Page 51 of All the Wandering Light

I wrenched back to myself. The others hadn’t noticed—Lusha was opening her mouth to interject something.

“Tem—” I managed, before I was pulled back again.

I let the air currents lift me high above the mountain. They were difficult to make out, at that height—small specks of darkness against the snow. Four figures standing on a ledge, one smaller than the others, unmistakable—

“Kamzin.”

I opened my eyes, which I had unwittingly clenched shut. It hadn’t made a difference—the vision had been painfully clear. Tem peered back at me.

“Did you see—”

“He’s here,” I said. My voice sounded strange.

“What?” Lusha’s hand went to the ax she had slung from her belt.

The chill wind dug into my bones as I tucked my wings in and dove—

Tem was shaking me. “Kamzin.”

“It keeps happening,” I said. I held on to Tem’s arm as if it could anchor me to myself. Was it because River was close? “I can’t—”

Lusha cried out. She pressed me behind her as my focus sharpened on the sound of rustling feathers, faint against the murmur of the wind. We watched, frozen, as the owl alighted on the snow, wings outstretched as it found purchase, and then in one fluid movement dissolved into River.

Seventeen

HE LEANED AGAINST the mountainside, one hand gripping the rock. He shook his head, blinking, as if to clear his vision.

“What—” His eyes found mine. “What did you do?”

Tem reached for the kinnika, which, in his surprise, he had dropped in the snow. But the shadows moved, and suddenly River was there, tossing the kinnika aside and shoving Tem hard against the mountain. The bells sang out as they fell into darkness.

Lusha brandished her ax, but River merely gestured, and a violent gust of wind sent her sprawling, limbs akimbo, across the snow.

I fell back before the look in his eyes, certain he was going to toss me into the air as easily as Lusha, but he stopped barely two paces away. For a moment, I was disoriented—I had looked out from behind his eyes, lived his thoughts, and now he was here in front of me. The world seemed to fracture before sliding back into place, subtly changed.

I stared at him—I could count the freckles on his nose. He was both familiar and unfamiliar—his mismatched eyes were the same; his unruly hair, which had an echo in the owl’s ragged feathers. But the powerful impression he gave off now, of being cut from the night, or perhaps the cold, unfathomable sky, was new and frightening. I could almost see the magic coiling through the air.

Looking past this, though, I could see that there were smudges under his eyes, and the line of his jaw seemed sharper, as if he hadn’t rested in days. He still smelled the same—a stark, clean smell like the wildflowers that grew above the snow line in Azmiri, mixed with something close to campfire smoke. It wasn’t a human smell, and now I knew why.

River’s gaze hadn’t left my face—it roved from eyes to mouth to chin and back again, as if he was trying to locate something he’d lost.

“What,” he repeated, “did you do? You cast a spell, didn’t you? Something that’s causing these—these visions.”

Realization struck. A moment ago, I had felt like I was crumbling. As if I couldn’t hold myself together, so rapidly had I shifted back and forth from River’s mind. I felt whole again—now—but the sense of displacement remained. “You felt it too, didn’t you?”

He made no reply.

His words hit, and I let out a breath of laughter. “I cast a spell on you? Is that what you think? I’m incapable of magic.”

A flicker of a smile crossed his face, startling me. River’s moods shifted as easily as the wind. “Kamzin. You’re not incapable of anything. If someone dared you to climb the mountains of the moon, you’d find a way.”

I flushed, and for a moment I was confused. Then bitterness rose again. Everything I had done to reach this point had come to nothing. River would never let us continue searching for the star. The sense of loss ached in my chest. “How did you know we were here?”

“You know how. It was your spell that connected us.” He glanced over his shoulder to where Tem stood murmuring over a bronze talisman he must have dug out of his pocket. “Or was it Tem’s?” He made a careless gesture, and a tendril of shadow wrapped itself around his mouth, silencing the incantation. Tem pulled at it, but his fingers passed right through.

“I know you sent your familiar to spy on me,” River said, turning back to me. “You can’t deny that.”

I stared at him, nonplussed. He thought I had sent Ragtooth to spy on him? Was he mad?