“He revealed himself to me.”
“Yes.” Frost gazed at him, but he had turned now so that the moonlight threw his face into shadow.
There was such import in that single syllable that Oliver at last recalled the winter man’s words only moments ago, when they had first burst up from the water. Frost claimed to have doomed them both. Oliver shuddered. There were so many questions he knew he had to ask. But the thought of the answers that might come in response sent dread spider-walking up the back of his neck.
He wasn’t ready for the answers. Not yet.
Emotions skirmished in his heart. Terror was the undercurrent, but overwhelming it was a strange giddiness. None of this was possible. This could not be happening. He was getting married in the morning. Julianna was asleep at home right now, or maybe still fussing over her dress despite the lateness of the hour. His father had invited half the firm.
This isn’t real . . .
Yet he had felt Frost’s icy claws on his throat, had seen the Falconer and felt the adrenaline surge through him, had careened off that ocean bluff with the winter man and tumbled down and down and down to the waves. He felt the water warm around him now, and his palms and fingers stung from where he had touched Frost bare-handed before. He smelled the air of this world, felt the rivulets of water running down his face. His tongue snaked out and he tasted it.
Salty. Like tears.
“Oh, my God,” he whispered.
He stared at Frost. The winter man did not seem to even be treading water but simply floating there, a dozen feet away. Now he raised a hand to push dangling spikes of icy hair away from his pale blue eyes.
“There are many gods here, you will find.”
Frost seemed more alert, somehow restored by his return to this world beyond the Veil.
And I can’t even believe I’m thinking in such terms, but what others are there? How else do I think of this and not lose my mind?
Slowly shaking off the lethargy that awe had wrought in him, Oliver began to swim toward shore. With his clothes and shoes on, it was slow going, but the lake was calm and the land was not far. He felt disconnected and unreal as he turned his back on Frost. The winter man did not speak or pursue him. Only after Oliver had reached a depth where his feet could touch the bottom and he had stood and begun to wade toward shore did Frost follow.
Oliver walked up onto the hard-packed dirt and scrub grass on the shore and sat down hard, not quite steady on his feet. Whatever the winter man really was, whatever these Borderkind were capable of, one glance around made it clear that there was no easy way out of here. Water in one direction and open land in the other. No vehicle, no sign of civilization. He glanced upward. They had tumbled out of the sky and into that lake, somehow slipped behind the Veil, behind a curtain between worlds . . . but there was no ledge up there, no ocean bluff, no house. They had just fallen out of thin air.
“There’s no Falconer, either. That’s a plus.”
It was all surreal. The words themselves seemed to numb his lips as he spoke them. Yet a smile crept across his face, a mad little grin of amazement and of strange victory. Not only the triumph that they had survived, but that the tiny spark of hope he had nurtured all of his life, that somehow one day he would find a bit of magic in the midst of the ordinary, had been rewarded.
The winter man emerged from the lake. Whatever water clung to him froze on his icy skin, dripping not at all. Frost glanced upward as though to follow Oliver’s gaze and then he turned his pale blue eyes upon his savior, spiked, frozen hair chiming.
“I told you. We’ve escaped him for the moment,” said the winter man. “But we had best be moving on. If there is one Hunter after me, there will be others. I’d heard rumors that the Borderkind were in danger, but lent them no credence. If such sinister deeds are indeed afoot, there must be more trouble in the Two Kingdoms than I had realized.”
“Others? What others? And what Two Kingdoms?”
“There are things you must learn if you are to survive here. But first, we ought not remain by the lake. One never knows what lurks beneath still waters.”
Oliver stood up and brushed off the seat of his jeans as he glanced around again. Something splashed out on the lake in the moonlight, sending a circle of ripples rolling outward. He knew nothing about this place. Nothing at all.
Frost took a step and flinched, hissing through his teeth. He clamped a hand over the wound in his side, and when he took those jagged fingers away, the opening that had been there was sealed with new, bright blue ice. The gash was closed, and no longer weeping ice water . . . what passed for blood in the winter man’s body. He was healing.
Oliver furrowed his brow and stared. Something inside him gave way in that moment. His mind had been turning over the events of the past— could it really be only minutes?— like a jeweler studying the facets of a diamond. He’d confirmed the reality of it, accepted it. Or, at least, he thought he had. But somehow in the back of his mind he had still perceived it all as some strange fantasy. Or lunacy. He was under stress, wasn’t he? Getting married in the morning—
Jesus, in the morning! Julianna!
— to a woman he knew he was going to wed for all the wrong reasons. The pain was enough to tell him it wasn’t a dream.
But he’d been lying to himself when he thought he’d really accepted the reality of his situation.
Until now.
Seeing the wound on the winter man’s side now healing up, the blue ice so much like new pink skin that formed where a scratch had been, or a scar would be . . . that was the instant in which he really
knew
it was real. The feeling of surreality he’d had before evaporated.
“Shock,” he said, laughing a bit madly. He stared right at Frost, marveled at the creature as though seeing him for the first time. Jack Frost. Jack fucking Frost. He might have veins that bled water, but he was made of ice and snow. He was . . . no matter how offensive the term might be to his kind . . . a myth.
Oliver’s eyes were wide and he felt pain in his stomach, a basket of coiled snakes there that were nothing but manic laughter, wanting to spring up his throat.
“I’m in shock, I think,” he muttered. “Maybe I should go back.”
The winter man tilted his head and regarded him quizzically.
“I mean, this is . . .” He swept his arms wide, swallowing hard and feeling his throat burn with sudden emotion. His pulse raced and his chest pounded with the thudding of his heart. “This is fantastic. But I can’t just . . . I’m glad you’re all right and everything, but I . . .” He hated the sound of his voice even as he spoke the words that he had dreaded his entire life. “. . . I have responsibilities.”
