Page 57 of Garden of Poisoned Delights

“But you’re nice. Is it because you’re not a person? Is that why they’re afraid?” The woman didn’t answer. “Well, I can talk to you, so you don’t have to be lonely.”

The woman stopped for a moment, standing there on the snow with her fur coat trailing behind her, and looked into Zeno’s eyes.

“I’m lonely sometimes,” Zeno said. “My parents died when I was little. I don’t remember them, but I’m still scared of water because it—it happened, there, at the lake.” He bit his cheek. People had told him how they found him, four years old and clinging to his parents’ capsized boat, but he didn’t remember it. He didn’t even remember what his parents sounded like. He just remembered hands on his, and someone pushing him onto the boat, and knowing that he couldn’t let go.

The woman touched his cheek, and her fingers felt like ice. “I do not remember many things.” She paused again, wind blowing her silky black hair over her face. “But I remember the sea and the force of the current, the warmth of the sun on my fur when I came to land. I remember that.”

“You don’t feel warm anymore?”

She shook her head and resumed walking. “When I deliver you, do not speak of me. The one who will meet you does not think kindly of me. Once, he thought I had stolen something from him, a man. I did not steal him—I was not the one to help him cross, but I can give him this, at least. I am not…” she blinked again, slowly, like she forgot she needed to. “I was not always cold.”

“I like you,” Zeno said, and for the first time, a faint smile broke across her stoic face. “I won’t tell anyone your secret, but if you want to talk again…”

This time, she didn’t answer. She just kept walking into the storm, and even though the wind howled and swirled around her, Zeno was warm and safe in her fox-fur coat.

* * *

It was the second day, and considerably colder, and Sava had begun to understand the true lesson that he had been sent here to learn.

It was not the cold and the snow, which he knew to the depth of his very soul, as did every Lukoi. They were forged in snow, created like a blade, and he felt an abiding love for it, this deadly substance that swept over Lukos, uncaring of what it smothered and destroyed.

It wasn’t the hunger, which he felt keenly as no amount of dried fruit and jerky could satiate, given the energy it took to traverse the land. It wasn’t the sound of the sea, distant and yet ever-present, a reminder that no matter how many now came here to see the island of exiles, they were, and always would be, an island.

It wasn’t the dark, or the heavy clouds, or the ground or the wet or the frost that clung to his hair, his beard. No oil-slicked sealskin would keep that from him, and he didn’t mind. He loved Lukos like he loved Victor, with the steadiness of heart and affection that he could not shed if he tried.

No, what he was meant to understand was the loneliness.

He missed Victor like a drowning man missed air, and he understood that it wasn’t like the hunts he took with Zev or the others from the spring to the fall. Once, he’d gone away with Zev and Sasha Bear-Hearted for a week to hunt and bring back supplies from all over the island. Sava had missed Victor, who had spent that time with Sasha’s mates, learning from Viv about the compound and filling notebook after notebook with history, recipes, and diagrams of Micah’s contraptions. He’d talked about it all the way back to their cabin, completely unaware he was speaking his scholar’s tongue until they were nearly home.

This was a different sort of loneliness. He was alone in his thoughts, with all of Lukos pressing down around him, telling him, if you are kuvar, it will be this way. You will be separate, different, alone in a way you are not when you hunt. This is what you will be—at the will of Lukos, because it is a living thing, this island. The first kuvar did not know what they would find, either.

Sava was not meant to find anything, he supposed, since he knew where he was going. He was meant to find himself.

He thought of Milan, as he trudged through the snowstorm, stopping to rest and take a drink of his water and fill it again with fresh snow. He thought about Ivan, about what the last six years might have brought him, if Ivan had taken Victor away. He thought about the man he would have been, if Ivan had tricked him into being his mate. All of those choices had led him here, with a storm whipping the snow into a frenzy, the wind howling like a wolf.

He wanted this, he realized. He wanted to be kuvar, not only to show Victor he was worthy, but to show Lukos he was worthy. He loved his country, harsh as it was. It would be an honor to guide the people who loved Lukos, as Dragan Wolf-Breaker had done. The hunger faded somewhat and his energy returned, and it was then that he found the child.

At first, Sava thought it was an animal, a winter fox, or perhaps a snow cat, and his heart ached as he saw it. Victor would not like that, hearing of an animal that had been taken by the snow. But it was strange to see it there, a bundle of fur, and Sava found himself moving toward it despite knowing that it must be dead.

It wasn’t dead—and it wasn’t an animal.

Sava went down on his haunches. The fur was a coat, and it was wrapped around a person—a small person, a child. And this child looked—he looked like Victor, the same reddish-brown skin, and his hair, though it was encrusted with ice, was the same color, too. His lips were blue, and his body was limp, so much that Sava thought he was dead. But a dead child here, now? A child who looked like Victor?

“What is this?” Sava whispered, looking around, gathering the boy to his chest. Tears pricked his eyes, but he shook himself and tore off his glove, uncaring of the bite of cold on bare skin, and pressed his fingers to the boy’s mouth. Relief shuddered over him as he felt the faint breath there, and a quick check for a pulse on his neck found it was weak but present.

Sava stood, looking around wildly, and his heart almost stopped when he saw fox prints in the snow, leading to where he’d found the boy.

Was this some trick? Was this the Fox Maiden, trying to lead him astray, to make him abandon the Lukoi, to distract him from his journey to the springs? Was this some trick she was using to lead him into death?

He was halfway between the springs and the home he shared with Victor. He could put the child on his back and head to the springs, where Dragan would meet him and give him the witch’s crown and the title of kuvar. Or he could turn and go back to his home, with a warm fire and medicine that could save the life of this child who looked like Victor, who might be an omen…or might not be.

He might just be a child who was too cold to survive another day’s trek through the weather.

There was really only one thing to do.

He would not leave a child here to die. Trick of the Fox Maiden or no, he would honor the spirit of his people. Want of a crown had been the thing that brought them here. It would not be Sava’s undoing. It would not be this child’s death.

With a grim expression, Sava made a makeshift sling so the boy was as close as he could get, and shrugged off his coat to turn it around and wrap more snugly around the boy. It would leave his back exposed, but that was all right. He put the fur where he’d found it—he did not want to bring it into his home. He turned, already feeling the cold on his back, the snow coming so fast and hard that he could barely see.

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