Followed by Fros(12)

“I didn’t ask for it.”

He grinned. “Does any man or woman ask for a curse? But yours carries death with you. Is it any wonder that I would take an . . . interest?”

“No!” I shouted, my violet fingernails digging into the oak’s root. “I did not kill that boy. Mordan did. He did everything!”

Chilly tears brimmed in my eyes. I quickly blinked them away.

“I see how it is,” Death replied, rubbing his smooth chin.

I pushed a stray hair behind my ear. “Why are you here?”

“I told you,” he said, smile unfading. “You interest me. However you may see it, Smitha—however you wish to lay the blame—you and I are a lot alike. We are neither dead nor living—entities who exist between worlds. There are few of our kind, but we tend to make good company.”

I scoffed.

“And we’re both cold, in our own way,” he finished, those glowing eyes studying me from foot to forehead. “Your curse doesn’t bother me.”

He stood and walked toward me, his long legs carrying him faster than they should. I leapt to my feet, but before I could run, he appeared before me, leaning down, the brim of his hat almost touching the top of my head.

He took my wrist in his hand, a loose grip, and held it before my nose, his skin almost as pale as my own. He wore no gloves, not even a ring, but touching me directly did not so much as raise goose bumps on his skin, and surely the heat of the fire—heat I still could not feel—was not strong enough to banish the cold.

I realized I still trembled, even more so in his grip. He released me after a moment and stepped back. I craned my neck to see his shadowed face.

“No one will help you, Smitha,” he said, his voice deep and honey-like, quiet. The fire cracked behind him. “No one will take you in. But I will.”

The shock of his words ceased my trembling. “What?”

He smiled. “The realm beyond this one is grander than you could imagine.”

I shuddered, imagining my body still and unmoving, buried deep in the frozen tundra beneath my feet. I imagined a world of blackness and mourning, the cries of the dead forever echoing around me. And though I had often considered death a preferable fate to life with my curse, I was suddenly desperate to survive.

I hugged myself. “No. No!”

He closed the small space between us so quickly I did not see him move. He took my chin in his long fingers.

“Come now,” he said with a smirk. “Do you fear Death?”

And with no warning, he faded before my eyes just as he had in the Hutcheses’ home.

I half wondered if so many days in the unyielding cold had begun to warp my mind, for surely Death had not just stood before me, touched me, and offered to take me away to the unknown world beyond. Surely I had imagined all of it, for Death himself could not have taken an interest—an interest!—in me, whatever that entailed. Surely Death did not lust after women the way mortal men did. He had talked to me more like one talks to a pet than a person.

But glancing to my wrist, I could still feel the press of his fingers. An insignificant gesture, but no one had dared touch me since Mordan had laid this godforsaken curse upon my head. No one had touched me since my father had reached for my hand and drawn his back, burned.

I touched my cold wrist with cold fingers and knew that Death had come for me.

It was the first visit of many.





CHAPTER 5





I woke the next morning encased in snow. Without a roof over my head and a fire burning in the hearth, there was nothing to protect me from the elements of my own curse. A biting chill flowed through me, and I wished to fall asleep again, if only to escape it.

I dug my way out, only to be greeted by whipping winter winds. Everything around me shimmered white, and the oak’s great branches sagged under the weight of snow. The winds had scattered the wood of my fire for several paces, the flames long since extinguished.

I grabbed a handful of snow and ate it slowly as I walked. My father had once told me, if caught in a storm, not to eat straight snow for refreshment, for it would lower my body temperature and cause me to freeze. Now that I was already frozen, that wisdom no longer applied to me. The snow didn’t even melt on my tongue.

The winds slowed as I loped through the snow, and gradually the clouds rested from their mystical downpour. It seemed so strange to walk over green grass and past flowering trees when I felt so bitterly cold. As long as I kept walking, my storm could not build enough strength to harm any of it. As long as I kept walking.

My feet quickly remembered the previous day’s trek and began to ache before midmorning. Euwan was a small village, and I was not accustomed to walking very far for anything. The cold that encased my feet made every step that much more painful. There was no relief, for the skin never numbed. I cursed Mordan’s name for the thousandth time, but there was no one around to hear me.

But thoughts of Mordan reminded me of the last dinner I had shared with my family, the one Mordan had so selfishly intruded on. Father had spoken of wizards up north—something about throwing fire and a political war.

Save for early morning and dusk, my storm cloud hid the sun from me, but I was not so far from Euwan that I could not determine which way was north. I hoped, a spark amidst cinders, that perhaps the rumors were true, that other wizards had come as far south as Iyoden. A wizard had cursed me; perhaps a wizard could cure me as well.