Distant light of torches broke Rue from whatever trance she had been bespelled into.

  She found herself curled against the form of Ferrow, the blanket engulfing her body and part of his. The first thing she noticed was the scent of blood. Her mind still felt like it had a heavy haze fogging it, and Rue could not be certain that she was awake yet. Trying to recall what had happened, the events were disjointed, and nothing felt grounded in truth. It smelled real.

  It was dark out still, though it was impossible to tell how much time had passed. Thirty minutes? A full day? The horse walked steadily on. Maybe slower than before, but dreams did have a way of feeling sluggish. She could see lights up ahead, very few of them, lanterns glowing in the dark. A village.

  “Are we there?” Rue asked. Her voice cracked. She looked to the man beside her, and he did not answer.

  Her arms ached with the memory of stabbing him over and over.

  It was too dark to see if life had faded from his eyes. She slipped her fingers from the glove it wore, tugging at each digit to free them, and pulled her hand out. She felt numb to the chilly air. Rue touched her palm delicately to his face and closed her eyes.

  Death had a feel. It was distinctly different from the feeling of life, and so the only way she could define it was Death. Someone living was warm and resonated with energy, like endless static electricity. Someone dead had all of that energy cease and congeal. It wasn’t as if they felt empty, but they were stilled.

  Ferrow felt like Death.

  It was peaceful. All of that energy could just stop.

  Rue had always been fascinated by that feeling. She loved joining her father on hunts, where she could partake in the stilling. Her father had never voiced the same fascination in life-to-death, but when they hunted, it was one of the few times they got along.

  The memory faded and she once again looked ahead at the lights. Her hand slipped from the corpse and it took a minute for her to manage to slip her glove back on.

  Ferrow had mentioned that there was a village to pass through before they reached Whesirki. Even through muddied thoughts, Rue realized it was a bad idea to enter the village beside a dead man, covered in his blood. There was a chance that they believed that she killed him out of self defense, but her trust felt thinned. If a single person knew this merchant and could vouch for him, it’d be a single person more than who could vouch for her.

  The journey could not end here.

  The smoke of her dreamlike state was fading.

  It wasn’t like she could just hide him. He was too big for her to move into the forest, and even if she just tossed him into the snow, spring would reveal the crime eventually. Rue muttered a curse, standing up, bundling the blanket in her hands. The horse continued unbothered. Rue chewed on her chapped bottom lip, thinking.

  Not my own fault. The asshole tried to assault me. He deserved worse than what I did.

  It was too easy to fall into a fantasy of what she should have done. Rue pushed it away.

  Twisting around, she grabbed the bag of his supplies in the back. It was too dark to rummage through and search for anything much else, but at least there was this and the blanket that could be taken, along with her own rucksack of meager supplies. Rolling the blanket back into the straps atop the bag, Rue slid from the seat and hit the snowy road by both feet, sinking into it with a crisp crunch. The horse kept trudging on. She watched it for some moments, headed towards the distant lights.

  If she were lucky, no village guards were posted at this hour, and the beast would go on. It wasn’t like any place to leave itself unguarded though. Bandits were not unheard of this close to the capital city, even if they tended to keep a healthy distance. Whesirki had no army, but supposedly the guard force was large enough to make up for it, when it came to domestic crimes.

  Rue started away from the path, ambling blindly into the trees. She had hope that the snow would cover her tracks and that she could just work her way around the village, avoid it entirely, and move on without trouble.

  By the time she made it to the treeline, that hope was diminishing.

  I’m going to freeze to death.

  There was an unnerving reality to that thought. It was too late to go back, not that she would have even humored that as an option. Not just back to the cart. Back home. Her face contorted with the scowl the thought brought. She’d rather be hung for Ferrow’s death than go back. She’d rather freeze in a ditch by persisting onwards.

  In this case, she would freeze in a ditch, thaw in a ditch, and then rot in a ditch. A feast for the bugs and a feast for the scavengers.

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  THIS WAY.

  Rue froze. She had heard something that was not her internal monologue, nor was it the call of the crows, who had finally left her alone. Not quite a voice, but an instinct. An instinct to go…This way.

  “What?” She whispered aloud. The single word was lonely and muted in the otherwise silent forest. She had barely passed by a few rows of trees and snowy underbush, the foliage thankfully not intense this close to the capital city. The urge to move in a new direction was unmistakable.

  Rue knew she was losing it now. She was absolutely going to die. Once she started to feel warm out here, it was going to be too late, the hypothermia claiming every last cell in her body. She was still cold though, so hypothermia hadn’t yet claimed her. Maybe. Rue hadn’t been on the threshold of death before, she had only admired it from a distant barrier of her own warm body.

