Red Wolf

by Rachel Vincent

  “Merci, Monsieur Colbert.” I ran my hand over the fox’s fur, admiring it. “My toes thank you for your generosity.”

  He pulled me close, careful to keep the dripping fox at arm’s length. “I’d rather have thanks from your lips.”

  “My lips? Shall I sing your praises, then, from the center of the village square?” I teased, smiling up at him.

  Simon laughed. “Oh, give the poor man a kiss, Adele. He’s earned it. Come, Elena.” He took her bread delivery and tugged her up by one hand. “Let’s give them a moment alone.”

  “So?” Grainger whispered, as Simon escorted my best friend toward her family’s cottage. “Have I earned a kiss?”

  “Maybe one kiss. On the cheek.” We were, after all, standing in the middle of the village square.

  “I will take what I can get,” he said.

  I stood up on my toes and pressed my lips to his cheek, where I let them linger for a moment against the rough stubble, while I inhaled his scent.

  “If I bring a rabbit for your gloves, will I have earned another kiss?” he murmured as I sank onto my heels again, still staring up at him.

  “Of course.”

  His brows arched. “And if I deliver that rabbit in a more private location, might your kiss land on my lips instead of my cheek?”

  “That is a good possibility, yes,” I assured him with a smile.

  “Mademoiselle Duval, you’ve just ensured that Oakvale will stay pest-free for the duration of winter.”

  I laughed as I tugged him onto the bench with me. “Well then, I feel as if I’ve done the village a service.” I set my basket down and linked my arm through his, determined to take advantage of this semi-private moment, because while Maxime had used the week since he’d arrived to charm my mother and sister and find out everything he could about me, I hadn’t yet found a way to prove that Grainger could be trusted with our secret.

  “Grainger, what’s the most frightening thing you’ve ever seen in the dark wood?”

  He frowned, caught off guard by my change of subject. “I can’t see anything in the dark wood. I saw a dead ogre once, when my father dragged it into the torchlight from off the path, but other than that, I’ve seen very little. Though we hear plenty from the forest.”

  “Did your father kill the ogre?”

  “No, he just found it. It appeared to have been killed by another beast. Likely a wolf. A good thing, too, because it was not far from the village.”

  Was that my mother, protecting villagers who scorned her? Or maybe my grandmother?

  “But wouldn’t it be great if you could see out there? Or if someone could? Wouldn’t it help to be able to see what you’re up against?” If he acknowledged that, then surely he would eventually understand how useful the rest of my abilities were.

  “No one can see in the dark wood, Adele.”

  “But what if someone could?”

  “That person would likely come under a great deal of suspicion over the source of such an unnatural gift.”

  Witchcraft. People would think the ability to see in the dark wood was witchcraft.

  “But what about you?” I only needed him to be willing to keep my secret. “What would you think?”

  “What is this about, Adele? Why are you asking about monsters no one will ever see and live to talk about?”

  I shrugged. “Curiosity. I hear a lot of strange things from the forest on the way to my grandmother’s house.”

  “Well, that is a dangerous curiosity indeed. You’d be better served putting those monsters out of mind entirely and accepting an armed escort when you must go into the woods.” He leaned in until his lips grazed my ear. “I know a certain good-looking young watchman who would gladly accompany you any time.”

  “I will take you up on that the next time I have no escort. But do you really think curiosity is dangerous?”

  “I think indulging it is dangerous. Fear of the dark wood is natural and healthy, and it keeps people safe.”

  An uneasiness settled into the pit of my stomach. “So then, you think curiosity is what? Unnatural and unhealthy?”

  “Unusual, at the very least. Most people don’t want to know what’s out there. They trust the watch to keep them safe, as they should. I worry that your curiosity could be misconstrued as a fixation. Especially considering—”

  His jaw snapped shut, his brows furrowing as he studied my stricken expression. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”

  “Especially considering what?” My red hair and wanton nature? Grainger didn’t believe any of that.

