Page 62 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

Sava remembered the fox prints, the coat of fur, and shook his head. “No. This was, I think, a…mystical thing.”

“He says a fountain spirit brought him,” Victor said.

“If you say this boy wanted to be Lukoi, then he is,” Dragan said. “We will welcome him. But Sava, you will walk with me.”

Sava heard Victor’s soft inhale under Dragan’s dominance, and gave his mate and encouraging smile. The boy, despite looking a little wide-eyed and nervy, didn’t lower his gaze. Too young for his natural alignment to manifest, but perhaps a dominant. Dragan gave an approving nod, and Sava pulled his coat from the peg by the door and followed his kuvar onto the porch.

A white wolf was waiting there in the snow, curled up with a witch’s crown between his muddy paws.

“I thought I would have to come here and tell your mate that you had been lost,” Dragan said, as the wolf padded over and dropped the crown at his feet. “But you were not.”

“I am sorry that I have failed you, Kuvar, but I think that he was brought to me by the Fox Maiden, or as a test of hers. I do not know. I might have failed both, but I would not fail the boy, or Victor. I would not fail myself.”

Dragan stared at him for a long time, then reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “What man of Lukos would leave a child to die in the snow? Fox Maiden or no, you did the right thing, Snow-Walker.” He reached down, took the crown, and handed it to Sava.

Sava stared at him, but did not take it. “I did not pass the trials, Kuvar.”

“The trials are to show who is worthy of leading the Lukoi. Who is more worthy than a man who gave up a crown to save a boy he did not know? Make no mistake, Sava Snow-Walker, this was no test of mine. I was truly grieved that something might have befallen you these last few days. But I brought this crown because I did not think it would be that. I knew you would have a reason, and you did. That reason is why you will take this, and be Kuvar in the spring when we light the sacred fires.”

Sava took the crown, fingers trembling. Zev barked, though he stayed in his wolf-form, and Dragan dug his fingers in his scruff.

“It isn’t why I did it,” he protested, the crown cold in his fingers—he’d forgotten his gloves.

“No. You did it because it was the right thing to do.” Dragan beamed at him. “Now, introduce me properly to the newest Lukoi, yes? Zora Star-Finder will be thrilled you have given her a grandson.”

Sava laughed and opened the door, and he thought about telling Zev to change before he walked in the cabin, but perhaps of all the things Zeno had seen on his journey to Lukos, a shape-shifting wolf would be the least strange of all.

As Sava opened the door, he looked at the iron crown in his hands. He felt the weightiness of it, what it meant that he’d earned it, how it felt to know that he’d done it because he’d done what was right. Like his ancestors, who’d born the same crown, the same weight, the same life-or-death decisions represented by the simple metal object he was holding. He was glad that he had earned this, but happier still that it was for doing what he knew was right. As he went to pull the door shut behind him, he saw a figure standing off in the distance. A woman, half-hidden by the snow falling fast around her, wearing the coat he’d left behind when he’d taken Zeno with him.

A chill that had nothing to do with the winter cold washed over Sava, but he did not turn away from her, or make a sign against evil. Maybe she was evil, or maybe she wasn’t, but she was of Lukos. Perhaps, like the winter, she simply was.

Sava raised a hand, and she raised hers back. He nodded, and she stared a moment longer before she turned and disappeared. He thought perhaps he saw fox prints leading away to the valley, but he had no desire to follow them. He did not think she had come to lead him to his death, but perhaps only to thank him.

Sava pulled the door closed behind him, and the newest Kuvar of the Lukoi turned toward his true home—his family.

CHAPTER 11

Appreciative

There was probably a rule about this.

There were probably rules about everything, but Aleks didn’t see why he should have to follow all of them. There were rules about boats. He’d seen Azaiah’s boat—a long, stately vessel made of dark wood that moved silently over the river of the dead, and that was fine, because people didn’t need much when they reached the river.

Aleks’s boat had blankets. It also had cushions, and little lanterns on the sides, and a wind chime that Aleks’s son had made him a year ago that was not supposed to be hanging off the prow. But when Azaiah had told him that mortal things were not traditionally taken to the river, Aleks just nodded and laid a new blanket over the benches.

The spirits seemed to like it, anyway snuggling under the blankets and lying back on the cushions as Aleks bore them across, and everyone was very impressed with the wind chime.

It jingled above Aleks now as he jumped into the river. He could hear the bells his son had painstakingly tied to shells from Lukos ringing over the susurrus of distant spirits from the river. Aleks swam toward the sound and emerged with a gasp.

Stars shone over his boat, an endless, swirling field of them, and Aleks reached up to stir the bells of the wind chime.

He wasn’t sure how to talk to Evander and Elena about the river. It had nearly overwhelmed him once, but now it was almost comforting. He swam in it for hours at night sometimes, leaving his body while Elena and Evander slept. He’d learned that if he swam in the river while he was injured, he woke up healed. Colds disappeared overnight. Swelling from a sprained ankle went down. Aleks guessed the river was a part of him now, or a part of what he was slowly, inevitably becoming as his powers grew, but he didn’t mind it so much.

Except whatever the magic was, it probably wasn’t supposed to be used to heal tattoos.

Aleks closed his eyes and sank into the river, reaching out for his body in the living world, and opened his eyes again to a bright, warm day outside one of Axon’s tattoo parlors.

“Dad?”

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