Followed by Fros(20)

Staring up at the wisps of silent, falling snow, I forgave Mordan. It was that resolve—a strange sort of hope that I could change for the better, one way or another—that fueled me through the years to come.





CHAPTER 8





Sadriel, whose company I both craved and despised, did not visit me that winter, and I had come to believe I would never see him again, save on my own deathbed. But our confrontation had ignited within me a new will to live. Where once I had gripped on to life with white knuckles for fear of death, I now cherished life for the love of it.

I reflected often on my life before the curse. Rather than bestowing me with comfort or joy, the memories often made my heart heavy with remorse. Even the smallest things, like the time I had eaten both brownies Ashlen’s mother had sent home with me, when I was meant to share one with Marrine. Or when I had mercilessly teased a young woman at school for her ill-fitting dress. I pondered on every chore I had skipped or completed haphazardly, on every piece of misleading advice I had shared with friends, on every boy I had ever made empty promises to and then discarded like an empty flour sack.

I considered all these things and made confessions and apologies I could only utter to myself. I traced the empty words in ice and sculpted my old home, the turnery, and poor renditions of my loved ones’ faces in the snow. Then I left my sad artwork behind to be buried by the next storm, always moving forward on cold and bare—but determined—feet.

When spring settled, I followed the runoff past the mountains and soon found myself on the northeastern border of Iyoden, which I recognized only from school maps and my own speculation. I spent a day determining whether or not to cross, and at the following dawn I did, dragging my storm with me. Less than one week into my travels I discovered what appeared to be an army camped in the distance: clean, uniformed rows of beige tents and fires, men whose livery I dared not get close enough to identify. I thought of circumventing them, but I decided not to chance it and turned back.

I had crossed to the other side of the first mountains, perhaps six days outside Euwan and Heaven’s Tear Lake, when I stumbled upon a black-cloaked figure with a broad hat, garbed in maroon, his long tresses stirring calmly in the cool breeze.

I paused and adjusted the schoolbag on my shoulder, its handle held together only by knots.

“I didn’t think I’d see you again,” I said. Thoughts of our last meeting would have flushed my skin had such a thing been possible.

Sadriel laughed heartily, his broad hat almost falling from his head. He seemed taller, or perhaps I had grown smaller in his absence. “You interest me, Smitha,” he said once he had controlled himself. “You amuse me. And I can hardly stay away from good amusement for long.”

I pinched my collar and tugged it up—all my dresses were near rags, hardly able to pass for modesty. “I didn’t mean to . . . When I saw you last, I—”

He appeared before me in an instant, a blur solidified. His long fingers grabbed my hair and jerked my head back, forcing me to look at him. His amber eyes blazed, and his mouth curled into a sneer.

“What will you say to me, Smitha?” he asked, and I winced in his grip. “Do you think you broke my heart?”

He tugged my hair back further until I was sure my neck would snap. His lips almost touching my ear, he whispered, “I am Death. I don’t have a heart to break.”

I peered into his face, forcing myself to look into those fire-hot eyes. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, choked. As loud as I could say it, throat bent as it was.

He released me and stepped back. I coughed and rubbed my frozen neck.

“I am part of you, Smitha,” Sadriel said, his slender brows knit tightly together. “I have waited longer than a few years for men to fall to me.”

He vanished. I shivered at his words. Indeed it had been a few years; I had already entered my third since leaving Euwan. I did not know the exact day, but I imagined my twentieth birthday would be upon me soon enough.





CHAPTER 9





They came in the spring.

If Sadriel knew, he chose not to warn me. I had finished my breakfast of wrinkled apples and was sculpting a fox out of snow when I saw them, a band of about thirty riding along the overgrown trail in the valley below—an uninhabited valley, narrow, with young trees, a crisscrossing of brooks, and dark soil that made me believe a fire had passed through some time ago. They rode in a snakelike formation, pushing their horses. With nothing but nature around us for miles, the only thing they could be looking for was me.

I ran.

I had the advantage of higher ground, and I knew horses did not handle steep inclines easily, but as I had learned when the hunting party from the eastern beach was pursuing me, the clouds that followed me would not allow me to hide. I climbed the steepest paths of the mountains and ran across rocks and roots to hide my prints, hoping the remnants of my frost would melt before they could be used to track me. I avoided streams and other runoff, which flowed at their fullest, for if I lingered too long in the water, it would freeze and snare me like a deer in a trap.

I ran until my frozen throat could barely pull in enough air to keep me breathing. I stopped only to pull burrs from my aching feet. Switching my schoolbag to the other shoulder, I continued on, a little slower but no less determined.

I wandered up and down the slopes, winding around the mountain until the narrow valley disappeared behind me, my storm trailing me all the while. I needed to forage for food, and soon, but I’d rather be hungry than dead. I ate my last apple and tuber as I walked, my jaw aching as it worked the frozen bites.