  He took my hand and squeezed it. “I just meant that with your grandmother living all alone out there, and your father wandering into the forest alone and unarmed . . .” He shrugged. “Most of the village already thinks your family is strangely . . . receptive to the dark wood, and if you display an interest in unnatural abilities and strange beasts, I’m worried they’ll start to believe that of you as well.”

  “That I’m receptive to monsters.” I wasn’t even sure what that meant, yet it felt like a slap to the face.

  “And to . . . the lure of evil.”

  “People have been saying things like that about my family for as long as I can remember, Grainger.” And if I truly were a monster, I might be tempted to let those people get eaten. “But I didn’t think you believed any of it.”

  “I don’t,” he insisted, his gaze holding mine. “You know I don’t.”

  “But it bothers you.” How could I not have seen that? Grainger liked me in spite of the rumors, and he consistently brushed them off as harmless gossip. But of course they bothered him.

  His hand tightened around mine. “It bothers me for your sake. Because I love you, and I don’t want to see you injured by idle tongues. Which is why I think you should avoid asking so many questions about the dark wood. Try not to seem so interested in whatever is bumping around out there in the forest. No good can come of that.”

  I studied his gaze, searching for some faint ray of hope. “You think there’s nothing good out there? Truly?”

  “Adele, I don’t know what’s out there. But I do know that nothing good can survive for long in the dark.”

  “Romy can’t play tomorrow,” Sofia announced around a bite of stew-soaked bread. “She’s got a fever. So Tom and Jeanne and I are going to tell her stories, while she rests. Only Tom doesn’t talk, so he’ll probably just listen.”

  “A valuable skill, indeed,” I teased, and my sister stuck her tongue out at me.

  “Is Romy’s stomach upset?” my mother asked from the chair where she sat weaving nettlecloth.

  Sofia shook her head. “Her mama says it’s just a fever and fatigue.”

  “Well, I’m sure she’ll be fine in a few days.”

  “Thank you, Adele,” Maxime said as he sopped up the last of the broth from his bowl. “That stew was delicious.”

  “You said that last night.”

  He grinned, hazel eyes sparkling in the glow from the hearth. “And it was just as true then.”

  “That’s because it’s the very same stew we eat most nights.”

  “Adele,” my mother admonished. “You would do well to learn to accept a compliment with grace.”

  “Of course, you’re right,” I acknowledged through clenched teeth. “Thank you, Max.”

  The problem wasn’t this one compliment; the problem was that Maxime Bernard was made of compliments. Everything I said, he found amusing. Every chore I performed, he declared flawless. His pursuit of me was a sugar-coated endeavor, as if I were a fly to be drawn with honey.

  As if he thought of nothing else, all day long. Which made me conscious of every move I made and skeptical of every word he said.

  “I helped with dinner,” Sofia announced, her head held high as she dipped a spoon made of antler into her bowl.

  “No wonder it was so good!” Maxime said as he stood from the table, and she beamed up at him. “Are you ready, Adele?”

 
“Ready for what?” Sofia asked, as he plucked my red cloak from a hook by the door. “Are you going for a walk, this late?”

  “Adele promised to show me the village.”

  “You’ve already seen the village,” Sofia said, her stew forgotten. “It isn’t that big, you know.”

  Max laughed. “You caught me. I’d just like a chance to make a good impression on your sister.”

  “Then you should bring her a present.” She held up her little wooden horse as a demonstration.

  He gave her a wink and a grin. “Now, why didn’t I think of that?”

  I rolled my eyes at him. “The two of you are incorrigible.”

  My sister frowned up at me. “What does that mean?”

  “It was a compliment,” Max assured her.

  “It most certainly was not.” I tried to snatch my cloak from him, but he pulled it out of my reach with a smile. Then he draped the garment over my shoulders, without taking his focus from my eyes, and his fingers brushed my chin as he tied it closed.

