Mercurial Naomi Hughes (suggested reading txt) 📖

snow. Her fingers crept to his legs, to the new wounds that the cat had rent in his skin. His trousers were torn, flayed, as was the flesh beneath. Disbelieving, she dipped a finger into one of the tears, barely feeling him shudder beneath her touch. When she withdrew her hand, her finger was stained with forbidden silver blood.

Tal was a silver Smith. Tal was a silver Smith, and he had hidden it from her for the last two years, because the color of his blood was a death sentence.

Two years, she thought again. Not a day. She had known Tal for two years.

She lifted her gaze. Tal’s eyes were open again and he was looking at her. Hopelessness and an odd, mercurial relief tightened the corners of his mouth. He expected her to…what? She could almost feel the thought, the supposition, the memory of what her old self might have done.

Behind her, the mooncat roared. It ceased scraping at its ruined eye and turned its head fully around so it could locate her.

Hurriedly, Elodie shoved her hands under Tal’s shoulders and yanked him backwards, pulling him across the snow. There would be time to figure out her memories and the mystery of Tal’s blood later. First, she had to save both him and herself.

The cat was wary now, its good eye trained on her as its bad eye wept blood and fluids. Its tail lashed against its back legs. It stalked forward, teeth bared, intent. It would no longer underestimate her.

Ice groaned beneath Elodie’s boots. She had reached the frozen lake again. An idea blinked into being, the only way they might stand a chance at survival. She swallowed hard and then stopped, setting Tal down and bracing herself. Then she took a slow, careful step away from him.

The mooncat’s gaze followed her. Good.

“Elodie,” Tal coughed, rolling on his side to watch her. The sound of her name from his lips, thoughtlessly spoken without bitterness, made her mad heartbeat slow a fraction. “What—what are you…”

“You were right,” she said in a low tone, not taking her eyes off the cat. “I will not let you go.”

She took another step. A piece of ice snapped beneath her heel and splashed into the water; she’d reached her little fishing hole. The place where her body warmth had been slowly melting the ice, weakening it.

She stopped.

The cat paused. It paced around her in a half-circle, keeping its good eye toward her, cautious of her now—but she had no weapon, no natural strength. She was an easy kill. She flung her arms out and bared her own teeth. “Come and get me,” she shouted. The ice caught her words and flung them out into the peaks, into the sky, into the champagne-and-coral clouds: transcendent, merciless. The echo rattled another memory loose within her.

I swear to protect you, and to not allow harm to come to you, and never to harm you myself. A younger voice, one full of emotion that he’d not yet learned to hide.

The mooncat snarled and pounced. Elodie did not close her eyes. She was many things, but a coward was not one of them.

No one has ever accused me of being soft, whispered her own voice, corrosive as it settled back into her heart.

The mooncat struck. It jaws latched onto her shoulder. Its front feet landed next, driving her downward, but even its big, broad paws could not distribute such a blow evenly over the weakened ice.

I am not unguarded. Old words: a precious safety net, the only thing she could trust.

Elodie’s breath was a stuttered gasp. There was no room to register her past as it burrowed back into her bones. The pain had come now, and it was a wave of fire burying fangs in her shoulder, and two rows of claws piercing her back.

She would scream. She owed Tal that much.

The thought was true, but she couldn’t yet recall why. Still, she inhaled a jagged breath and let it out in a wail—just as the ice beneath her cracked and gave way.

The cat’s weight drove them both instantly into the freezing deep. Her cry cut off. The water was cold enough to feel like an inferno on her skin. The shock of it made her inhale. She choked on a lungful of water.

It was dark, but there was a dim light above her—sunlight through ice. It was mostly blocked by a writhing ivory mass. The cat was lashing out, snapping off more plates of ice as it desperately tried to free itself, widening the hole in the process. One of its back legs smashed into her with enough force to break a rib and force all the remaining breath from her body. She went reeling away into the murk.

Air. She needed air. She needed air now.

She curled in the water, found the dim sunlight, and twisted toward it. She reached not the hole, not the air, but the cap of unbroken ice. There was a shadow on the other side of it. She could almost make out a face. She could almost make out the sound of her name. She tried to call Tal’s.

What is he to you? Just another guard dog, just another toy for you to break and discard? How dare you call him yours?

She pounded on the ice. The water slowed her blows, rendered them ineffective. There was nothing she could do. Nowhere for her to go but to her death.

She could make out the shouting now. It was Tal. He wasn’t calling her name; he was crying out in pain.

Because of his oath. It was trying to force him to save her, and he was trying to fight it. It would hurt him. But not for long.

Instead of leading me to my destiny, he led me to the Destroyer.

She flattened her palms against the ice. Her memories were slipping back in, one by one, and she still didn’t have enough to wholly make sense of the puzzle that was her. But oh,