Page 96 of Untethering Dark

The last threads tethering Astrid to humanity snapped.

Chapter Forty-Six

“Astrid!”

Warm hands enclosed her forearms, yanking up.

Astrid’s body burst through a crust of snow to face the full moon above and Suri’s panicked expression.

Her body thrummed with too much energy, the stillness of Death long left behind. The cold was invigorating.

“Astrid? Is that you?” Suri’s voice was uncertain, fearful.

No longer hindered by fatigue, Astrid held out her hands, turning them over in the moonlight. Fingers, hands, then wrists darkened as if succumbed to frostbite but it tapered off the further it traveled up her limbs. The veins in Astrid’s body had darkened, too, stone gray beneath skin as white as snow, like cracked ice. From afar it might resemble old, wrinkled flesh.

She had claws of her own now, and following a cursory reach up, she felt a rack of antlers crowning her head.

Her heart thumped wildly in her chest, the gunshot wound pain but a dim, dull ache.

She not only survived but transformed, her metamorphosis into a hag complete, even at Death’s door. How, she did not know, and maybe the hag’s ritual was the reason she still lived, all that extra life-giving energy infused into her.

Suri took a step back, brown eyes wild and round.

“It’s me,” Astrid’s voice rasped, touching her hands, her arms, her shoulders, and torso in wonder.

Me. This is really me.

“I’ve changed, but it’s still me,” she added, hoping it would help, the happiest tears freezing on her cheeks.

Suri nodded vigorously, collapsing on the snow beside her and enveloping Astrid in an all-encompassing hug, rocking her from side to side. “You’re alive. I’m so glad you’re alive.”

Memory returned. The gunshot, the darkness, the cocoon of cold. Gudariks. Johanna. Mutter. Astrid pulled back.

“Where are the others?” She gripped Suri’s hands in a too tight squeeze, the bones shifting between gloves and flesh. Suri whimpered, and Astrid quickly released them. She’d have to remember this newfound strength.

Tears streamed down Suri’s cheeks, their whole body shaking, but not the debilitating sort of tears, rather the sort that begot rage. “They got my jaan and the others.”

Dread sliced down her spine. “Got as in...?”

She couldn’t bear to ask if they’d been slain.

“Captured,” Suri answered. “We have to hurry.”

Not dead, then, Mutter Holle sei Dank. But for how much longer? Heldin and her people had a penchant for human sacrifice. Astrid shot to her feet with all the energy and wobbly clumsiness of a newborn fawn.

Suri caught her elbow and steadied her. “Where’s Gudariks?”

“They took him, too.”

Angry tears streamed down her face, forming tracks of ice. They dared take her friend, herlove... Oh, how she would make those forsaken, ancient humans regret it.

Frostbite was now the very least of what she could do.

Suri swore. “Your cottage is on the way. Anything we can grab that might make a good weapon?”

For them? “I’ve got an ax and some kitchen knives.”

“Good enough. Oh, and I found this.”

---