We walked in silence while he pondered and the sun reached its zenith. I hummed, echoing melodies made by shrikes and wrens. The sky was a perfect, clear blue over the mountains, hardly a cloud in sight. Last night might have been only a bad dream, except for the presence of Sam, who kept eyeing me like I might do something crazy.
After we crossed a river bridge and shadows stretched away from the lowering sun, Sam said, “I’d live differently, I suppose.”
It took me a second to realize he was answering my question. “How?” I liked it better when I could make him uncomfortable, rather than the other way around.
“If I knew there wasn’t much time left, I’d get things done more quickly. See more places, finish all my projects. I wouldn’t waste time daydreaming or starting new things. Seventy years isn’t that long.”
Seventy years sounded like eternity to me. I couldn’t imagine being seventy years old. “But that’s not being afraid.”
“I’d be afraid of what would happen after. Where would I go? What would I do? I don’t want to stop existing.” He didn’t move, just halted on the path, his back toward a clearing and an iron-fenced yard of stones. His gaze stayed on mine, like there was something I was supposed to read in his expression, but he just looked tired to me. “That’s probably the most frightening thing I can imagine.”
My hood slipped back when I shifted my weight, my face still turned up to his. “At least you’ll never have to worry about that.” I shivered against chill and the thought of having only one lifetime. The sylph burn on my cheek stung.
Thought made a crease between his eyes. He looked ready to say something when a stray shadow in the clearing caught my attention.
I stepped back, the word like an avalanche. “Sylph.”
Had he brought me here to feed me to it?
“What?” His voice dripped with confusion.
A surprise to him, too. Okay.
I peeled off my mittens and dragged the sylph egg from my coat pocket. I felt like a girl made of ice as I shoved past him, into the clearing. “Move.” I would have revenge for the mark one left on my cheek last night.
The sylph moaned, a shadow twice my height and blacker for the white all around it. Steam hissed beneath it where its fires had melted snow. I twisted the sylph egg and thrust it at the shadow.
“Stop!” Sam cried, at the same time as hooves pounded the ground and a tendril of shadow shot out of the sylph. The egg flew from my hands, and I screamed at the heat on my fingers. I stumbled backward as the sylph loomed over me like burning night.
I was on the ground before I realized, Sam rolling with me—away from the sylph. Our knees and elbows jabbed each other, only somewhat dulled by cloth. I sat up and lifted my red, peeling hands.
Soon I would die.
“Watch out!” Sam shoved me off him as the sylph lunged again, shrieking.
I caught myself, but swayed with pain too sharp to comprehend. Then I jerked back into reality when Sam shouted.
“Get behind the fence!” He scrambled out of the sylph’s way.
Iron. Right. I sprinted toward the graveyard, but Sam was still near a copse of snow-smothered trees. He’d saved me and I couldn’t just let him—
The sylph grew thicker, darker than midnight, and a giant, dragonish head pushed out from one side like it was trying to escape a bubble. It snapped at him, and Sam became expressionless. As if he was somewhere else. Somewhen else, like I’d felt when I saw the lake again last night.
No, I had to help him. My new sylph burns would kill me, anyway.
I searched through the steaming snow and gathered up the sylph egg. From the corner of my eye, I saw Sam return to himself—return to now—and begin pelting the sylph with snowballs. The dragon head disappeared, but his snowballs melted within seconds of passing through the shadow.
“Ana!”
Ropes of shadow forced Sam to dodge and duck. The clearing reeked of ash. The sylph attacked Sam again, trapping him against a tree.
My hands closed around the egg; I could barely feel it through the numbing cold. It was slick, almost too slippery to grip, but I gave the device a final twist and flipped up the lid just as the sylph lunged for Sam with a dissonant shriek.
I thrust the egg into the burning shadow, and smoke streaked into the brass when I dropped it. Heat raced through me, and my entire world grew too hot to live in. I felt like a legendary phoenix must, consumed in its own fires so it could be reborn.
But I wasn’t a phoenix.
Just a nosoul with blackened hands.
Across the sylph egg stood a young man who looked my age, but wasn’t. He might have said my name again. I couldn’t hear through the rushing in my ears as I ran to the nearest snowdrift and shoved my hands inside.
I would not cry. Would not.
A moment later, Sam knelt in front of me. “Hey.”
“Go away.” I clenched my jaw, trying not to look at the pitying expression he wore. He knew about the sylph burns, surely. He knew how they’d spread and engulf me, and soon I’d be dead. Probably forever. At least I was near a graveyard.
“Let me see your hands.” He spoke softly, as if that would change my mind. “Please.”
“No.” I scooted away and pressed my hands into a new patch of snow. They burned no matter how much snow I packed onto them. If I pulled them out, they’d be black and flaking, like charcoal. The singe on my cheek echoed the sensation. “Leave me alone.”
“Let me help you.”
He wasn’t going to listen. He didn’t care what I wanted. “No! Just go away. I don’t need you. I wish you’d never found me.” I was hot and cold and so tired of everything hurting. For someone who’d died a hundred times, he had a poor grasp of the situation. “In the last two days I’ve been given a bad compass by my own mother so I’d go the wrong way, attacked by sylph twice, burned, and nearly drowned in a freezing lake. You should have left me there. Everyone would have been happier to forget about me.” I collapsed over myself and wept. “I hate you. I hate everyone.”
Finally, he left.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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Chapter 4
Fire
AFTER I’D CRIED myself out, hooves thumped the ground behind me, then stopped. Sam scooped me into his arms. Snow fell in clumps. I tried to hold on to it, but gripping hurt too much. When I dug my elbow into his chest, he just shifted me around and carried me through the cemetery’s iron gate. “Go away.” My throat hurt from cold and crying.
“No.” He swept snow off a stone bench and set me down, then sat next to me. “You should have come in here when I told you.”
I squeezed my eyes shut and hugged my legs to my chest, buried my face in my sleeves. The alternating hot and cold in my hands made drowning in the lake seem like a leisurely summer swim. “You don’t listen, do you? Go away.”
“Piffle.” Icy hands closed around my cheeks as he turned my face to his. Couldn’t make me meet his eyes, though; I kept my gaze down. “You don’t listen,” he said.
Why wouldn’t he just leave? I was going to burn up, anyway, with fire creeping up my arms to consume me. My eyes ached with fresh tears. I hated crying.