Winter War Awakening by Rosalyn Eves

Author:Rosalyn Eves [Eves, Rosalyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2019-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

I slept for hours, a blessedly dreamless sleep, and woke to an empty room. My bag lay open in the center of the floor.

For a moment, I blinked at it, uncomprehending. Then I scrambled from my bed, jarring my knees against the rock floor as I dug through the bag.

Gábor’s letters—both spelled sheets of paper—were gone. What had he written last? Something about heading to the northern passes to head off the Austrian army and protect the mines. And I had not erased the letter because I wanted to remember the part that made me laugh.

Nausea rolled through me. I wanted to weep. The praetheria knew where Gábor and the Hungarian soldiers were heading. They knew I had means of writing the soldiers. What else might they know?

Noémi ducked back into the room. “You’re awake!” She registered the look in my eyes and dropped to the ground beside me. “What’s wrong?”

“Gábor’s letters are gone. Along with the last message he sent me.”

Noémi knew as well as I what that meant.

“Oh, Anna.” She reached a hand toward me, then let it fall. “Hunger told me what happened with Chernobog. I have never seen him so angry.”

“Were you with him just now? When someone snuck into our room and stole my letters?”

Her blue eyes narrowed. “Don’t blame me—your keeping the letters made them dangerous, not my absence. Are you in pain? I can lighten some of the bruises.”

My entire body ached, including my head, though the worst of that had subsided with my rest. But I was not about to let Noémi heal me. I deserved to feel some pain for my own stupidity.

“I’m fine.” I stood up, wincing at the movement.

Noémi put her arm around me, her own irritation forgotten as her healer’s instincts kicked in. “You’re not fine. Someone put you in solid rock.”

“I’m a fool.”

I was worse than a fool. I’d put Gábor in danger—and I’d proved Chernobog right. Unmake this. Chernobog’s voice echoed in my head. He’d pushed me into the wall to goad me into action, and I’d acted. I had not unmade the rock, not precisely, but what I had done was destructive magic all the same. What kind of chaos could such unmaking unleash on the battlefield? Breaking spells alone had made me monstrous, had given me a gift and a responsibility beyond what I trusted myself to bear. If there was more to being chimera than spell-breaking, what might I become in following those gifts?

Terror curdled in my heart. It did not bear thinking of.

“Anna, look at me,” Noémi said. “Whatever they hope to make of you, that does not have to define you.”

She put her arm around me, and I curled into her, laying my head on her shoulder, comforted by her warmth and her pragmatism. Only a few people could look at me as she had just then, as though they could see all of me and did not flinch from it but loved me still. Gábor had that same gift.

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