Girls of Storm and Shadow (Girls of Paper and Fire, #2)(3)

The demons don’t let up their pace. We stop only to take swigs of the water flask at Nitta’s waist or to check for signs of the animal she and Bo are tracking, the siblings dipping their heads together to discuss its markings in low voices.

After one hour of focused trekking, Bo breaks the silence. “We’re closing in,” he announces, half-hidden by the sheets of driving white where he’s walking a couple of feet ahead.

Nitta cants her nose higher. “You’re right. I’ve got something, too. Sharp, musky… what do you think it could be?”

“Your delightful natural scent?” her brother suggests.

Nitta rolls her eyes. “See these?” she asks, pointing to a nearby tree.

Bo and I move closer. Two deep grooves are etched into its bark, just below my head height. They look freshly made: only a light dusting of snow covers them.

Bo traces the marks. “Could be a large mountain goat.”

“Wait,” I say, backing up to take in the tree’s low, twisting branches. “This is a mango tree. A mango tree,” I repeat, awed. “Does it usually snow here? We can’t be that high up in the mountains if there are banyans and fruit trees.”

Neither of them shares my surprise.

“The Sickness has caused all sorts of weird climate changes,” Nitta says with a shrug, then turns back to her brother, forehead wrinkled. “That would be one big goat. I’m thinking more along the lines of yak.”

“Ugh, I hope not. Yak meat is gross.”

“Do you want taro for dinner again?”

“Better than yak butt.”

Nitta peers ahead into the glittering drifts, her rounded ears twitching. Like her brother’s, her ears are peppered with studs and hoops in a variety of tarnished silvers and golds, and dim wintry light winks off them as she looks left and right. “This way,” she says, already moving.

Bo winks at me. “Ready to play your part in the hunt, Princess?”

“What part is that?”

“Bait,” he replies with a grin.

I glower as he stalks off. It takes a few moments for a retort to come to me. I stomp through the snow, ready to deliver it—when a movement to my left snags my attention.

I freeze. My heart beats loud in the hush of the ice-limned forest.

The still, empty forest.

Under my scarf, gooseflesh plucks at my skin. “Are you—are you sure there’s only one animal around?” I call ahead.

Nitta and Bo both spin around, silencing me with identical green-eyed glares.

“We need to be quiet—” Nitta starts.

There’s the sound of snow crunching. She whips back around, lowering into a defensive stance. Bo points into the swirls. Smoothly, he loosens his knife while Nitta swings her bow from her shoulder. She holds it out in front of her with her left hand, her right plucking an arrow from the quiver strapped to her back. In one swift movement, she fits the feather-tailed arrow in place and draws her right arm back to extend the bowstring, resting the tip of the arrow on her left knuckles. Lean muscles flex under her cotton shirt as she aims into the iced air, but Nitta doesn’t loose her arrow.

Not yet.

Ears pricked, face focused, she slinks on between the trees. Bo crouches slightly as he moves after her, fingers clamped around his throwing knife.

I fumble at my waist for my own knife with clumsy glove-clad hands. It’s a short, plain blade—one of the others’ spares. Gripping it tightly, I follow the siblings, doing my best to keep to the path they create with their precise steps. My skin prickles with unease. A few times I think I catch movement—not ahead where Nitta and Bo are advancing up the wintry slope, but at the corners of my vision. The shadowy shape of something large and… not human. But when I look, there’s nothing there. Only thick swirls of glittering flakes. Wind-chill and billowing breaths and deep, blizzard-muffled silence.

Nitta and Bo move faster now. Though I do my best to follow them, the gap between us begins to widen. Ahead, Nitta turns abruptly, leading us up a steep incline, the glimmer of a frozen waterfall to our right. My breath comes out in thick clouds as I try to keep up—and then my toes catch on a rocky outcrop beneath the drifts.

With a yelp, I fall face-first into the snow. Clumps of ice latch to my skin, melt trickles down the sides of my scarf. Grimacing, I push myself to my knees, shaking the snow from my face and hair, when I sense movement behind me.

A voice—light as a feather, yet deep, deep as gods’ bones and earthshakes—uncurls on the wind.

I’ve found you.

Something cold trickles down my spine that has nothing to do with the snow. In an instant, his face comes to my mind.

Grooved horns, etched with gold, tips as sharp as knife-points.

A slim, handsome face, bovine features melded immaculately with human form.

A smug, satisfied smile.

And those eyes—irises such a clean, clear arctic blue I can recall the feel of them piercing me even now. More than two weeks on from that night, the very moment I drove a blade deep into his throat and cut the life free from him.

The King.

I’ve found you.

Crouched in the snow, I swirl around with my knife brandished in trembling fingers, heart thumping against my ribcage. But the forest is empty. The trees stand tall, silent sentinels armored in frost.

Blood rushes in my ears. I look once more in all directions, shivers still rippling up my arms and the back of my neck. The voice had seemed so real. So close.