Page 68 of Echo North

IWENT TO THE LIBRARY. I stepped into five different book-mirrors, looking for Hal. He didn’t come and I wasn’t surprised. Because if Hal was the wolf, he was too injured to come. The thought twisted inside of me, sharp and terrible.

At last I went to my room and crawled into bed. I blew out the lamp earlier than usual. I curled myself into a tight ball. I’d tried so hard to help him and I’d made everything worse. I’d almost been trapped by the Queen of the Wood.

And I’d nearly killed the wolf.

I felt him climb into bed beside me a long while later. My tears were dry by then and I was profoundly glad. I didn’t want him to catch me crying, not after everything he had suffered.

We lay a long while in the silence and the dark, not speaking. I knew he wasn’t asleep—his breathing was too quick and sharp for that.

“Echo,” he said at last, his voice tight with pain. “Thank you for saving me.”

I took a breath. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“I attacked you.”

The image of him lunging at me, eyes wild, teeth dripping red, would haunt me forever. “What would have happened if I had broken the mirror?”

On his side of the bed, the sheets rustled. “It would have killed me.”

I cursed myself.

“Echo do you remember the day you freed me from the trap?”

My heart seized up. The blur of white. The blinding pain. Looking in the mirror for the first time at my ruined face. “Of course I do.”

“I have fought the wildness every day for nearly a hundred years. But sometimes—sometimes it seizes me no matter how I resist. Like it did with the trap. Like it did today. And that—that is when I hate myself the most.”

“Wolf—”

“When I hurt you.” His words were choked, like he was fighting tears. “I hurt you from the moment I met you. I do not mean to, but I cannot seem to help it. I—I do not want to hurt you anymore. You should leave. Go back to your father’s house. I will see you safely through the wood in the morning.”

“But I promised you a year. I gave you my word.”

“There is only one day left. It doesn’t matter.”

“I will fulfill my promise. I’m not leaving you.”

I listened to him breathing, three heartbeats, four. “If you are certain.”

“I’m certain.”

He said nothing more.

Sleep stole slowly over me, and as I was slipping into the realm of my dreams I thought I heard the wolf’s quiet voice at my ear, just a breath away. “Forgive me, Echo. For what I have done. For what I will do again.”

And then, in the last few moments of consciousness, human fingers tangled in my own, and a heartbeat that was not mine beat quick and sharp in my palm.

When I woke in the morning I was once more alone in the bed, but I knew with absolute conviction that the voice and hand had not been a dream.

And it was time to prove that to myself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

IROSE AND DRESSED,DONNING A FURcloak against the chill permeating the room, and skipped the breakfast the house had laid out for me. I went straight to the library.

The magic mirror was still locked in its cupboard in the back room. I took it out, settled down on the floor, and pulled out a hair and pricked my finger.

“Show me Hal.”