Page 125 of The Mirror of Beasts

I’d managed a few hours of sleep last night, in between watching his relaxed face and searching for signs that he regretted what we had done. My body felt relaxed but heavy, as if I were collecting little bits of exhaustion and carrying them around like stones in my pockets.

“Tamsin,” Emrys said, his voice low. I almost laughed at the sight of the ridiculous fur coat he held out to me in offering. He smiled—one of his old smiles, too charming by half. “What? It’s a look.”

“You wear it, then,” I told him, gazing out over the snow.

He grabbed my hand and pulled me back, tucking me into the soft depths of the coat, against the warmth radiating from him. The smell of him, pine and earth, lived on my skin now too. My senses were overwhelmed by a new awareness of him. The memory of his weight over me, the scratch of his stubble against my skin—my eyes drifted up to his lips again, my own still swollen. My hands curled against the warmth of his chest, against the feel of his heart beating fiercely beneath the layers of his clothes and skin.

Yet, little by little, as the night drifted further away from us and the world intruded, a knot of ice began to form at my center. I knew what it was immediately.

Dread.

I stared up at his face again, searching for those signs—the ones I had missed in Avalon, that would have told me what he’d planned to do. My pulse began to climb as the need for flight, for the safety of distance, kicked in.

I’m safe, I told myself, my hands sliding down to his waist. Holding on to him. On to us.

Emrys leaned down, brushing his lips against my cheek before whispering in my ear, echoing my own words back to me. “Stop thinking. It’s just us here.”

“What happens when it isn’t?” I heard myself ask. My body responded to the proximity of him—how could it not, when those eyes were gazing so deeply into mine?

“Where do you want it to go?” he said, pulling back to study my face. “I’m not going to pretend like I don’t want this to be something, to take it as far as you’ll let it go.”

I chewed on my bottom lip and he watched, captivated. I felt that warm power rise in me again.

The truth was, I’d never been a daydreamer. The way I’d lived until now, haunted by the past, living day to day on what small bits of money we could scrape together, I hadn’t let myself.

But that wasn’t Emrys. He was someone who lived for the future, who tried to shape it in whatever way he could. He wanted it as much as his next breath.

“I can only focus on right now,” I told him. “That’s all I know how to do.”

He stole a quick kiss. “Then I’ll meet you there, between today and tomorrow.”

And that was enough for me.

A roar bellowed across the snow-laden hills, and we both dropped into a crouch. The wind was playing games with us, carrying the sound from every direction at once.

After that, we said nothing—we only quickened our pace, and kept our eyes wide open.

It was an hour, maybe more, before we encountered a strange, wavy imprint and the first splatter of blood staining the snow.

My hands curled into fists in my jacket pockets. Within my chest, my heartbeat began a traitorous refrain. They’re dead. They’re dead. They’re dead.

“Tell me that’s not the trail we’re going to follow,” Emrys began.

I only looked at him and continued on.

There was no way to avoid the bloody tracks; they were heading in the same direction we were, to the abandoned village at the foot of the castle walls. The fact that we could see the path the creature had taken at all meant it had been left this morning, after last night’s snowfall.

If the others had come this way—

I shut the thought down and looked up toward the towering structure ahead. More than a mere home to kings, it was a citadel built into the side of a small peak. Four levels of outer buildings rose one after the next, to the pale stone castle at the peak. I counted four towers, and even through a dusting of snow, their turrets gleamed gold.

The village had been built out around the main road leading up to the castle gates. Aside from the blacksmith forge and a handful of structures with dilapidated signs announcing their trade or wares, the buildings seemed to be cozy stone cottages. Some with pens for animals that no longer needed them, others with snow-buried gardens. Our only welcome was the sound of a well’s pail squeaking in the wind.

Like the fairy mounds, most of the stone cottages looked as though their occupants had risen from the breakfast table and never returned. Shutters clattered and snapped like twigs at the lightest of touches. Glimpses through fallen doors and uncovered windows revealed scenes that were almost heartbreaking in their domesticity. A straw doll left on a bed. Candles and hides left hanging to dry, forever unused. Frayed thread on a spinning wheel.

We slowed our steps, keeping close to one another as the tracks continued and pools of blood appeared. My pulse beat harder with each step. As we came around the corner of a collapsed stable, I reached back for Dyrnwyn’s hilt, and held my breath.

Not Neve, I begged inwardly. Not Cait.

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