Jagged, frozen features refracted the moonlight as Frost tilted his head again.
“I’m sorry, Oliver. I had thought you understood.” The winter man frowned, and though there was little detail in his eyes to reveal his intent, Oliver would have sworn there was real regret there, real sadness. “You cannot return. Even if I had the strength at the moment to make another border crossing, and I assure you that I do not, it would be nothing short of murder to return you to your home.
“You are marked, just as I am. They will be hunting us both now. Me because that is their assignment— and I mean to discover who gave it to them— and you because you are an Intruder. Humans get lost through the Veil frequently enough, but that is something entirely different. There are places and times when the magic in the Veil is unstable, and your people— sometimes individuals and sometimes whole villages— slip through. But once the magic that wove the Veil touches them, the Lost Ones cannot return home, cannot cross back through, not even through one of the Doors, for the magic that created them is all one and the same.
“You are considered an Intruder because you
can
go back. When one of the Borderkind opens a portal, it is a tear in the very fabric of the Veil’s magic. You’ve crossed to the other side of the Veil without being touched by it. You can return, as long as you have a Borderkind to open the way. For the Lost Ones . . . not even a Borderkind can bring them back through. That is the nature of the enchantments used to create the Veil.
“But you are not Lost. You are an Intruder. And no Intruder is ever allowed to pass through the Veil and live. You will be executed the moment you are discovered. Unless we can keep you hidden.”
Oliver took a ragged breath and pressed his eyes tightly closed. He pushed his fists against them as though that might somehow make it all go away.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, opening his eyes and staring at the winter man. “He’s after
you
. Okay, I did you a favor, but I didn’t want to come here, I—”
The winter man had seemed hesitant. Now all such hesitation fell away. Jagged ice and frozen eyes, he did not so much lunge at Oliver as slide toward him. Sharp blue-white talons snatched up the front of Oliver’s wet shirt and frost formed on the fabric, crinkling as Frost clutched it tightly.
“That’s enough!” he hissed, his breath frigid in Oliver’s face. “I owe you my life, Oliver Bascombe. I shall not forget that. But a wasted effort it shall be if your foolishness keeps us here long enough for Hunters to arrive. The Falconer and his comrades will care nothing for your excuses. It is time that you—”
“No!” Oliver shouted at him. He plucked at his sodden shirt where it stuck to him and his boots squelched as he marched away. Panic thrummed in his chest. “I have to . . .”
He stopped. Swallowed. Reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “I have to go back,” he whispered. Oliver shook his head. “Oh, shit. Oh, Julianna, I’m sorry.”
The winter man must have sensed the change in him, for he stood back and waited, arms crossed. Oliver took several deep breaths. Where those snakes of fear had coiled in his stomach, he felt something harden. After a moment he took one final, shuddering breath. The breeze across the lake had kicked up a little and though the night was comfortably warm, he shivered in his wet clothes. The sweet air helped to wake him. The sparse trees rustled with the wind, but other than that, nothing moved.
Grim weight bore down upon his shoulders, but Oliver stood taller, managing it. “All right.” His left eye twitched as he said it. “We’re here. I still only have the vaguest idea where here is, and you’re going to have to explain it all to me. All of it. But if we could be in danger, staying here, then you can talk while we go.”
He ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up, trying to dry it a little. A little laugh escaped him. “Jesus. All right.” Oliver glanced around again. “Which way? Toward the mountain?”
The winter man shook his head in consternation, icicles of hair shaking. “No. There is ice atop the mountains. That is the first place they would look for me. It would restore my power more quickly than I can manage myself, but I can’t return home until this is ended. We’ll go northeast to start, to get away from the lake, and then due east until we meet the Truce Road.”
Oliver opened his mouth, but could summon no response. What was there left to say? He plucked again at his wet clothes where they stuck to his body. It would be an uncomfortable trek until they dried, and they had no supplies, no food at all. He wondered if Frost needed to eat, or would consider that Oliver did.
“What are we waiting for?”
Frost started off across the brittle grass on a diagonal path away from the lake. After a moment, Oliver followed him. He started to unbutton his shirt as he walked, thinking it would dry better if he let it wave in the breeze. But his mind was not on that task. Reluctantly, he turned to cast one final glance at the sky above the lake, the place where the Veil was thin enough for the Borderkind to pass through.
Lower, on the water, something caught his eye.
He had nearly reached that copse of trees— Frost had already begun to duck in amongst them, forging a direct path northeast— when he saw them. The surface of the lake had been broken by the emergence of small creatures, some of them still swimming but others wading onto the shore.
“Frost,” Oliver rasped.
The winter man continued on, unhearing.
Oliver called again, more loudly, and his companion halted at last, turning to regard him with deep frustration. He seemed prepared to face another argument about their course of action, until Oliver pointed back to the lake and the winter man saw the monsters at the water’s edge. Some of them had ambled out of the lake and begun sniffing at the place where Oliver had stood only moments before.
Their eyes gleamed wetly in the moonlight. The things were squat and rolled from side to side as they walked, long arms dragging beside them like chimpanzees. Their flesh was dark, but he thought he caught a hint of green in the moonlight, a putrid sort of hue. But as squat and ugly as their bodies were, their heads were far worse. Their faces were pinched, mouths pushed out like small snouts and eyes too close together. Worst of all was their skulls, which were concave on top, creating a strange kind of bowl out of their heads. Even those who had dropped to the ground to investigate managed to keep their heads upright. As they walked, shambling from side to side, their heads tilted back and forth to remain steady.
