“It’s nothing,” my grandmother said then, in response, and my father grunted.
Then, my father’s gift. The box was heavy, and I set it in my lap, my whole body tightening with anticipation as I lifted the lid and dipped my fingers beneath the paper laid on top of the contents inside.
Something dense and soft met my hand. Fabric, black threaded with gold filigree that winked and flashed in the dim light of our kerosene lantern.
I lifted the gift from the box, and velvety folds spilled over my knees and across the floor.
A cloak.
One side black and gold, the other side a deep, vibrant red.
My grandmother drew in a sharp breath, as if someone had slipped a knife between her ribs.
“Dan,” she said to my father. “What are you doing?”
“It’s hers,” he replied, his voice flat and firm at the same time, the tone he used when he was feeling unyielding. “It’s always been hers.”
“Don’t be a fool,” she replied angrily.
I only dimly heard them, for I was captivated by the cloak. I spread my palm against the silky feel of it, tracing the embroidered flowers, turning the edge of it this way and that to admire the way the light bounced across the threads. Something about it seemed to call to me deep in my bones. There was power in this cloak. Magic. Tendrils of it teased my fingertips as I ran them across the fabric lightly. Touching it felt like an echo of when I’d brushed against the electric fence that ran around the fields where Farmer Eliazar, the only one in the village with a windmill that produced power, kept his cattle.
The sensation faded, leaving only fabric, but I knew what I’d felt.
My grandmother reached across the table and put her hands on the cloak as if to take it from me. A noise of protest tore from my throat. My father grabbed her wrists.
“Don’t,” my grandmother said again to my father. This time, it sounded like an order.
I lifted my head, and my stomach curled at my grandmother’s expression. I glanced from my father’s face to my grandmother’s in confusion. They were both grim.
My mother stood silently and busied herself with the dishes, leaving them to glare at each other. Kassian sat quietly, looking as confused as I felt.
“You can’t stop it,” my father said tightly.
My grandmother’s face went as rigid as a statue’s. “I can stop it,” she hissed to my father. “I’ll do everything in my power to stop it. I won’t lose her, Dan. Not Meredith.”
I was frightened. What did my grandmother mean, lose me? How was giving me a cloak going to cause me to be lost?
“Daddy?” I asked, the word scraping in the sudden silence.
“Later,” my grandmother said. “We’ll discuss this later.”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” my father said. He scooped up the cloak and put it back in the box. He closed the lid and put it beneath my bed that sat in the corner. “Who wants some cake?” he asked, forcing joviality into his tone.
My grandmother’s jaw tightened, but she allowed him to brush the matter aside for now. The tension eased in the room, and the lantern seemed to brighten. My mother returned to the table and straightened her hair with one hand. I remember how her fingers trembled against her forehead. She mustered a smile for me and asked, “How about an extra big piece, Red?”
“Don’t call her Red,” my grandmother said before I could speak. “Her name is Meredith. It’s a beautiful name.”
It was an old, stupid argument. My grandmother must have still been feeling surly to invoke it. I was a girl of many names. My family called me Red because of my hair, which had been red as a radish when I was born, and the fact that the word was nestled between the other letters of my given name, Meredith. It was a short, no-nonsense kind of moniker, and I never thought it was that pretty. It tasted like a lump on my tongue. Red. Short, easily shaped into a shout, a curt command, a snap. Friends called me Mere, and I was used to hearing that yelled by other children as they waited for me at the gate so we could venture into the edge of the forest to pick blackberries and search for fresh eggs. Only my grandmother and my teachers ever called me Meredith, which was prettier, but unfamiliar to my ears. The word was undulating, lispy, fancy. I used to practice whispering it to myself as I stared into the mirror, searching for myself in the sound of it. But I never seemed to find my identity in that name.
Kassian, my Kassian, called me Erie, and I liked that name best of all. It made me think of wind-swept skies and rippling cloaks and soaring high above the forest, higher than any Sworn or treecrawler could reach. It made me feel safe, but also somehow adventurous.
“She’s our daughter. We’ll call her whatever we want,” my father said to my grandmother.
“She’s my granddaughter,” my grandmother replied icily. “Her hair isn’t even red anymore. It’s brown. It doesn’t make sense, and besides, she has a perfectly good name.”
My mother remained silent. She wasn’t afraid to argue with my grandmother, but she picked her battles. Tonight, she seemed determined to let my father do the fighting.
“Lots of people call me Mere, Grandmother,” I interjected. “And the butcher’s son calls me Merry.”
“The butcher’s son has a Chosen for a sister,” my grandmother spat. “Do you really want the brother of a Chosen calling you anything?”
“Those poor girls,” my mother murmured in my grandmother’s direction. “It isn’t their fault, Delphine.”
“Let’s eat some cake,” my father declared, because this was another fight brewing.
“Yes, please,” I said about the cake. I was feeling scared because of the way the adults were acting, and the end of the words squeaked when they left my lips. I didn’t want to think about the Chosen—girls who were dragged from their homes and marked with claw-drawn tattoos by the Sworn, marks made to designate them as future breeders for the werewolf army. I wanted to pretend everything was happy this evening. I wanted to pretend that there was no Alpha ruling us as a dictator, that there were no dangers prowling the forest that grew thick and wild around our village and farm, and that there were no disagreements between the people I loved about the right way to think about these things.
Kassian grabbed my hand beneath the table, and I felt a thrill of excitement despite everything else. I ate my extra big piece of honey carrot cake and held Kassian’s hand, and for ten minutes, even though my grandmother and my parents had argued and my grandmother still looked quietly furious, I felt safe and whole.
After dinner, my father asked me to take the scraps to the compost heap. “You’re old enough to go alone,” he said, with a pointed look in my grandmother’s direction when she tried to protest. “Take your new cloak.”
