The Girl in the Tower (The Winternight Trilogy #2)(108)

The power gathered somewhere in the space between them, between her flickers of awareness. There is no magic. Things are. Or they are not. She was beyond wanting anything. She didn’t care whether she lived or died. She could only feel; the gathering storm, the breath of the wind. Morozko there beside her.

Was that a flake? Another? She could not tell snow from ash, but some quality had changed in the fire’s noise. No—that was snow, and suddenly it was falling as thick as the fiercest of winter blizzards. Faster and faster it fell until all she could see was white, overhead and all around. The flakes cooled her blistered face. Smothered the flames.

She opened her eyes and found herself back in her own skin.

Morozko’s arms fell away from her. The snow blurred his features, but she thought he looked—tentative now, his face full of fearful wonder.

She found she had no words.

So instead she simply leaned back against him, and watched the snow fall. Her scorched throat ached. He did not speak. But he stood still, as though he understood.

For a long time they stood, as the snow fell and fell. Vasya watched the mad beauty of the snowstorm, the dying fire, and Morozko stood as silent as she, as though he was waiting.

“I am sorry,” she said at length, though she didn’t know, quite, what she was sorry for.

“Why, Vasya?” He stirred then, behind her, and one fingertip just touched the base of her throat, where the talisman had lain. “For that? Better the jewel was destroyed. Frost-demons are not meant to live, and the time of my power is over.”

The snow was thinning. She found, when she turned to look at him, that she could see him clearly. “Did you make the jewel, just as Kaschei did?” she asked. “To put your life in mine?”

“Yes,” he said.

“And you wanted me to love you?” she asked. “So that my love would help you live?”

“Yes,” he said. “That love of maidens for monsters, that does not fade with time.” He looked weary. “But the rest—I did not count on that.”

“Count on what?”

The pale eyes found hers, inscrutable. “I think you know.”

They measured each other in wary silence. Then Vasya said, “What do you know of Kasyan and of Tamara?”

He sighed a little. “Kasyan was the prince of a far country, gifted with sight, who wished to shape the world to his will. But there were some things even he could not control. He loved a woman, and when she died—he begged me for her life.” Morozko paused, and in the instant of chill silence, Vasya knew what had happened to Kasyan next. She felt unwilling pity.

“That was long ago,” Morozko went on. “I do not know what happened then, for he found a way to set his life apart from his flesh, to keep my hand from him. Forgot—somehow—that he could die, and so did not. Tamara lived with her mother, alone. It is said that Kasyan came to her house one day to buy a horse. Kasyan and Tamara fell in love and fled together. Then they disappeared. Until Tamara appeared alone in Moscow.”

“Where did Tamara come from?” Vasya asked urgently. “Who is she?”

He meant to answer. She could see it in his face. She often wondered, afterward, how her path might have been different, if he had. But at that moment, the monastery bell rang.

The sound seemed to strike Morozko like fists, as though they would break him into snowflakes and send him whirling away. He shook; he did not answer.

“What is happening?” Vasya asked.

The talisman is destroyed, he might have told her. And frost-demons are not meant to love. But he did not say that. “Dawn,” Morozko managed. “I cannot exist anymore under the sun, in Moscow, not after midwinter, when the bells are ringing. Vasya, Tamara—”

The bell rang again, his voice died away.

“No. You cannot fade; you are immortal.” Vasya reached for him, caught his shoulders between her hands. On swift impulse, she reached up and kissed him. “Live,” she said. “You said you loved me. Live.”

She had surprised him. He stared into her eyes, old as winter, young as new-fallen snow, and then suddenly he bent his head and kissed her back. Color came into his face and color washed his eyes until they were the blue of the noonday sky. “I cannot live,” he murmured into her ear. “One cannot be alive and be immortal. But when the wind blows, and storm hangs heavy upon the world, when men die, I will be there. It is enough.”

“That is not enough,” she said.

He said nothing. He was not a man: only a creature of cold rain and black trees and blue frost, growing fainter and fainter in her arms. But he bent his head and kissed her once more, as though the sweetness of it struck a spark of something long since gone dim. But even as he did, he faded.

She tried to call him back. But day was breaking, and a finger of light crept through the clouds to illuminate the char and reek of the half-burnt city.

Then Vasya stood alone.





27.


The Day of Forgiveness




Sasha felt, disbelieving, the wind rise, saw the flames retreat and retreat again. Saw the snow blow up from nowhere and begin to fall. All around Dmitrii’s dooryard, voices were raised in thanksgiving.

Marya sat on Solovey’s withers, both small fists tight in the horse’s mane. Solovey snorted and shook his head.