ZOSIA CAME BACK TO HERSELF slowly, a steady throbbing at the back of her skull pulling her into the present. Dazed, she cracked open an eye and tried to make sense of her surroundings.
Black. Everything was black. It was as if she’d been tossed back into the Midnight Forest, back into those woods where the sun never rose, into that inescapable darkness. She cracked her eyes open a fraction further, and bright spots, stars, blossomed across her vision. Everything hurt.
Where was she? She remembered—sparks. Fire. Marynka’s face. Her features lit with fury. Her eyes burning gold as day. It all came back to her in pieces. Marynka. Beata. The kulig. The furious chase through the trees. The horse she’d stolen galloping faster and faster and faster, the raging wind, the clash of fire and shadow. The towering wall of snow crashing down. . .
Panic seared through Zosia like lightning. She tried to sit up and quickly discovered that she couldn’t.
She was lying on her stomach. One arm pinned beneath her chest and the other trapped beneath a solid weight of ice. The cold pressed down on her body like a boot heel grinding an insect into dust. She tried to turn her head, but it was like a hand gripped the back of her skull and was holding her in place. She’d been buried. Snatched from the saddle and dragged under by the full force of winter herself.
Breathe.
She had to remember to breathe.
Think.
Zosia’s breath rasped out in ragged puffs, spit icing on her lips.
You’re going to get out of this—and then you’re going to murder Marynka.
She tried to shift her legs, but a searing pain tore through her calf.
Move.
She would die down here if she couldn’t dig her way out. That was the danger of snowslides. Only those pulled quickly from the slush survived. The corpses of those who didn’t reappeared each spring when their white shrouds melted away like rain-soaked cobwebs.
Move.
But the snow, the ice, weighing on her was as stubborn and unforgiving as stone. It refused to shift, and the throbbing in her head sharpened painfully with each failed movement.
Zosia reached desperately for her magic, for the darkness that bled through her veins, that slept deep within her bones. And found. . .
Nothing.
She was all hollowed out. Empty. Completely drained of power. She couldn’t summon her monstrous strength or call on the shadows to free her. She’d given everything she had fighting Marynka. She had not a drop of magic left.
Horror clawed at her insides. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried again, reaching deep, deep, deeper inside of herself. Denial warred with outrage, with fear. Impossible that she’d spent all her magic and still been overpowered. Impossible.
You’re going to die down here, whispered the voice in her head. Alone. In the cold, in the dark.
Like you were supposed to all those years ago.
When one winter’s night, Zosia’s mother, not much more than a girl herself, had abandoned her by the side of an ice-rimed road for the wolves or the mountain spirits to find. For a witch to find.
“Be a good girl and wait for me, Zosiu. I’ll be back soon.”
Only her mother hadn’t come back. Zosia couldn’t even remember what the woman had looked like, who her father had been, whether or not she’d had other family. She could only recall pieces of things: the phantom touch of someone’s hand stroking her hair, the snatch of a hummed lullaby. She’d sometimes dreamed of trying to find her mother. “Look,” she’d tell her. “Look, I’m alive. I came back.” Only the faceless woman always recoiled from her as if she were some bloodsucking upior crawled out of the grave.
“That’s not my daughter. That’s a monster.”
The tiniest whimper escaped Zosia’s throat. It was getting harder and harder to breathe. Pain throbbed through her with every jagged hammer of her heart. She was so spent of magic that she didn’t even have the power to heal herself. Had she really defied Black Jaga, stolen all those hearts, become a monster just to die down here in the dark?
No. No, she refused to let it end like this. She would not die quietly here in the cold. She would not be buried here. She wasn’t going out like this—whimpering over her wounds. She wasn’t finished yet.
She was Midnight. The strongest and most terrifying of the servants who served the three witches of Lechija. The most powerful. She couldn’t be beaten. Midnight didn’t lose.
She ignored the pain that lit up every nerve as she pushed herself to move.
And that was when she heard it, the faintest sound filtering through her despair. A shout, muffled and distant.
Zosia stilled. There was only silence now. Had she imagined it? She screamed as loudly as she could, until her throat was raw, the effort making her head spin violently. Her pulse thundered in her ears. But if she could let them know she was down here. If someone. . .
No one had ever answered her prayers. But just this once, just this once.
Please. She prayed for help, for a miracle. Please, I’m begging you. Someone. Anyone.
Time passed in small eternities. Zosia fought to keep conscious, to keep from slipping into that beckoning dark, her tired mind sinking toward sleep, until, through a fog of haziness and pain, she felt something shift.
The weight on her back lessened, eased slightly. There was a sound of frantic scrabbling. Someone seized her arm.
Zosia sucked in air through her teeth, filling her starving lungs as the darkness gave abruptly to shards of moonlight. A pale face swam into view above hers, and a pair of worried, coffee-brown eyes.
For a moment she could only stare, unable to comprehend why Prince Józef of all people would try to save someone like her.
With the help of two more boys, he freed her from her icy prison, from the snow’s hold, shouting as he did so. “Good, good. Here! Quickly, she’s frozen through.”
Zosia surfaced into a scene of chaos and devastation. Debris surrounded them. Shattered trees and giant branches lay half-buried beside overturned Karnawał sleighs and. . .bodies. Some moaning. Some still. Beyond the prince, a foam-streaked horse was rearing, hooves clawing the air, whinnying in high-pitched distress as a woman leapt for the reins. Voices called to each other through the dusk in low, urgent tones. One repeating the same name over and over. Another praying. Flaming torches carried light through the dark. More blurry figures huddled together in shock.
“Where?” Zosia croaked out. Where was Marynka? If the prince was here—
“Shh,” Józef hushed her. “Don’t try to speak. Selim, quickly, over here!”
A new pair of hands swaddled Zosia in thick sleigh robes.
“We’re going to get you someplace warm,” Józef said, his breath escaping in ghostly plumes. “It’s all going to be okay.”
Zosia stared at him, thoughts spinning wildly. He pressed a leather-gloved hand to her cheek as a comfort, and then he was moving on, calling firm, concise orders, searching the snow for the injured, for more survivors. “Staszek, bring the lanterns this way. Watch for the edge of the ravine.”
She grabbed after him weakly. “Wait, don’t—” Her fingers brushed his trailing sleeve, and the last of her strength deserted her. Her arm flopped loosely to her side. Her vision slid in and out of focus. Don’t go. Marynka. Where is Marynka?
Oblivious to her silent protests, a massive pair of arms swept her up, cradling her as if she were something fragile made of glass. Zosia’s head lolled against the broad wall of the man’s chest as he staggered through the snow, murmuring soothing words as he carried her away from the carnage.