“Fine?” Jude laughed. “You tried to kill me today.”
Tom looked away, ashamed, and Rowan’s heart broke for him. He was different now, there was no question about that, but he was still Tom, and to see him in such pain was excruciating. Her eyes traveled to Fiona. Rowan kept expecting her to join in, to speak, but she only sat watching from her place on the ground, placid and beautiful, her hair falling in black waves down to the snow.
“Please,” Tom said, looking at his brother’s gun trained on Fiona. “I love her. And we’re leaving tonight. We’re going north to the Old Territories, away from people. We only came up here for a final farewell.”
“And what about that creature—that beast?” Jude asked.
“She’s taking it with her,” Tom said, stumbling over the words. “It won’t hurt anyone again. Neither of them will. They will feed on moose and northern bears. Just let us go.”
“You would choose such a life?” Jude said, his voice breaking. “She’s bewitched you. She’s a monster.”
“She didn’t ask for this,” Tom cried. “She’s a victim. You can’t punish her for choices that weren’t hers to make.”
“People are dead, Tom,” Rowan said. “People we knew and loved, they are dead because of her.”
“At least let her defend herself. Tell them, Fiona,” he said, turning to her. “Tell them what happened.”
“Why?” she said calmly. “I owe these people nothing.”
“Please, Jude!” Tom pleaded. “Put down your guns. Please, give her a chance to speak. As my brother. As my friend. Do this for me.”
Jude considered a moment, his face strained with emotion, and then he signaled to Rowan and her father that they should lower their weapons.
Tom turned to Fiona, but she looked away. “I … don’t want to tell them,” she answered.
“Then tell me,” he pleaded, kneeling beside her. “Tell me what happened to you. Because if I’m going to risk death up there in the north, then I need to know. If you love me, you will tell me. You will help me understand what it is that I’m walking into.”
She looked at him with a desperate kind of love, and then, pain marring her face, she nodded. “I don’t like thinking about it,” she said, her voice soft. “I don’t like thinking about anything anymore.”
“Start with the night in the woods,” he urged. “Do you remember what happened?”
She nodded. “It was the coin,” she said, running her fingers over the necklace. “My pet, it was far—very far from here, but the coin connected us. It had been up there, you see—up on Beggar’s Drift, slumbering, ancient. And then something woke it, and at first it didn’t want to answer. It wanted to stay sleeping, but then the call became unbearable. When it emerged, it sought the coin, but it had been in such a dark place for such a long time and without a heartbeat to follow, the beast was like a blind infant, searching in vain. First it headed north, where the animals are large and warm and fresh. But then my heartbeat, it called it back down here, back to me, because I am its master. I was born and I died that I might be its master. That night when it found me in the woods, it was wild then, it was filled with longing and death, and in lunging for me, for its new master, it didn’t mean … well, you know the rest.”
Her voice cracked, and she blinked as if fighting back tears. Tom touched her arm, gently urging her on, and she nodded.
“After that, I remember very little except for cold and the sense that I was very alone. And then something changed. I heard … digging. And then I remember gasping for breath, clawing my way out of the mud. I remember the night sky above me—how beautiful it looked as the pain shot through me, and my body came to life. Next I was in the woods. It was with me, waiting for me. And we were hungry, so hungry. The hunger, it burned inside us. Tom, you can’t know what this hunger was like. There are no words for it.”
“We?” Rowan asked, her thoughts turning to the abomination she’d seen with Fiona.
Fiona narrowed her eyes at Rowan. “Yes, we,” she hissed. “We.”
“So,” Tom said, his voice shaking. “So it was the beast that killed the villagers?”
Fiona hesitated a moment and then shook her head. “You have to understand. When it woke me, when it pulled me from the clutches of death, it gave a piece of itself that I might live. And we were so hungry, and it couldn’t cross into the village, so I had to do it. I didn’t want to. It wasn’t a choice.”
“That thing. That thing did this to you?”
Fiona’s eyes were wide with emotion, and it seemed to Rowan the girl was desperate to make Tom understand. “We are bound. I gave it my heart, and it gave me its soul. We share our hunger, our thirst … our mortality.”
“Your mortality?” Tom asked, his voice breaking with sorrow. “Tell me you’re not serious. Tell me your life isn’t yoked to that creature’s.”
“We need each other, Tom,” Fiona said. “The beast and I, we are not whole without the other. But no one has to die anymore. I grow stronger every day. If we can just get far enough away, then no one has to die. We’ll find something else—something big and warm. We just have to leave, Tom, and we have to leave soon. Because given our current situation,” she said, looking to the others, “I can’t promise anything.”
“Tom,” Jude said. “Don’t go with her. She’ll kill you.”
“She won’t,” he said. “I trust her.”
“Then you’re a madman. You really don’t think she’ll turn on you eventually when that monster of hers gets tired of eating bears?”
“If I’m a madman, then let me be mad. I’m going with her.”
“Listen to your brother,” Henry Rose said, taking a step toward Tom. “You’re a good boy, Tom. You always have been. Go home to your family.”
Rowan thought of the witches, to the connection they believed existed between her and her sister. It didn’t seem likely that she could have much effect on Fiona, but she needed to try. She stepped toward her. “Please. I beg of you, listen to reason. He’ll die if he stays with you. Let him go.”
Fiona laughed, and Rowan, startled by the movement, raised her gun and trained it on the girl.
“Rowan, no!” cried Tom.
Slowly Fiona Eira pulled herself to her feet, and naked arms outstretched, she started walking toward Rowan. “You think you can kill me?”
“Send him away,” Rowan said, feet planted firmly in the snow. “He won’t leave you on his own. You have to make him go. Please, make him go.”
“Don’t be stupid, girl, and don’t threaten me again,” Fiona said, anger beginning to transform her porcelain face. “I’ll only give you one more warning.”
But there was to be no further warning, only a flash of movement as Fiona darted across the snow, and a crack and an echo as Henry Rose fired his rifle, the bullet lodging in a nearby tree. And a moment later, Fiona had Rowan’s body in her arms, holding her like a rag doll, as her bared teeth drove into the flesh of her neck.
“She’s your sister!” Jude screamed, desperate, and Fiona froze.
Pain split into Rowan’s being, clouding her vision, and then faded to a throb as the teeth retracted.
“What?” Fiona said, her arms still wrapped around her prey.
“She’s your sister!” Jude cried. “Please don’t hurt her.”
Fiona let Rowan’s body drop to the ground. Pain traveled from her neck, coursing through her, alighting every nerve in her body. She reached for the wound to stop the bleeding. With shaking legs, she pushed herself up to stand.
“What did you say?” Fiona asked, her gaze shifting to Rowan, something like recognition in her eyes, and Rowan felt it welling up within her as well—that person she was always reaching for, that twin soul, was right beside her.