Girls of Storm and Shadow (Girls of Paper and Fire, #2)(4)
When I get to my feet to carry on after Nitta and Bo, there’s no sign of them. I’m alone.
Then my breath hitches.
Because maybe I’m not. Though I couldn’t have heard the King’s words, the feeling that someone’s watching us could be because we are being followed. Not by the ghost of the dead King, but by one of his soldiers or elite guards.
That’s why Wren and the others haven’t let me out of the temple all this time. We know it’s only a matter of time until they find us, if they haven’t done so already. It’s been more than two weeks since the attack on the palace the night of the Moon Ball. Plenty of time for them to have tracked us down, even to our remote location here in the northern mountains. Plenty of time to wait outside the temple, where we’ve hidden ourselves with protective magic. To wait until we leave for our next location, or until I get stupid and reckless enough to disobey my orders to stay hidden.
Exactly as I’ve done today.
An alarm screeches to life in my head, at the same moment more movement—real, this time, paired with panting breaths and the crunch of breaking snow—comes from ahead, higher up the slope.
“Lei!” Nitta’s yell cuts through the blizzard, pitched in panic. “Run!”
Just as a hulking shape leaps across my path and loosens a bone-shattering roar.
TWO
TIME SEEMS TO STRETCH AS THE beast reveals itself in two long, loping bounds, springing from the columns of trees and emerging through the driving sheets of ice as if in slow motion, its large front paws—and claws—outstretched.
Black markings on sandy-white fur dusted with snow.
Heavy haunches.
Powerful, muscled shoulders.
A snarling face, lips drawn back to flash curving incisors.
And eyes: crystal blue, bright as the King’s.
The animal lands a few paces in front of me, rearing down, a tail as robust as an arm flicking from side to side. Its feline ears press back. Teeth bared, it lets out a snarl that rips all the way to my core. And for a moment, I’m trapped in place, weighed down not by fear but by memories. Memories of the demon who had eyes just like this. Who snarled, too, before using his teeth and power not to tear apart my skin—but my clothes.
My soul.
I’ve found you.
In a way, the King has found me—because he’s never left me. Not even death could take away the scars he left upon me, imprinted deep, the way history carves its marks into the very bedrock of a kingdom, forever to shape and influence its future.
Then the animal hisses, its eyes swiveling as it surveys the three of us with feral curiosity. And I realize three things all at once.
This isn’t the King; this isn’t even a demon. It is an animal.
The snow leopard’s wet, pink-black nose twitches. Ice-cold eyes home in on me. My heart clenches; the familiar color draws me in. Without thinking, I raise my knife and crash forward with a yell—at the same instant the leopard pounces.
An arrow whirs past, burying itself into the snowpack between us. The creature growls, swerving at the last minute, and into the space that opens up, Nitta leaps.
She tosses aside the arrow she was wielding and knocks her bow from her shoulder to brandish it lengthwise like a staff. Less than a second later, the leopard barrels into her. She thrusts the bow into its spit-flecked muzzle. The creature’s jaws clamp around it. There’s the crack of wood, but the weapon holds. The leopard shakes its head, throat rumbling. Nitta doesn’t let go, and though her hands are too close for comfort to the animal’s massive pointed teeth, she holds firm. She’s only a few years older than me, but she seems suddenly decades more mature now, taller and stronger and rippling with a warrior’s confidence.
I lurch forward, dagger lifting once more, when Bo barrels into me.
We crash into the snow. “Are you crazy?” I cry. I kick at him, but he doesn’t let go, wrestling to keep me down as icy powder flies everywhere.
Less than five feet away, the leopard growls. Deeper, louder. It pushes forward with its strong legs.
Her muscles rippling, Nitta digs her heels in, chin jutted—and growls right back.
The animal blinks. Pauses. Its ears swivel to the front, its snarling mouth softening.
Nitta growls again. No words, just a guttural sound from the pit of her belly that ripples up her chest and out of her throat with the same feral quality. It’s only an echo of the wild animal’s own snarl. Even so, the creature seems to recognize it.
It lowers the paw that was hovering mid-step. Their noses inches from each other, the two leopards face off in silence. Bo and I are still half-hidden in the snow where he tackled me, but from my low vantage point I have a full view of the snow leopard. Towering over us, it is majestic and fierce, beautiful and terrifying, its round, wide-snouted face and turquoise eyes shimmering with intelligence. Snowflakes nestle in the thick tufts of its fur coat. It pants, jaw still clamped around Nitta’s bow, heat billowing from its whiskered maw.
The creature doesn’t take its eyes off the demon girl. Could it be that it’s noticing the same resemblances between them that I am? How even though Nitta is standing on her hind legs, there is a feral power to her stance that mimics the leopard’s own? How though her limbs are willowy and long with their human influence—Moon castes are the perfect midpoint between human and animal—they share the shape of the leopard’s haunches? How her features carry the same feline cast as that of the animal whose eyes she is staring into?