Page 73 of Echo North

For half an instant, nothing happened, and then Hal jerked awake, a cry of pain on his lips. His eyes roved wild around the room, and fixed in horror on my face.

“Echo,” he gasped, his voice high and hoarse. “Echo, what have you done?”

The room began to shake.

I dropped the lamp.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

FLAMES LEAPT UP FROM THE FALLENlamp. The house shook. Theworldshook.

“Listen to me,” said Hal. “Listen to me. She’s coming, Echo. She’s coming to take me and you must leave this place. As fast as you can, do you hear me? Run. Run through the wood to your father’s house and don’t look back.”

He put his hands on my shoulders and I stared at him, shaking as violently as the house. “Hal, I thought—Hal—”

“Promise me. Echo, you have to promise me you’ll run, that you won’t try and find me. Not this time.”

The flames crawled higher, casting wild shadows on Hal’s face. Fear seared through me. “But what about you?” I cried over the noise of the house. “I wanted to save you!”

“You have.”

He clung to me as the house wheeled roaring around us, and then all at once a spot of snow touched my cheek and a coldness deep as death crept into my bones.

Hal released me. The house was gone—we stood in the snow below a high hill, the lamp somehow still beside us, spitting flames into the dark.

And then I realized we weren’t alone. Enormous black wolves were coming toward us, their eyes glowing red, their teeth flashing sharp in the firelight. Foam dripped from their mouths.

Hal’s eyes met mine. He stood in the snow in only his shirtsleeves, shuddering with cold.

I had chosen wrong.

I had betrayed him.

“The Wolf Queen has claimed me.” His words sounded hollow, his voice not quite his own. “She enchanted me.”

I whispered, “And if I hadn’t lit the lamp?”

“I would have been free, but Echo, that doesn’t matter—”

“Where is she taking you? How can I save you?”

The wolves drew closer. They wore silver collars around their necks, and their cruel muzzles were studded with jewels that glittered in the light from the burning lamp.

“Hal,please.Where is she taking you?”

Pain stretched across his forehead, snowflakes catching on his eyelashes. “She rules in a place where the mountain meets the sky, and the trees are hung with stars.”

“What does thatmean?”

The wolves drew closer.

“Echo, you have to run. You have to run far from here!”

“Hal!” I grabbed his sleeve.

But two of the wolves seized Hal’s arms in their huge jaws. They ripped him away from me.

“HAL!”

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