Page 43 of Spring Guardians & Songbirds

She looked peaceful yet the most disturbed. Was she asleep?

I felt the hum of her heartbeat drum all over the place till it suddenly snapped to a steady beat. She almost startled me when her hands broke from the water to clutch the side of the bath.

“Husband,” she croaked, sighing and dipping further in the water. “How did you leave Sitara?”

Shadows slithered away, afraid, and this time not from me, but from her. She was unusually chirpy—different from how she’d behaved the whole week. “Got your gift, if that is what you are asking.”

“Hm.” She tilted her head back to reveal a crooked smile. “Your street dogs looked famished. Aren’t I generous?”

“Very,” I said, moving to the other side of the bathroom to shut the tap that had poured enough water to rise to my ankles.

She raised her gilded gaze to look up at me, staring through that hooded expression like she once before had—back in Isjord. Like I was her plaything. “You look afraid.”

“You look like you’ve been bad.”

She bit her lower lip. “I’ll play a game with you,” she crooned, trailing a finger over the water surface. “One of hide and seek.” When she rolled her eyes up at me again, a wicked smirk lifted on the corners, and I knew then that she’d done something beyond fearful.

“No games, Snow, it was what we bargained on,” I said, freeing myself from the jacket I wore. She’d made me feel like I had chains and cage bars all over me with one sentence alone. I’d seen how she played her games. How to cheat them, too.

“I am only playing along,” she said, leaning back and dipping her hair in the water, working her ruby stained hands through her blood matted locks. “It wasn’t I who started the game.” She hummed to herself. “Though I might have suggested it. Loosely.”

“Snow,” I warned. “What have you done?”

She flashed me a grin. “Hide. And. Seek.”

Fuck. I was in deep fucking trouble.

A fist banged on our door, loud and panicked.

“Come in!” I shouted, moving toward it. My brain was scrambling and working to figure out whatever she had done without breaking the bargain.

Larg breathed hard and heavy, face stained with terror. “Merle’s children,” he wheezed out. “My partner's children. My stepchildren. They are gone. She couldn’t find them all day.”

My eyes drew shut. Fuck.

“Hello, Larg dearest,” Snow shouted from the bathroom and then cackled loudly. “Better run, my darling. Seems like trouble will keep you away all night long. What a shame.” The silence after those words was filled by the chilling tune she hummed.

Larg shook his head. “It can’t be…she couldn’t have done this,” he muttered, staring wide eyed toward the half open bathroom door. He took a step forward and then two back, disbelief like no other filling him. “She took Merle’s children?”

I went back to her. “Where are they? If you want me gone, I will go. I’ll leave you alone for the night.”

She slowly shook her head. “Not good enough. I want to play.”

“Snowlin.”

She leaned on the tub side, batting her lashes at me. “Yes?”

There was only one way to win her games. “You want to play?” I asked, bending down to her face.

She nodded.

“Let’s play.”

“Very good.” She leaned close, her nose slightly nudging mine, her eyes dropping to my mouth. “Hint. Where can a running child be when at night they cannot see? Where can a running child be when at home they should really be?” She lifted a hand to my jacket lapel, pulling me close till our lips almost met. “You have till dawn.” Leaning over my ear, she whispered, “Run.”

And so we ran. We had searched almost every corner of Adriata. Almost every forest and lake and rock and city and sea. The Snow I knew would never hurt those children. I just knew it. No matter what I had done to her, what all of Adriata had done to her, she would have not hurt those children. I knew it. Because I knew her.

Merle had crouched by the front stairs of her house sobbing till her voice had gone hoarse.