“I guess it’s more like…reborn? Remade?” I said. “So far showing no signs of being interested in consuming blood or brains, but he remains an utter rapscallion.”

  Emrys seemed to process this in stride. “Death magic, then?”

  “The coin.”

  His brows shot up as he found the right memory. I nodded.

  “I hesitate to ask this, knowing how much you adore these touchy-feely conversations,” Emrys began, “but are you all right?”

  The stinging barb was right there, and so easy to reach for. It was a reflex now—the dagger of sarcasm or irritation flung back to avoid having to think about how I felt, or what I thought, on a deeper level.

  “I’m…processing,” I said finally.

  For a long while, there was no sound but the duet of the pleasant, homey crackling of the fire and the moaning of the wind. I closed my eyes, trying to push the image of the others still wandering in the blizzard from my mind.

  “I can practically feel you thinking,” Emrys murmured. “Are you worried about the others?”

  It should have unnerved me that he’d read my thoughts so perfectly, but instead, I found it almost…comforting.

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I don’t understand how we got separated when we crossed into Lyonesse.” That thought drew up another, and my eyes snapped back open. “How did you get here, anyway?”

  “Same way you did, I assume,” Emrys said. “The Hag of the Mist.”

  “Nope,” I said. “Same method, but different hag.”

  At that, Emrys propped himself up on his elbow. “The Hag of the Bogs?”

  “Moors,” I corrected. “And yes. She was very helpful. Didn’t even want our weird little offering bottle.”

  He shook his head, the waves of his fair falling into his eyes. My hands tightened around one another.

  Stop it, I told myself. The friendly distance of the conversation was good. The distance between our bodies was good.

  “You finally make a friend,” he said in wonder, “and it happens to be an ancient monster. One with the tendency to eat any traveler she comes across.”

  “I have other friends too,” I protested. “Neve and the others like me a solid sixty percent of the time.”

  “You know how they ended up trapping the Hag of the Moors in that mirror?” Emrys said, settling back down. “All they had to do was let her catch a glimpse of her reflection. She was so distracted by her own face she didn’t even put up a fight.”

  “Well, that was rude of them,” I said.

  “You’re defending the traveler-eater,” Emrys reminded me.

  “Everyone gets hungry now and then.”

  He actually laughed—a real laugh that rumbled deep in his chest. I wanted to gather the sound to me, to hold it close to my heart.

  I wanted to remember it.

  * * *

  For once, I wasn’t the one having a nightmare.

  A low note of distress crept through the shadowed boundary of sleep, almost indistinguishable from the wind. If I hadn’t been so primed to danger over the last few weeks, I would have drifted right back into the drugging pull of exhaustion.

  “Please…don’t…”

  I sat up, the dark burrow spinning as my mind fought to grasp where I was. Who was next to me.

  Emrys’s voice was agonized. “Don’t—”

  His body thrashed violently, his legs colliding with mine as his torso contorted, threatening to rip open his stitches. My mind sharpened, fully awake now.

  “Emrys!” I grappled with his arms, fighting to keep my grip on them as he wrested them away. His face was pinched with terror, his skin covered in a sheen of sweat despite the chill that had overtaken us.

  Waking someone from a dream was like saving them from drowning. I pulled him back to me, managing to get my arms under and around him, trying to haul him up from the ground, to use the movement to wake him. “Emrys!”

  His eyes fluttered open, the muscles of his chest and shoulder jerking against me as he slammed back into awareness. His gaze found mine in the dark, disoriented with fear. A feeling of almost unbearable tenderness filled me, more awful than ever now that I could name it. Now that I wanted to give in to it.

  Every part of me was shaking. My throat burned as I released him. We both stayed there, suspended in darkness.

  “Tamsin?” he said, his voice rough with sleep. “Is this real?”

  I took his face between my hands.

  “It’s real,” I told him, but the moment felt like a dream. A liminal place, where anything could happen. Where there were no consequences, no past, no future. Just…

  The thought dissolved as his hand slid around my waist; the assuredness of it, the open look of wanting on his face, made me feel powerful. For once, I was in control of this—whatever this was.

  I rose onto my knees, letting him draw me closer as I smoothed my fingers over his face, feeling the roughness of stubble growing in, feeling the muscles of his jaw relax. I would have been embarrassed, maybe, by how closely I was watching him, but he was watching me, too, his breath hitching as I straddled his legs.

  I drew my face close to his, feeling his skin warm with my touch, smelling the earthy pine scent of him. I drew back ever so slightly, my breath mingling with his, giving him the opportunity to pull away and unravel this.

  He rested his forehead against mine, his hand moving to cup the nape of my neck, his hand stroking the sweat-damp hair there.

  “I don’t want a dream,” he whispered. I felt almost drunk with the sound of it, the husk of those words. “It’s always been real to me.”

  Don’t hurt me, I thought desperately.

  Emrys had lied before, had lied and lied and hidden behind his veil of secrets, but his body told the truth and mine responded in kind. A feeling of liquid heat wound through my belly. I felt so dizzy with the sensation of him, I hadn’t realized I’d said it aloud until he answered, his breath whispering against my ear, “Never.”

  His hand tightened around my hip, holding me there. “You know what I am…”

  But I heard what he was really saying. You can hurt me, too.

  I met his gaze, daring him.

  “I know what we are,” I told him, sliding a hand back to tangle in his dark, wavy hair. The word burned in me like a brand. Even.

