Saint István,” Nándor says softly, “would rise to stop a pagan girl from dying by his holy blade.”
My heart is pounding, bile rising in my throat. I think of running, but my muscles seize as if I’ve been plunged into the frigid water again, ice closing over my head. I think of screaming, but my lips can only part wordlessly, sweat chilled on my brow. I think of reaching for my magic, but I can hardly feel my own hands, and that phantom ache is gone. I think of at least dying like a true wolf-girl, all vicious snarling and mouth-foaming fury, but there are already blades crowding my back.
“I,” the king begins, and then has to stop and exhale shakily, “King János, of House Bárány, blood chieftain of Akosvár, heir to the throne of Saint István and ruler of the kingdom of Régország, hereby sentence you to die.”
I was not half so terrified when the Woodsmen took me, or when Peti was grimacing over me, or when I watched my mother’s cloak vanish into the mouth of the forest. And then something else knifes through the fear, bright as a beam of sunlight. It is nothing more than animal instinct, the rawest, most feral desire to live. The king’s sword hurtles toward me, and I lift my four-fingered hand, black threads noosing around my wrist.
The blade halts against the tip of my finger, carving the tiniest slit, and a single drop of blood blooms from the cut, red as a summer-flushed rose. As the sword hovers there, in that suspended moment, it begins to rust: the steel loses all its luster and turns a dull, grainy shade of amber before flaking away into nothing.
The blunted hilt of the king’s sword clatters to the ground.
“You, wolf-girl,” he whispers. “What are you?”
“You said it yourself. A wolf-girl.”
I stride forward, too quickly for the awestruck Woodsmen to follow, and before either of them can think of killing me, my hand is locked around the king’s wrist. His flesh is dry and papery, scarless. I let my magic push out from under my skin and scrape against his—only a little wound, but enough to make him cry out.
“You wouldn’t,” the king rasps. “My soldiers will strike you dead, even if you do.”
“I may die, eventually,” I reply, “but I will go chasing you out of this world, because I will kill you first.”
King János swallows. He looks like the profile of my coin if it were tossed into the forge again, the planes of his face rippling, his jaw going slack under the melting heat, his brow folding like a rotted fruit. I imagine what it would feel like to let my magic clamber up his throat, blistering all the skin from his body, to see him puddle limp to the ground just like any of the animals he ordered killed.
The king knows that I could kill him. I know that I will die if I do. A scale tips in these realizations, wobbling between our twin desires: we both want to live.
“Perhaps,” the king says, quietly, holding his hand up to stop the Woodsmen lumbering toward me, “neither of us have to die today.”
Nándor makes a strangled noise, though not a word escapes him.
My grip doesn’t slacken. “What will you offer me, to spare your life?”
“Your village’s safety,” the king says. “No soldiers of mine will move against Keszi.”
“Not enough.” My stomach is roiling, sick with this newfound, unchecked power. I am the warden of Keszi’s destiny, now. “I want Zsigmond released, unharmed.”
“Who?”
“Zsidó Zsigmond,” I say. “A Yehuli man that Nándor dragged to trial and falsely imprisoned. You must set him free and promise that no one will try to harm any Yehuli in your city.”