Echo North(76)

“Stop!” I cry, beating at his chest with my free hand. “Stop! I know it isn’t you.”

He grins, his eyes flickering red. “Why do you ask me to stop? Because you know I speak the truth and you are too water-willed to hear it? Foolish child. You are nothing. You have always been nothing, and that is what you will be forever.”

“Stop it, stop it, stop it!” I scream at him.

He just laughs and laughs, and I know it is the Wolf Queen’s laughter, but I still can’t bear it.

And then suddenly he is Hal again, and his mouth presses soft and warm against mine and he’s wrapping his arms around my shoulders and clinging to me as I’m clinging to him.

I sob into his chest and his tears fall into my hair and I can’t bear it.

“Echo, Echo, Echo,” he whispers. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

I sag against him, still shuddering and scared. There’s tension in his arms; it isn’t over yet.

I hear the Wolf Queen’s step and look up at her. She stands cool and silver in the moonlit wood, and I realize the sudden silence is the absence of her spell-song. I regard her in exhaustion and fear, my arms still locked around Hal.

“You have done tolerably well so far.” Her tone is aloof. “But I don’t think you know everything.” She’s holding another of the red flowers from her throne, and she strokes its petals thoughtfully. It trembles in her hands, and I have the feeling that, to her, I am nothing more than another flower, for her to toy with as long as it amuses her, then discard when she grows tired of the temporary diversion. “Does she, Hal?”

He turns his head to look at her, and I feel again his own fragility, the weight of the curse stretching him too far, too long. “I don’t know what you mean, your majesty,” he answers softly. But I can sense he’s lying.

“Don’t you?” The Queen’s lips turn up in a momentary, humorless smile. “Well, let me remind you of the terms of your enchantment. The terms that she agreed to, when she came to live in your house for a year. What really happened when she broke those terms.” The Wolf Queen steps slowly around us, her skirt sweeping the forest floor behind her as she walks. I have the sudden idea that she fashioned it from ice and snow, with wind for thread. “I think you should tell her.”

Hal sits a little back from me. I can feel his heartbeat echoing in our joined palms. He doesn’t speak.

The Queen keeps circling us. “Let me rephrase. Tell her, Halvarad. Tell her exactly what you made her agree to. Tell her what would have happened if she didn’t light that lamp. Tell her.”

He doesn’t look at me, just stares at the ground and shudders like he’s breaking to pieces.

“TELL HER!” thunders the Queen.

I can feel the shiver of magic pass between them. She’s using the enchantment to command him. He cannot help but obey.

“And look at her, when you do,” she adds.

His chin jerks up, against his will. His eyes are wet. The scar from the spot of oil is stark against his pale skin. “Echo.” His words sound strangled, torn from his lips. “If—if you would have waited. If you wouldn’t have lit the lamp—”

The Wolf Queen is laughing, and begins picking up the threads of her spell-song once more. I sense its rising power.

“You would have been free,” I say. “I know. Instead I doomed you to come back here. Back to her.”

He nods, tears leaking down his cheeks. “It’s true, yes, it’s true. But Echo, all the things I told you. About being a caretaker for the house. About seeing your family again—” He wants to look away but he can’t, and his whole body trembles with his resistance to the spell. “If you hadn’t lit that lamp, I would have been free. But—but she would have taken you instead. That was the deal. The only way to break my curse. Your life for mine. That was what I asked of you. That is what you agreed to, though you didn’t know it.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

HAL’S PULSE BEATS BENEATH MY FINGERTIPS: erratic, unstable.

His eyes still meet mine, but I glance away. I can’t bear it. My breath is ragged and wild in my chest, my whole body sears with the pain of everything I’ve endured. I can’t bear it. Can’t bear it.

“He never wanted you,” hisses the Queen. “He never loved you. He was just trying to save his own worthless skin.”

“No.”

“Tell her!” the Queen commands.

Hal’s wretched voice, torn from his lips without his consent: “It’s true. I’m sorry, Echo. I’m so sorry—but it’s true.”

I stare at my hand, wrapped around his wrist. I am collapsing inward, falling through a jagged crack in the ice, dark water closing over my head and sealing me into oblivion. In the service of the Queen there will be peace. Forgetfulness. When I belong to her, body and soul, I won’t remember him—won’t remember this.

I am outside myself as I watch my fingers loosen their hold. They move so slowly, too slowly, as if my own body rebels against me.

“Echo,” breathes Hal, “Echo, no.” And he jerks himself close to me, his leg grazing my foot as he grabs my head with both his hands, fingertips piercing into my skull. “Let her see.” He says it like a prayer. “Let her remember.”