Of Sorcery and Snow (27 page)

I'd killed someone. Finally. It probably made him happy.

He glanced my way every few miles, but I looked back only once. He didn't seem triumphant like I expected, just worried.

Around midday the wind picked up, and Lena passed out another round of dragon scales so we could refresh our heating enchantment. Except I didn't say it right the first time:
“No need for flames, no need for a blaze, just enough to kill—”

That was what I was now. A killer. Thirteen years old, and I'd killed someone who wasn't much older than me. My hands started shaking again. I clutched my dragon scale, so hard that I felt its edges bite my palm.

Lena noticed. “Are you okay?” I just nodded, but the numbness was beginning to wear off.

Hours later, as the sunset dyed the bobbing icebergs pink, the bay ended. Ahead of us was the trail of footprints, leading straight into a gorge.

“Yes!” Miriam cried, spurring her reindeer forward.

I didn't really look.

Chase drew up. “Here.” He held my M3 out to me, and when I just stared at it stupidly, he reached out, unzipped my carryall's pocket, and shoved it inside. “Hey, Forrel—me and Rory's mounts are starting to wheeze. That means we should stop, right?”

“Yes. Miriam, I'm sorry, but the reindeer will suffer if we go any farther,” Hadriane said, before our Tale bearer could protest. “We've ridden more than a full day already.”

So out came Lena's tile and the snow servants. Up went to snow hut, and in we went. Out came the sleeping bags and the Lunch Box of Plenty.

The food smells turned sharp and metallic, like wolf blood, and suddenly I remembered how easily my sword had sliced through Mark's neck, easier and messier than hacking down a beanstalk.

Nausea flooded me.

“I'll take first watch,” I heard myself say, and I stumbled outside. I managed at least ten paces before I started retching up bile. It steamed on the ice and started to freeze, edges first. Being upset didn't stop me from thinking that was gross.

I dragged myself over to a hunk of ice to sit. All the thoughts that I'd managed not to think earlier crashed through my head. Mark's little socks. The way he'd kept looking for permission from the older brown wolf in Golden Gate Park. The way he'd snarled, “I'll never help you,” right before he attacked Lena, right before I murdered him. Those were the last words he'd said, and now he'd never say anything again. Now he'd never get turned back into a human.

So, yeah, I was crying pretty hard by the time Chase came outside.

“You don't want to be out here.” I wiped my face, but my
sniffly voice made it pretty obvious what I'd been doing.

Chase didn't even pause, but he looked down into the steaming bowl of soup in his hands. “You can cry. I don't have to watch.”

Considering how much he hates seeing people cry, this was actually really generous. Suddenly I was glad I wasn't alone.

The soup was for me. He put it in my hands as soon as he reached my ice chair.

“I'm not hungry,” I said automatically.

Chase pulled a spoon out of his pocket and passed it to me. “You don't have a choice. Lena says that even with the heating spells, we're using up more energy being out in the cold. It's dangerous not to eat
anything
.”

He sat down next to me. “You never forget the first one. You never forget their
face.
”

Sometimes I felt like there were two Chases—the one who liked to show off and pester us, and then this one, who said things that actually mattered.

“The first person I killed was a goblin. He had a scar on his right cheek, a hole in his right ear, and eyes as green as a parrot,” Chase said softly. The details shocked me more than the story. “The Snow Queen's war had begun. The Fey weren't part of it yet. But Cal had his suspicions, and he shared them with Dyani's father, who doubled the patrols. The kids in my sword class were assigned guard duty at an old portal. The others, especially Fael, kept complaining that everyone had forgotten it. They thought nobody would come through.”

Chase had been
five
when he lived with the Fey. Just five.

“But three goblins did. The Snow Queen's messengers,” Chase said. “I didn't even mean to kill him. He tried to jump me from behind, and I turned. My dagger just slid into his stomach. He
looked right at me, and then. . . . His eyes were still open, but he wasn't seeing anything.”

I pushed away the memory of how sharp my sword really was, how smoothly it sliced.

“Since we just captured the other two, I was the only one who killed anyone,” Chase continued. “Everybody congratulated me, but for the next three days, I kept throwing up. Amya thought I had food poisoning.

“But Cal knew. He took me on a long flight, far from the others, and he told me, ‘You'll never forget your first. You'll carry his face with you always.' And since I'd spent the whole day throwing up every time I remembered the goblin, that wasn't what I wanted to hear. I think I kicked him.”

“Not shocked,” I said.

Chase shoved me, not hard, just enough to let me know I wasn't getting away with that. “And then he told me that if I hadn't killed that goblin, the goblin would have killed me instead. ‘Amya and I would be devastated if anything happened to you,' he said. ‘We would never be the same.'”

I knew where this was going, and it ticked me off. It wasn't that simple. “You're trying to remind me that I saved Lena, aren't you? I
know
that. I'm glad she's okay. It's just—” When I went home, I would have to tell Mom about this too, and the look on her face when she learned I was a killer on top of everything else. . . .

“‘You've decided who should live and who should die, and you cannot take it back.'” It took me a second to figure out that Chase was still repeating what his brother had said. “‘You don't know whether or not it was the right decision, choosing your life over the goblin's, and I can't tell you that. But I can tell you that you will make peace with the decision you made. The horror you feel will pale in
comparison to the horror of what might have happened instead.'”

He meant losing Lena. That was so awful I couldn't even imagine it.

“‘And it will be easier when the choice comes next time,'” he continued. “‘And easier the next time still.'”

