There was a long stretch of open, icy ground. On it was a throne, and on it sat a very old man, his skin crusted over with sheets of ice, his hair and beard and eyebrows tangled with still more, making him look ancient and aged and weary. Three girls who looked like the Crow Girl in all the ways that didn’t matter, and nothing like her in any of the ways that did, knelt at his feet. They didn’t shiver. The feathers atop their heads were sleek and shining, as if they didn’t feel the cold, while the feathers atop the head of his Crow Girl, their Crow Girl, stood at shuddering attention.
There was a cage, and in it was Zib, shivering hard enough to make up for the Crow Girls who weren’t, her hands wrapped tight around the bars, like she thought she could pull them out of their sockets and set herself free. There was a feather in her hair, red as fresh-spilled blood, banded with darker streaks, and it hadn’t come from a crow, and Avery couldn’t have said where she had found it, but he knew it hadn’t been there when she’d fallen. In front of the cage stood the Page of Frozen Waters, a trident of ice held loosely in her hands and a slight smirk on her face as she gazed at the pair of them.
“So,” she said. “You decided not to be cowards after all. How nice. I’ve been meaning to finish things with her”—a nod toward the Crow Girl—“since she decided to run away. It’s always sad when someone refuses the good things you offer them, isn’t it?”
The King of Cups, frozen in his throne, said nothing, only blinked lazily and watched them with the disinterested air of a man who had seen little of interest in a very, very long time.
Avery took a step forward. His knees were shaking. His teeth were chattering. His whole skeleton felt like it was coming apart at the joints, like it was going to fall into so many bones on the floor. He wanted to turn. He wanted to run away. He didn’t belong here. This was between the Crow Girl and the man she’d run away from, between Zib and the Page of Frozen Waters. This wasn’t his fight at all.
But Zib was clinging to the bars of her cage, and he could see the black feathers pushing against her skin, trying to burst free, to turn her into a Crow Girl like all the others. She wouldn’t be Zib if he let that happen. She wouldn’t be Hepzibah, either. She’d be something else, something wilder and stranger and not his at all. He hadn’t known her long enough to care as much as he did. He cared anyway. He couldn’t let the Page have her.
“You have to give her back,” he said. “She’s my friend, and she doesn’t belong to you.”
The Page of Frozen Waters smiled her razorblade smile. “Why should I?” she asked.
“Because…” Avery took a deep breath. “Because I asked, and because I’ll cut you into ribbons if you don’t.”
The King of Cups blinked, a slow and thoughtful gesture, like a stone rolling in the depths of the sea. The Page of Frozen Waters narrowed her eyes.
“I think not,” she said. “I’m better than you, and I’m bigger than you, and I’m faster than you for all of that. If you try, I’ll cut your heart out and give it to my lord and master as a token of my esteem.”
“You’ll have to go through me first,” said the Crow Girl.
The Page of Frozen Waters snorted. “Through you? The coward? I think not, broken little thing that you are. You don’t even know how much of you has flown away. Leave, before you find yourself remembered.”
The other Crow Girls watched with blank, avian eyes, neither approving nor disapproving, and Avery shivered again—this time, not with cold. There was something wrong with them, something missing.
The Page of Frozen Waters followed his gaze. Her smile widened.
“They thought they were allowed to fight, and fly, and flee,” she said. “They came before that one”—she gestured sharply to the Crow Girl—“but they tried to follow after her, and that simply can’t be allowed. Your heart won’t be the first one I cut from its moorings, nor the first to freeze. It’s peaceful. You’ll see, if you keep threatening your betters, just how cold a heart can grow.”
“Get out of here, Avery!” shouted Zib. There was a hint of a crow’s harsh caw in her words as she shook the bars of her cage. “It doesn’t matter if you can’t go home without me, I’ll be fine, I’ll be…” Her voice broke, tapering out. Finally, she whispered, “I always wanted to fly.”
“I’m not leaving without you,” said Avery. He tried to keep an eye on the Page of Frozen Waters, his hands tight on the hilt of his sword. It was sharp. It was so sharp. He was sure it could cut through anything he needed it to cut. He was less sure about his own ability to cut through a living person. Even the Page of Frozen Waters was alive, and deserved to stay that way.
“Then you’re not leaving, child,” said the Page of Frozen Waters. “I’m sure you’ll come to love it here. I did.” She raised her trident into place, as if to strike.
The Crow Girl stepped in front of Avery. “No,” she said, voice clear and calm.
The Page of Frozen Waters faltered. “Move,” she ordered.
“No,” the Crow Girl repeated. Then she laughed. “It’s so easy, isn’t it? No, and no, and no. There’s a glory in refusal that I never thought I’d see. No to you. No forever. I won’t move, and you won’t hurt the boy, and you won’t have the girl. No.”
“You feathered fool,” said the Page. “You don’t have the right to stop me anymore. You gave it up when you landed here.”
“Did I?”
