The Winter of the Witch (Winternight Trilogy, #3)

by Katherine Arden

Perhaps she could just—step away—walk into the gray forest beyond life and be gone. Death was someone she knew.

Konstantin only smiled at her again, lifted his hand to make the sign of the cross, raised his deep voice to intone a prayer. The crowd fell silent to hear him. Then he bent forward to whisper in her ear. “There is no God.”

Magic is forgetting the world was ever other than as you willed it. On a surge of blind will, Vasilisa Petrovna set her hands onto the thick, burning-hot bars of her cage, and pulled. The heavy wood broke apart.

“There are no monsters in the world, and no saints. Only infinite shades woven into the same tapestry, light and dark. One man’s monster is another man’s beloved. The wise know that.”

“What use am I? None. I have made more mistakes than I can count, and the world has no place for me. And yet, as I said before, I am still not going to die to please you.”

Magic makes men mad. They forget what is real because too much is possible.

“Love is for those who know the griefs of time, for it goes hand in hand with loss. An eternity, so burdened, would be a torment. And yet—” He broke off, drew breath. “Yet what else to call it, this terror and this joy?”

She bent forward to breathe into his ear: “Never give me orders.” “Command me, then,” he whispered back. The words went through her like wine.

“I think that between us we have sealed the murky reputation of bathhouses.”

“I have said you are not alone, Vasya, and I meant it,” he said. But he sounded unhappy. She managed the ghost of a smile. “You are not alone either. By all means, let us continue repeating it until one of us believes it.”

“I have seen uncounted dead,” he returned coolly. “Touched them, sent them on. But I have never done anything to remember them. I can walk now with you, because you cannot ride Solovey beside me. Because he was brave, and he is gone.”

She had survived the frost and the flame, had found a harbor, however brief. Perhaps that was all anyone could ask, in the world’s savage turning.

“Why my sister?” she asked Morozko. “Why, of all the women in the world?” “For her blood,” said Morozko. “But later for her courage.”

“Will you deny her the spring and the summer?” “I will deny her nothing. But there are places she can go where I cannot easily follow.”

“But for tonight, food and cool air, clean water and untainted earth. Come with me, Snegurochka. I know a house in a winter forest.”

The wild darkness of Midnight was all about them now. But somewhere ahead, a light shone through the trees.