That was probably true. But I didn't think it would ever be as easy for me as it was for Chase. I didn't think I could kill someone during every single battle, even when I was older.

“That was one of the last things Cal said to me,” Chase added softly. “He and Dyani were dead a few days later.”

I knew how much Chase cared about his brother, but Cal must have loved him too. War had been destroying their whole world, and he'd still taken time to make sure his little brother was okay.

I let myself imagine it, just for a moment—suggesting names like Brie had asked, flying down to L.A. for the birth, waiting with Dad through Brie's labor, meeting the baby for the first time. She would be so tiny, so helpless. She would be family, for me to protect like Mom and Dad and Amy and Brie, and maybe someday, I would be the one telling her advice, like Cal had for Chase.

Pointless to think that way. It made me feel even worse.

“You miss him.” It wasn't a question.

“Every day.” Chase shrugged. “But recently, every hour.”

Because we were getting closer and closer to the place where Cal died.

“What was he like?” I'd never asked him this. Chase was too touchy about the Fey and his life with them.

“It's impossible to tell you about Cal without talking about Dyani. They were always together,” Chase explained. “She was the Unseelie heir, and she liked the attention. She drew people to her. She was fair though, because Cal was fair. And he was
just about the only person she listened to. And Cal—”

He paused.
Here's when he changes the subject,
I thought, but I was wrong. “Dyani told me once that Cal was like a light. He just made everything better and brighter. He wasn't the first person you noticed in a crowd, but if you got to talking to him, he was the one you remembered afterward. He was the one you wanted to see again. It was hard to feel alone when he was around.”

But then he was gone, and Chase
had
felt alone.

“Brie's having a girl.” It just popped out. I hadn't planned on telling him.

Lena would have immediately started telling me that this still didn't mean I was like the Snow Queen, that I wasn't turning into Solange, but Chase just stared at me, searching my face so intently that I had trouble looking back at him.

Then he said, “You'll make a good sister, Rory.”

He meant it, and I was grateful, even though I still had to decide what being a good sister meant. Afraid I was going to cry again, I told him. “Chase, Lena noticed that you do glamours. Last night she told me that she thinks you're the grandson or great-grandson of a Turnleaf.”

“That stupid pavilion—” Chase sucked in a huge breath, thinking it over. “I can live with that,” he said finally.

“Even if she thinks Torlauth is your great-uncle?” I said. “She wouldn't tell. She spent the last few years believing you're descended from a Turnleaf, and she never said. You might as well—”

He raised his eyebrows, and I knew I was pushing it. Oh well. It
was
his secret.

“Get up. You're helping me train.” Standing, he unsheathed his sword and pulled out his M3.
“Please, please don't be botched. Come on mirror, it's time to watch.”

“I don't want to train.” I didn't feel like
touching
my sword.

Chase knew that, I think. “You don't get a choice.
I'm
the one training this time, and you owe me about a thousand training sessions. I watched the mirrorcordings from this morning, and I figured out why you're so good at fighting in big groups. You move around so fast that you get your opponents to accidentally fight each other. You know, like human kung fu. We're going to go through every single move, very slowly, till I get the hang of it. Then we'll do it faster. You're playing all the bad guys. I'll be you.”

I could think of only one reason why Chase would show a sudden interest in my magic sword's techniques. “Does that mean I actually won the bet?”

Chase didn't answer that directly. “Tackling the islands was a strategic mistake, but if I'd gotten the five points from Ripper, I would have won.”

“It doesn't matter anyway,” I said, trying not to think about Mark. “You got what you wanted.”

“I didn't
want
this,” Chase snapped. I looked up, surprised he was so angry. “I never wanted you this upset. I was afraid you would get backed in a corner and have to choose between you and the bad guy. You would hesitate and then there would be no more Rory. I knew this would suck for you, no matter what. I pushed you anyway. Be mad at me if you want. If I have a choice between you being mad at me and being dead, you can just be mad.”

“I'm not mad.” I really wasn't, not anymore. “But you should have told me
that
. You just kept complaining about fighting the same bad guys over and over.” I would have listened better if I had known he was worried about me.

Chase shook his head, turning back to the M3. “You would just have said there's nothing to worry about.”

He was probably right, so instead of arguing, I peeked at the M3 over his shoulder. I couldn't really follow it. I just saw white fur, and then my brown jacket. But Chase did. He stared at the mirror, totally engrossed, like it was an instructional manual for awesome.

Cal would be proud of him. I hoped Chase knew that.

“Chase?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“I wish I could have met your brother.”

“You would have gotten along.” Chase tapped the M3 twice to rewind the last section. “You two are a lot alike, actually. Okay, looks like you need to be over on the right and aim a slice at my throat. I wish this mirror had slow mo. You think Lena could add it while we're out here?”

I don't think he even noticed what a nice thing he'd said. But I did.

And I would have trained all night if he'd asked.

I hadn't really expected to sleep after we woke up Lena and Miriam at the end of our watch. Every time I closed my eyes, I kept seeing Mark's white paws, but eventually, the paws grew boots, Mark started walking on his hind legs, and he sprouted cobalt wings threaded with red.

Then Torlauth towered over me, a sword in his hand, a sneer on his face.

“Isn't this what you always wanted?” said the Snow Queen.

The scared questers were lined up beside me, Forrel's pale face, Lena's weak smile. Then Chase gaze's hit mine like a magnet, and I couldn't look away, even as my hand crept toward my pocket.