  “Good night, Sofia,” he said as he pulled the front door open, letting in another frigid breeze. She waved, then when she bent for a bite, he took my hatchet from the high shelf and motioned for me to grab my leather belt on the way out into the dark night.

  “He’s rather handsome,” Sofia utterly failed to whisper, and Max laughed as he pulled the door closed behind us.

  “Don’t let that go to your head,” I warned as I buckled my belt beneath my cloak. “She also finds charm in a snake’s slither through the dirt.”

  Max handed me my hatchet, and I dropped it into its loop. “So you don’t agree with her assessment?” He picked up the lantern my mother had prepared for us.

  I turned to look up at him, and I was almost irritated at how brightly his hazel eyes shined in the moonlight. “Maxime, are you fishing for a compliment?”

  “In fact, I am.”

  “Well, I’m afraid you’re going to need better bait.” I turned and headed toward the east end of the village.

  “Mademoiselle, you injure me.” He jogged to catch up with me, one hand over his heart, clutching at a phantom wound.

  I huffed and walked faster, hoping he didn’t see well enough in the dark to avoid pits in the path. Or to notice my faint smile.

  Ahead, the flash of a lantern caught my eye, and I pulled Max into the shadow of the lean-to on the side of the sawmill, hiding our own light from sight.

  “If you wanted to be alone with me, all you had to do was ask,” he teased. But when I didn’t smile, his grin faded. “Monsieur Colbert is on patrol tonight, isn’t he? And you don’t want him to see us together.”

  I peeked around the corner of the building and exhaled. The lantern was gone. “Yes,” I admitted. “But not because we’re doing anything wrong. We aren’t.”

  My mother and me being seen out at night, carrying weapons, would have added to the perception that the Duval women were unnaturally independent. That might even have spawned rumors that we were practicing witchcraft in the dark wood. But being seen out alone with Max was an entirely different kind of danger.

  Anyone who saw us would assume the Thayer brothers were right about my wanton nature. And I couldn’t do anything to spawn further rumors about myself. Not now that I knew they bothered Grainger.

  “It would just be too difficult to explain to him that . . .” I shrugged.

  “That you’re taking me into the dark wood in the middle of the night to introduce me to your grandmother and possibly to fight monsters? Yes, that’s a bit complicated.”

  I stepped back onto the path, and Max followed. In silence. I’d only known him for a few days, but I already understood that silence was not his natural state. “Aren’t you going to try to convince me that if I marry Grainger, my life will be a series of lies and secrets, and I’ll never be able to confide in him?” An opinion he surely shared with my mother and grandmother, considering his personal stake in the matter.

  “That’s your business, Adele. I don’t want to win your hand based on what he can’t be for you. I want to win based on what I can be for you. What we could be for each other.”

  His quiet confidence was a pleasant change from outright arrogance, but it was his unwillingness to criticize Grainger to gain the advantage that truly caught me by surprise, and I found myself studying him in the dark. Reassessing.

  “How do you know what we could be for each other? We only met a week ago.”

  “I didn’t know, at first. I have a duty here, just like you do, but I didn’t know what to expect from you. I wasn’t even sure we’d get along. Then I met you.” He turned to give me a moonlit grin. “I knew you’d be fast and strong, by virtue of your destiny, but you also turned out to be smart, and funny, and beautiful. You are more than I could have expected, in every possible way, so while I am wooing a guardian on behalf of the entire village of Ashborne, as selfish as it might sound, I am thrilled to be competing for your heart on my own behalf.”

  “Stop.” I gave in to a frustrated sigh. “Just stop. Please.”

  Max frowned. “Stop what?”

  “The more praise you throw at me, the less impact it has. We both know I’m not perfect, but according to you, I can do no wrong.”

  “I never said—”

  “I haven’t exactly welcomed you here, yet you insist that my stale bread is ‘crusty and delicious.’ My crooked stitches are ‘endearing.’ And you think I’m beautiful when I have manure smeared across my forehead and hay in my hair.”

  His eyes narrowed. “And you’d rather I find you unappealing?”

