Page 90 of Echo North

I stare straight into her fire-eyes. “My scars don’t control me anymore. I don’t need to get rid of them to be beautiful.”

“Don’tcontrolyou anymore? This from the girl who prayed to God every night since she was seven years old to make her pretty again? This from the girl who bought a jar of cream worth more than a shipment of books from the city, then buried it in the back garden when she found it had no effect on her? Don’t control you anymoreindeed.”

The rage is burning me up from the inside. My eyes snag on Mokosh, and suddenly Iknowwhat deal she made with her mother. “You want to be entirely human. That’s what she promised you.”

Mokosh ducks her head, ashamed. “You don’t know what it’s like, Echo. To be a monster, to revile your very existence, to not belong wholly to one world.”

“Oh Mokosh. I wish you would have told me. Of course I know.”

“But how could you?” she whispers. “You are so beautiful.”

My heart tears. “It may not even be in her power. You know you can’t trust her. Why would she make you wholly human when she hasn’t done the same for herself?”

“She doesn’t need to be human. She commands all the magic of the world.”

A strange wind breathes through the clearing, stirring through my hair and smelling of ice. “Not all of it.”

The Queen has been listening to our exchange with a kind of bemused scorn. “Are you quite done?”

I turn back to her, my voice clear and strong. “I am here to free Hal, and I’m not leaving without him. I invoke the old magic.”

The Queen releases a breath and steps back from me, like I’ve slapped her. “The old magic?” she echoes uneasily.

“I told you, Mother,” says Mokosh. “I told you she has the power to defeat you.”

The Queen doesn’t even acknowledge her. I dare a glance at Hal. His eyes are shut and his lips are moving as if in silent, desperate prayer.

Words pour through me.

The wolf’s, in the Temple of the Winds:Once, I had something precious. I should have held it tight, should have guarded it with my last breath, but instead I let it go.

The East Wind’s, in the book mirror:When you have found the oldest of magics, you must not let it go, not even for an instant.

And Isidor’s, in Ivan’s tent:If you love something you will not give it up, not for anything. It belongs to you, it is part of you. If you grab hold of it and never let it go—no one can take it from you. Not even the Wolf Queen.

“The old magic is stronger than you,” I say. “It has the power to break your curse.Ihave the power to break your curse. Now. Tell me. How long until his hundred years is fulfilled?”

She doesn’t answer, her expression cold, aloof. And yet I can feel her anger.

“How long?”

“Three days,” says Mokosh, rigid on her throne. “His hundred years are fulfilled in three days.”

“Careful, daughter,” growls the Queen. “You overstep yourself.”

Mokosh says nothing more.

“I want to make you a deal,” I say.

The Wolf Queen turns to me, silver brows raised, and Mokosh is instantly forgotten. “What deal?”

“Give Hal to me for the remainder of his century, and I will hold onto him. I won’t let go even for an instant, no matter what you do, no matter how you try to take him from me. I will hold back your curse. And when the three days are over and his hundred years are fulfilled—he won’t belong to you anymore.”

“He will belong to you, I suppose,” the Wolf Queen scoffs.

I look at Mokosh, who crouches miserably on her throne, and I am sick that the Queen thinks I would want to own anyone. “He will belong to himself. The old magic—the first magic—will free him.”

She considers me. “And if you fail, girl-child?”

---