THEY FOUND HER BODY amidst the freshly fallen snow.
Winter accompanied them, though she felt a stranger. Knot, Cinzia, Jane, Eward, and some of Jane’s other disciples all walked together, while Winter remained a few paces behind, Astrid’s words in their final conversation echoing in her mind.
There are a lot of people who have lost fathers, mothers, husbands, friends. A lot of people who’ve been addicted, or felt trapped. A lot of people who felt helpless. None of this is new. This is life. It’s what living is.
Knot knelt beside the girl’s body. Winter knew from the hope she’d felt as they had walked toward the girl—the hope that she might still be alive, that the miracle of light and fire had somehow preserved her—that Knot and Cinzia must feel it, too, far stronger than she did, and that the sharp pain of disappointment at the lifeless corpse they found must be infinitely stronger for them, too.
Cinzia fell to her knees at Knot’s side, but neither of them moved, neither of them touched the body. Everyone behind them sensed the importance of the silence and the stillness, and did not move at all.
Later, Knot bent down, wrapping his arms around the girl, and lifted her. She dangled loosely from his embrace, and with Cinzia’s help he adjusted his hold on her, so he carried her across his arms and body.
“She looks like she was just a girl,” someone remarked, someone Winter did not know. No one responded.
He was right, whoever it was that had said it. Astrid had no trace of vampirism on her: no fangs, no claws, no glowing eyes. It was daylight, of course, but Winter suddenly could not imagine what the girl looked like with those things. Even at night, the image seemed strange, something that had only happened in a nightmare, or in a dream. The girl Knot carried was just a girl, nothing more.
And that was all anyone said. They walked back to the Odenite camp together in silence, with only the sound of boots crunching on snow and the occasional gust of wind to accompany them. Even Triah itself loomed oddly silent in the distance, without bells or shouts or anything of the sort.
Knot and Cinzia walked ahead with the body. The disciples, Jane, and her family followed.
And Winter was left alone, standing in the middle of the Odenite camp.
Were the rest of the tiellan Rangers all right? Had they stayed away as she had ordered? She had noticed some commotion at the edge of the battlefield, and thought she saw some of Roden’s banners, but could not be sure. She had been too absorbed in her struggle with the Nine Daemons.
A growing sense of unease seeped through her, like ink slowly soaking through paper. What the Daemons had said to her, what Azael had said to her, still bothered her. How they had acted around her still bothered her. It had almost felt as if she were not truly facing Daemons at all, but people. Had she made the wrong choice? Perhaps she should not have summoned them at all. Perhaps she should have left it alone, and Cinzia and Jane would have solved the problem with whatever plan they were concocting.
If she had left it alone, Winter knew, if she had not done anything for the Daemons, Astrid would still be alive.
The hate she felt for herself because of that understanding was beyond description, beyond bounds. She was responsible for Astrid’s death. She was responsible for the terrible grief Knot and Cinzia must be feeling, that anyone who had been close to the girl now felt. And, more than that, she was responsible for the fact that Astrid would never again make another sarcastic comment, fight another battle, help someone in the way she had helped Winter not twelve hours earlier.
In that moment, Winter wanted change. She no longer wanted to be the person she was. She no longer could be the person she had been.
She did not know what she could possibly become, but she knew the only option left was to try.