  “I’d rather you were sincere. I want you to stop looking at me like I’m some kind of angel sent to save your village and understand that I’m only a girl.”

  “You are not only a—”

  “I am. I just found out I’m a guardian, but I’ve been sewing crooked stitches and making a mess out of mucking the cowshed my entire life. I love my sister, but sometimes I want her to go away. I hate churning butter, but I would fight you for the last smear of it from the bottom of the crock, when I’m feeling selfish. I am just a girl, and you can’t keep thinking of me as some faultless savior, because you are setting yourself up for severe disappointment.”

  Max blinked at me in the moonlight. His shoulders slumped a little as he exhaled, and his gaze felt heavy with the weight of whatever he was about to say. Whatever he’d been holding back. “I know you’re not perfect, Adele. I just . . . I’ve never tried to woo a girl before, and I didn’t expect you to be in love with someone else before you even met me. And the truth is that I’m not thrilled to be competing for your hand. I wish you were as excited to get to know me as I am to get to know you, and since you aren’t, I just . . . . I wanted you to know that I really like you.”

  “Do you, though? Isn’t it possible that you only think you like me because you believe we’re supposed to be together? Because your family—your entire village—needs me?”

  “No.” He gave me an earnest little smile as he reached out to tuck a stray strand of hair into my hood. “I like you. Crooked stitches and all. I especially like how willing you are to speak your mind, because that means I always know where I stand. Even if I’m not yet where I want to be, in your eyes.”

  I stared at him for a moment, as what he was saying sank in. “Okay then. Thank you for telling me the truth.” It was good to know that his arrogance came from feigned confidence in his ability to win me over. But as disappointed as he was to be competing for my hand, at least he knew he was competing. Grainger had no idea, and that didn’t seem fair.

  We walked on in silence, and this time that was my doing. I felt like I understood him a little better now, yet I had no idea what to say.

  At the edge of the village, Max stopped on the path, eyeing the point where it disappeared into the dark wood. We stood side by side in front of the halo, studying the great, dark expanse in solemn silence. The first few feet of trees were easily visible, thanks to the ring of torc
hes, but beyond that, the dark wood was an unnatural ocean of gloom, so murky that from where I stood, I could only make out the general suggestion of trunks and branches.

  Max probably couldn’t see a thing.

  “Does the dark wood completely enclose Ashborne?”

  “Since before I was born,” he confirmed. “My mother says it has spread with a frightening speed for the past twenty years or more. If we aren’t able to beat it back, the monsters will eventually occupy more territory than humanity does.” He turned to me then, and his fingers twitched, as if he wanted to take my hand.

  Instead, he reached for the hem of his dark wool tunic and begin to lift it, along with the lighter linen garment beneath.

  “What are you doing?” Alarm fired through me and I glanced around to make sure no one had followed us, even though it was the dead of night.

  “Showing you what’s at stake for us, in Ashborne.” He raised the material, and before I could object again, my gaze caught on a thick line of gnarled pink scar tissue beginning just above his right hip, easily visible in the glow from the torches.

  “Oh!” I gasped, my horror growing as he continued to lift his tunic, exposing more and more of the gruesome scar angling toward his left shoulder. “What happened?”

  “I’ve been going into the dark wood with my mother for three years, to help her as best I can. Last spring, she fell sick, and I went into the forest on my own to watch out for a small caravan. But despite years of experience and training, I cannot do what comes naturally to you, Adele. What you were born to do.

  “I never saw the creature that attacked me,” he continued. “If the caravan hadn’t heard my scream—if they hadn’t come running with torches, frightening off the monster before it got more than a shallow swipe at me—I wouldn’t have made it out of the forest alive.”

  How brave must he be—how deeply must he care for his village—to have left the path in the woods without a guardian’s ability to see in the unnatural darkness?

  As fascinated as I was horrified, I reached for the thick line traversing his flesh, my fingers skimming the smooth, shiny scar. “I can’t believe you survived this.”