Lena Marsh's Arc

Chapter 15 of 24

Lena stared at her bare wrist. The last thread of the scent-band drifted off into the wind. She felt the cold hit her skin as if a door had opened. Somewhere north, something raised its head and smelled her. "Mine's gone too," Linny said. She held up her wrist. The band there had crumbled to dust. Forge checked his own. Nothing. Only Nell still had one, and his was fraying at the edges. "They'll come fast," Nell said. He looked north through the frostwood trees, where the troll's roar had come from before. "We can't outrun them all the way home." "Then I make new ones," Lena said. She pulled thread from the air. Her fingers shook and the thread came out thin and gray, not silver. It broke before it reached her wrist. She tried again. It broke again. "You're spent," Nell said. "You bound the troll. You've got nothing left." "I have to." She tried a third time. The thread snapped and drifted down onto the snow. The emerald-tailed fox came back through the trees. It stopped at Nell's boot and stared north, ears flat. A branch cracked somewhere far off. Then another, closer. "They have our scent already," Linny said. Flat. Done. "Running won't help. We fight, or we hide." "Hide where?" Forge said. Nell knelt and put his palm flat on the snow. His eyes lit green. The forest above them groaned. He was asking, and the forest was angry with him for asking again. A frostwood cluster twenty paces off shifted its lower branches down, low and thick, the icy limbs folding into a shell around the trunks. "There," Nell said. He stood. Blood ran from his nose. "It won't hold long. The forest hates me now." "Your scent-band," Lena said. She grabbed his wrist. The last band was still there, worn thin but whole. She pulled it off him. She unwound the thread with her fingers, slow, careful, until she had four short strands. "Lena—" Nell said. "One each," she said. She tied a strand to each of their wrists. Her own, Linny's, Forge's, Nell's. The strands were shorter than a finger. "An hour. Maybe two. Enough to reach the ridge." "And after the ridge?" Linny said. "After the ridge we run." Lena pushed them toward the folded trees. "Move." They crawled into the shell of iced branches. The fox slipped in last. Nell dropped the forest's cover behind them. Outside, the snapping came closer. Something huge passed within ten paces, sniffing. It did not stop. Lena pressed her hand against the needle in her pocket. Two hours to the ridge. Then open ground, and whatever the fae sent behind them, all the way to her father's door.