A Breath of Frost by Alyxandra Harvey Page B

bones. The trees shivered and flattened under a sudden gust of wind, showing their leafy underbellies. The birds fell silent. Fear fled, too wispy and unnecessary to hold onto. Something akin to joy bubbled through her, like hot springs coming out of barren rock. For the first time in her life, she didn’t feel lonely.
    She lifted her hand, the one with the painted witch knot. She moved slowly, so slowly it was like being underwater. Her fingers hovered over the stag. She paused. A red bird darted over her head. The stag stayed still, patient.
    “Please don’t bite me,” she murmured, barely louder than a breath, as she stroked his shoulder. When he didn’t snap at her, she dug her fingers into the thick fur. It was both rough and soft. She had the insane urge to lay her cheek on it. The knot on her hand felt warm.
    And then her entire body felt warm. She could smell everything: the rich earth, the tender new grass, the crushed acorns, the faintly skunk-like odor of fox pups in a nearby den, the very sun on the hills. She felt different. Unconstrained.
    Furry.
    A quick, startled glance froze her breath in her throat and her every thought somewhere in the back of her head. She felt an urge to run, to bound through the forest. The wind tugged at the hem of her dress, revealing a leg now lengthening and narrowing and growing a sheen of red fur. Her bones shifted, not unpainfully, and bent at angles at odds with her body.
    She’d traded an unearthly glow for fur. Not precisely an improvement.
    Still, she abruptly and quite desperately wanted to believe in witchcraft. It was a far more beautiful justification than madness.
    The deer around them continued to eat. A few stepped nearer, blinking those wide liquid eyes. Ears flickered. A head turned sharply. Several tails lifted, flashing white.
    “What the bloody hell is—urk.” Gretchen strangled her own words, snapping her jaw shut so fast she nearly bit off her tongue in the process.
    The deer scattered, going off in every direction, like a storm of shooting stars. The stag bellowed and charged away, flinging clumps of dirt at them. Emma stumbled back, ducking to avoid being skewered by an antler. Under the privacy of her skirts, her leg turned back into ordinary flesh.
    Gretchen goggled at her. Before she could say anything, Penelope joined them, squeaking as she stumbled into the grove. Her eyes were wide. “I was nearly trampled to death by a herd of deer!”
    “Emma was petting a stag like it was Lady Pickford’s pink poodle,” Gretchen returned with a quick grin. “So you’ll have to do better than that.”
    “Last night I was burned at the stake.”
    “You win,” Gretchen said as Emma struggled against the desperate pull to follow the deer and run wild over the hills. “And … what?”
    Penelope shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know. I touched a ring and suddenly I wasn’t myself anymore.”
    “You didn’t think to choose to be someone who wasn’t being murdered?” Gretchen asked.
    “I didn’t exactly have a choice in the matter, Gretchen,” Penelope replied. “Believe me.”
    Gretchen rubbed her ears. “You needn’t tell the truth so loudly.”
    Penelope looked at her oddly. “What are you talking about?”
    “You don’t hear that buzzing?”
    “No,” she said, glancing at Emma. “Do you?” They waited through a long pause, not receiving a reply from either a convenient swarm of honeybees or their cousin. “Emma?”
    “Hmm?” Emma forced her attention back to the achingly empty grove and her very boring human self. “Sorry?”
    “You ought to pay attention when your cousin tells you she was murdered.”
    Emma blinked. “Neither of you look particularly dead.”
    She snorted. “Perhaps not, but I did see Margaret’s ghost last night.” She shook her head sadly. “And then I read about it in the newspaper this morning.”
    Penelope sank down into the grass, looking tired and perplexed. Gretchen stretched out next to her,