  Then his lips were on mine and I knew I was right—that the feeling in me, hot and desperate, that painful longing, echoed in him. I kissed him back, hungry for the sensation of his heart—his heart—racing. Alive. I rocked against him, careful not to brush against his chest, devouring the low, rough sound it drew from him, the way he moved against me in turn.

  One moment blurred into the next, his tongue parting my lips as if we’d done this a thousand times, for a thousand years. He turned, easing me down onto the blanket, covering me with his body. The charge between us changed, that molten feeling in my belly spreading as it became a competition, that push and pull between us, that refusal to be the first to pull away.

  He was everywhere, consuming all of my senses, erasing the fear from my mind, the painful ache of my battered body. My skin jumped as his hand slipped up beneath the hem of my sweater and skimmed over my skin, careful to avoid the tender spot on my ribs. I ran my hands up the muscles of his back, pulling his shirt free.

  He leaned back to let me do it, capturing my face between his hands, holding me there in that stillness, even as I tried to lift my head and meet his lips halfway. He stroked my hair back from my cheek and I saw his fear play out clearly over his face.

  “No,” I whispered. “Stop thinking. You know what I am. I know what you are. It’s just us here.”

  It was startling but also so completely natural to want him, the comfort of connection. Something in me, that voice that was so quick to cut, told me I was being a fool, that baring everything to him was an invitation to the pain that would inevitably come. But wasn’t that the risk everyone took in opening their heart to another person? Closing myself off hadn’t protected me. It had only kept me alone.

  He drew in a sharp breath, his body trembling as I stroked his back, finding the waistband of his jeans. The button.

  “Are you sure?” he whispered.

  I’d been wrong to think he had nothing to lose in this, that he held all the power. His skin was as soft as mine, his heart just as vulnerable. If everything went to pieces around us, this at least would remain.

  “Yes.” For the first time in weeks, I felt calm, even if my movements were clumsy, needy. I was protected in the ways that mattered most right now and had been for years, since my first time. But this wasn’t a quick fumble born out of curiosity. This was a promise.

  Yes, I see you.

  Yes, I want you.

  The heat of him overtook me, burned away the world, burned away everything but the feel of him.

  The silky night enveloped us, hushing the snowstorm to a whisper, leaving that sole thought singing through my blood as I kissed him again.

  Alive, alive, alive…

  “All right…this does feel familiar,” I admitted. “Just a little.”

  Emrys chuckled as he surveyed the frosted land that lay before us. “Consider it a do-over, then.”

  My gaze slid sideways toward him, but he only looked ahead, pointing at a dark shape diminished by the miles between us. “That’s the castle, isn’t it?”

  I shielded my eyes against the glare of the strange, milky sunlight. “Looks like it.”

  The storm had raged all through the night into the morning, and had only died down moments ago. The clouds gathering behind us, and the sharp quality to the air, made it feel like it had only temporarily retreated.

  “That’s where Rosydd was supposed to open the portal for us,” I said, trying to rub some warmth into my arms. “Hopefully the others are headed that way too.”

  If something had happened to them in the night while I was safely tucked away with him beside a cozy fire…I drew in a deep breath, letting cold air clear the lingering fog of sleep.

  Emrys swept an arm out toward it. “Shall we?”

  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.

  But there were no gods left in this world to hear me. There were only us, and the monsters.

  Emrys sidled up beside me, giving me an encouraging nod. I released the air in my aching lungs and forced myself to lean around the crumbling stone wall.

  My knees turned hollow. I braced a hand against the remains of the cottage, closing my eyes, trying to steady the wild beat of my heart.

  “What…do you think could have done that?” Emrys asked.

  A black serpent, the length of three of me, lay in pieces on the road. Chunks of its lustrous scales were riddled with holes. An unidentifiable, half-eaten mass of bloodied fur had been left near its gaping maw; tufts of white clung to the sticky blood on its swordlike fangs. My mind composed the story in an instant: the creature had gone hunting, found the day’s meal, and was bringing it back to its den when another, deadlier predator had taken it by surprise.

  I ran toward the castle gate, leaving Emrys huffing to keep up.

  The main road served as an artery that climbed up past more homes, guild workshops, and armories. Covered markets protected from the snow revealed the last evidence of the carnage of the past. The stone road turned crimson there, still stained by blood that had never completely washed away.

  “I thought…the rivers of blood…were only a story,” Emrys got out between hard breaths. My lungs were working like bellows too, sending tremors through my body.

  “There’s always a seed of truth in every story’s garden,” I said. Another favorite refrain of Nash’s.

  God’s teeth. I hadn’t spared the man a single thought since crossing into Lyonesse, but he had to be somewhere in the kingdom too. Given his head start, there was a good chance he’d already beaten us to the citadel, and maybe to Excalibur.

  “Come on,” I said, steeling myself for the possibility. “We’re almost there.”

  Emrys had turned back to survey the road behind us. The sight of his profile, achingly handsome, sent a bolt of warmth through my body. He would have been right at home here, I thought ruefully. A prince of a legendary kingdom.

  The wind ruffled his snow-dusted hair, and as he turned back, his bright eyes met mine—and darkened in a way that sent heat washing up my throat to my cheeks.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” he almost groaned. “Not when I don’t have time to do anything about it.”

  My breath caught, and somehow—somehow—I forced myself to only reach for his hand.