Chapter 004 — The Throne of Bone and Snow

She woke at three in the morning to a sound she could not immediately identify. It was not the wind. It was not the house settling. It came from the couch, where Elias slept when he said he did not want to disturb her, and it was low, and it was inhuman.

She was on her feet before she was fully awake. The silver blade was under her pillow. She had it in her hand.

The moonlight came through the window in a pale band. Elias was twisted on the couch. The blanket had fallen to the floor. Buttons was on the rug. His hands were fisted in the cushion. His knuckles were white. He was making a sound — a low, guttural whine, like a dog caught in a trap, like something that had forgotten how to be a man.

"Elias."

She knelt. She put her hand on his shoulder.

His eyes flew open.

Evelyn had time for exactly one thought.

That is not him.

His irises were molten gold. Not the soft gray she knew. Not the flash she had learned to watch for. Full, burning, molten — like the metal had been poured into his skull. There was no softness in them. No confusion. There was only a predator's attention, cold and ancient, taking in the room, taking in her, taking stock.

It lasted maybe a second.

Then he blinked. The gold flickered. The gray came back. And he crumpled forward into her arms, shaking, gasping, his whole body coming apart like a cut string.

"Evelyn. I — I dreamed —"

"Tell me."

"I was somewhere high. There were stairs. They were made of —" He swallowed. "They were made of bone. And there was a seat on the top. A throne. Snow on it. It never melted. And there were people. Hundreds of people. They were on their knees. And there was blood on the stairs."

She held him. She did not say anything.

"I was holding someone. A woman. She was on the stairs. She wasn't moving. And I thought, in the dream, that I had killed her. Or that I was going to. And I thought — Evelyn, I thought, it is better that I don't remember this."

Evelyn's arms tightened around him.

She did remember. Three years ago, on a night that had smelled like copper and rain, she had woken in his arms on the floor of a burning circle. He had been carrying her. There had been bodies between them and the door. He had been saying something over and over, and she had been half-dead, and she had not understood until later.

I cannot protect you if I remember how I failed.

She had never told him. She never would.

"Elias. It was a dream."

"It felt like a memory."

"Dreams feel like memories. Mine feels like I forgot to pay the electric bill."

He made a wet, shaky noise that was almost a laugh. He pulled back. His eyes were still the wrong color around the edges — not gold, not quite gray, but somewhere in between.

"Am I a bad person?"

She took his face in her hands.

"You are the best person I have ever met."

"How do you know?"

"Because you cried over a stuffed dog when you thought you had gotten it wet. Because you apologized to the toaster. Because you held a terrier on your lap for forty minutes because an old lady asked you to. Bad people don't do those things."

He looked at her. He swallowed.

"I can't remember my own last name. I can't remember where I grew up. But I remember that I don't want to leave you."

She kissed his forehead. She kissed his eyelids, which were wet. She kissed the corner of his mouth.

"You are not leaving. I am not letting you."

She made him tea. She wrapped him in the blanket. She sat with him on the couch until his breathing evened out. He fell asleep against her shoulder. She did not move.

At six, when the town started to wake, she heard the sound she had been half-expecting.

A shout. Down the street. Another. The wail of a dog — Old Tom's shaggy dog, a big yellow animal with a white muzzle, who had not stopped barking since the night before.

Evelyn set the sleeping Elias carefully against the cushion and went to the door.

Old Tom's wife, Marnie, was on the sidewalk. She was wearing a housecoat. She was holding Old Tom's dinner plate — washed, but still holding a fork, like she had brought it out into the street by accident.

"Evelyn." Her voice was thin. "He didn't come home last night."

Evelyn's hand went to the doorframe.

"Who didn't, Marnie?"

"Tommy. He said he was going up the north ridge. Just a few traps. Be back by dark. He never misses pancakes. He would never miss pancakes."

Behind her, Elias stirred on the couch. He mumbled something. He turned his face into the cushion.

Evelyn looked up the street, toward the north ridge. The mountains were gray and low and full of trees. The sky was the color of a lid.

She did not tell Marnie that Old Tom's rifle was not by the door. She did not tell her that she had seen the rifle three days ago, propped in the hollow of the old oak at the edge of town, the barrel unblooded, the chamber empty — put there on purpose.

She put her arm around Marnie's shoulders.

"We'll find him," she said. "The sheriff will take out a search party. We'll find him by lunch."

She did not believe it. Marnie did not believe it. But they said it anyway.

Outside, the shaggy dog howled again. And on the wet mud below the back step, in the light of the rising sun, Evelyn saw that the prints from the night before were not alone.

There were more. Bigger. Deeper. They went right up to the step.

Whatever had left them had stood there for a long time. Long enough to look in the window. Long enough to watch them sleep.