Faerie Winter by Janni Lee Simner Page B

were bound, wasn’t quite as tight as before. I tugged on it, and the wool gave a little, as if some tear had weakened the fabric when I fell. It felt looser around my ribs, as well.
    The rain had stopped. As the sun dipped below the horizon, I slowly worked at the weak spot in the fabric, using movements I hoped were too small to see. Fibers gave way, one by one.
    I heard Johnny stumble in the fading light. Kyle complained he was tired, and Elin silenced him by telling him he wasn’t. A shadow floated across our path, brushing my leg. I shivered as I felt the longing within it, the cold desire to be called—there was nothing I could do about that now. The shadow floated on. Had it belonged to one of the children Elin had killed? I no longer doubted she’d commanded Ethan to burn them all. I wondered if he’d even understood was he was doing.
Not my fault
. He might be dying for it even now.
    Another fiber gave. I uncurled my fingers, curled them again before Elin could see. Wind brushed my face and sent shivers down my spine. A faint burned scent returned to the air, though the wind didn’t come from the direction of the dead children. It came from Clayburn.
    Wool tore. My wrists pulled away from each other. I pressed them together again, careful not to move too fast. I felt the skin of wrist touching wrist through the holes in the fabric, Matthew’s hair tie between them. I inched my fingers up through my sleeves, slowly widening those holes.
    “Carry me,” Kyle whispered. Elin made a disdainfulsound. When I looked back, it was Johnny who carried Kyle. The younger boy leaned his head sleepily against his brother’s shoulder, clutching my knife like a toy he didn’t want to let go.
    The burned smell grew stronger as we came to the ruined houses that meant we were near the edge of a town. The path continued on, toward pale bluffs that reached for the sky. We veered off it. The forest gave way to cleared land, but the ruins went on. One house’s roof had fallen in, and its walls were blackened and crumbling. The next house had burned to the ground, and the one after it, too. A man lay lifeless in the snow, arms flung open, shirt burned away.
    I choked on the stench of charred flesh. This wasn’t the edge of a town. This was—this had been—Clayburn.
She didn’t only kill the children
.
    “Smells bad,” Kyle muttered sleepily.
    “No, it doesn’t,” Elin told him. Kyle didn’t complain again.
    We passed a woman whose fingers had melted together where they were folded over her chest, a man whose frost-stiffened hair fell over the sunken sockets of eyes that had burned away. I tasted bile at the back of my throat, even as I wondered why Elin hadn’t killed the children here, too, instead of waiting to take them so far beyond the town.
    The last of the light left us, and a bright moon poked through the clouds. A great horned owl hooted, a mournful sound.
    “Owl’s hungry,” Kyle muttered. “Me too.” Elin didn’t bother answering him. The houses grew closer together, some piles of ruined timbers, others half standing. Their blackened beams glistened in the moonlight. More shadows drifted among them, keeping their distance from us, as if dying had taught them, too late, to be afraid.
    The holes in my sweater were large enough to get my hands through now. I slowed my steps. I’d go for Elin’s eyes—that was my best chance of disabling her without weapons or magic, and it might buy Johnny and Kyle the time to escape.
    The wind died. I caught a whisper of movement, and a woman silently stepped out from between two fallen houses.
    She wasn’t human. I knew it at once, down to my bones, would have known even without her pale hair, piled in braids atop her head and held in a net that glittered with icy green light, or her silver eyes, which shone as bright as moonlight itself. Her long brown dress was frayed at the hem and sleeves, yet she moved in it with a liquid grace that nothing human could hope for.