  Her feet had already begun to lead her in a new direction. It did not seem horribly off from the direction of the village, but she did not know these woods. This was the furthest north Rue had ever gone.

  THIS WAY.

  “I’m hallucinating,” Rue whispered to herself. She pushed forward, continuing on. At least the snow wasn’t as deep out here, but her toes were still frozen and numb. She followed that pull, which had a strange sensation of being just a bit warmer than everything else. Comfort and safety. She wasn’t sure that she should be expending her resources on this, but where else was she going to go?

  Maybe it was better to have risked walking to the city, and having them connect the dots when they found the dead man.

  Another new sensation swept through her. A curiosity? The voice, presence, whatever it was actually felt curious. It was instinct that she realized what it was curious about. Perhaps she hadn’t actually awoken from that dream, yet. No, it had been a nightmare. Of crows and men that could not keep hands to themselves. Now it was a nightmare of snow beckoning her deeper within, to smother and freeze. As the depressing notion distracted her, the tendril of curiosity shifted and felt as if it zapped her thoughts, pulling her attention back. It demanded attention.

  By instinct that she did not know she possessed, Rue did not speak in answer, but instead thought it, in the way of playing the events over in her mind. She played more than intended, but once she started, she did not stop.

  She gathered what she could without anyone taking suspicious note of what she was doing. They had no reason to notice, but they could not see the desperation flooding her, urging her to leave. She could not go quickly enough.

  Slipping away was easy.

  The first two days on the road were uneventful. She spent her only copper coins on a bed in a tavern. The night after, she found a barn, and slept in a corner.

  On the road again, she met the man with the wagon.

  A third sleep came there, and it was her third nightmare, one for each day she had been away from home.

  Finally, there was blood and death.

  She could feel it, this other presence against her mind, and it could not be dispelled.

  “I’m completely losing it.”

  Her words were lost in the dark forest. It did not react to what she had shown it.

  As was she. Five minutes of trampling went, then ten, then twenty. Every few minutes, that strange presence was warmer, enveloping her internally. Outwardly, she was still freezing, but Rue couldn’t help but wonder if this was the start of the fatal hypothermia.

  YOU ARE CLOSE.

  The suddenness and swiftness of the answer startled her. Rue cursed under her breath, which also felt cold by now. The ‘voice’ did not sound like the Common language, but if it were something else, she could not prove it, for she understood it. Common was all that she spoke.

  While the voice, presence, whatever it was, was ultimately strange and uncomfortable to experience, she was grateful for it suddenly. Something was here to witness her death, even if it was what lured her to it.

  YOU WILL NOT DIE.

  It said it with such certainty. Did it say it with certainty, or did it feel certain? Did it matter which it was? Rue laughed. The sound died on a single, weak note. It would have been hysterical if she had the energy. She kept walking.

  And walking. Twenty-five minutes.

  And walking. Thirty.

  And walking. Forty.

  Crunch.

  The ground underfoot abruptly changed, making her stumble as her gait had adjusted to inches of snow. How much further had she gone? Time had long blurred. But this was…Dry, uncovered grass, she realized. Warm air.

  The clouds overhead parted enough to allow a moonbeam down, puncturing weakly through the night air, making shadows dance as her vision failed to piece together images. Rue fell to her hands and knees, letting both bags upon her back fall beside her, relieving their weight.

  It was truly snowless grass. Warm, crunchy, dead grass. She fumbled to pull off her mittens and feel the ground underneath without barrier, confirming that it was exactly that. Warmth immediately began to try to leech into her skin. “How is this possible?” She whispered. The voice had gone quiet. She no longer felt the presence.

  It didn’t matter now. She was exhausted. She sat up and reached towards where she had come from. Sure enough, at a very specific point, her hand could cast into warmth and brittle cold at the same time, divided upon her digits. It made no sense. She had seen runic magic before, a kind that could cast warmth into an area around it, with a distinct area where the outside temperature collided against the magic shift. But those runes glowed, and there was no glow here.

  Not that she could see it, but it must be so. It didn’t matter right now.

  Rue drew her hand back only to fall onto her back, breathing in a heavy, tired breath. Warmth was slowly spreading back through her body. She felt the urge to undress in the intensity of the heat, but there was just enough reason in the back of her mind that she resisted the urge. With closed eyes, the waning droplets of adrenaline that brought her here faded entirely.

  She allowed sleep to wash over her again, allowing her a first long rest without nightmares.