The night air smelled sweet as I stepped onto the back stoop. The forest lay black with shadows, the branches of the trees moving faintly in the wind. Our house huddled right up against the woods. In the distance, I could see the feathery peaks of the vertical forest against the starry backdrop of the sky. The place that had once been a city with towers of silvery steel. Now, it was overgrown with so many vines and trees that it looked like the earth had reached leafy green fingers up to touch the sky.
One day, when I was old enough, my father had promised to take me there. To show me the secrets and wonders of the world before the Alpha and the Sworn.
I couldn’t wait.
The cloak lay heavy and soft against my shoulders. I felt older wearing the weight of it, taller. Braver. Stronger, even. As if I could fight off any threat. I wore it with the scarlet side out, and I imagined that I stood out against the shadows like a drop of blood on coal, like a fighter for the resistance, as I strode into the backyard behind our cabin. I felt the faintest prickle of magic singe my skin again.
Crickets sang loudly, and the grass whispered around my ankles as I made my way to the compost heap, located a stone’s throw away from the house so we wouldn’t get raccoons rustling beneath our windows in the night while we slept.
>
I took my time in the yard, enjoying the feel of the length of cloak sweeping behind me like the train of a lady’s gown. The weight of the cloak emboldened me. Usually, I scurried through my chores, nervous in the darkness with the forest at my fingertips, imagining invisible eyes were watching. But this time, I pretended I was a queen walking through her garden, regal and composed. The cloak dragged across the dew-soaked wildflowers. One day, it would fit me. It was a woman’s cloak, made for a full-grown future self.
As I walked, the hem snagged on the thrusting roots of the Thorn Trees that rose from the soil like the grasping hands of buried zombies. We hacked them back, but they grew with a speed and stubbornness that rivaled every other plant in the forest, because they were magic. They’d burst into our world at the same time as the werewolves, spreading like fire across civilization along with the dreaded disease of the land that we called the Spore, a magic plant-disease that spread horrors in its wake.
I stopped to free myself from a Thorn Tree tendril, rubbing my thumb over the embroidery at the edges once more. A thrill lanced through me to think that this beautiful cloak was mine. I felt like a queen, and so I paused to lift my chin as if accepting the bows of my subjects before I raised the bucket to upend the contents over the compost heap.
I was dumping the scraps when the Alpha’s elite werewolf soldiers came.
I had never seen the Sworn before, but I’d heard stories. Whispers of how they were fast as the wind, and just as silent. How they were taller and more muscular than the humans they looked like. The stories also said they had faces like monsters and eyes that glowed the cold blue of the moon on a frosty night, but the Sworn wore black wolf masks, so I didn’t see their faces as they melted from the shadows of the forest in silence. They surrounded the house before I heard anything at all.
The first indication of trouble was a glass breaking.
And then my mother’s scream.
I whirled, the cloak swirling around me. I saw the figures surrounding the cabin. They were as quick and lithe as ghosts. They wore the black armor of the Sworn—thorny arm shields and chest plates, and helmets fashioned from metal to look like wolves’ heads.
They were like monsters from the deep forest.
Every person I loved was inside that cabin. Mother, Father, Kassian, Grandmother.
A gasp wrenched from my lips.
One of the Sworn turned its masked face toward me at the sound of my exhalation. The wicked wolf face glinted like a death mask in the pale moonlight. His curved shoulders, powerful beneath his armor and cloak, tensed.
I stood, feet rooted to the ground, a shout frozen on my tongue. My heart thundered. Surely the Sworn saw me. He would cross the grass and kill me with one swipe of his arm-shield. The thorny spines along it would slice my throat.
I wanted to run, but I couldn’t move.
I couldn’t breathe.
Like a fawn discovered by a predator, I was locked into place, trembling, my limbs like lead.
After an eternity, the Sworn turned back to the house and slipped inside. It was as if he hadn’t seen me at all.
Another scream split the night, and I heard the sound of a struggle that ended in a dying gasp. The light in the house went out.
They emerged from the house, and I couldn’t see how many of them there were. One wrenched his mask from his face, and moonlight caught his features. He looked just like a man.
I didn’t understand. Where was his fur, his monstrous, doglike mouth?
The Sworn bled away into the shadows, rushing past me like wind, and I was alone.
Time seemed to swell and slow around me. My heartbeat felt as lethargic and final as the hand of a dying drummer in my chest. My thoughts sorted from their tangle and presented themselves one by one. Hide in the shadows. Run to the door and call for my mother. Stay here and never move again.
The house stood before me, corpse-like. I knew in my bones what I’d find if I went inside.
So, I didn’t go inside. I stayed there, paralyzed, the cloak pooled around me, a cry stuck in my throat, and unshed tears blinding my eyes.
It felt like years had passed before a hand touched my shoulder. I jolted as time snapped back to its normal speed, my heart slamming in terror as I rose to fight.
But it was Grandmother.
She put a finger to her lips and helped me up. I was shaking, but her hands were strong and steady. I turned toward the cabin, my expression hopeful.
The windows were still dark.
Hope struggled up in my chest. My parents? Kassian? I turned back to my grandmother, looking into the forest behind her for them.
There weren’t there.
My grandmother lowered her gaze and shook her head.
The second grief of losing them after that brief and wild hope struck like a slap. A hole opened inside me. Tears rolled down my cheeks, but I made no sound. I couldn’t. It was as if my voice had been sucked from my throat.
My grandmother put something into my hand. I turned my palm over and looked down. My gifts—the ring she’d given me, and the collar-necklace my mother had made. More tears flooded my eyes.
She reached out and traced one finger down the cloak. I’d put it on with the red side out, but still, the Sworn had not seen me in the shadows.
“You were protected,” my grandmother whispered as if reading my mind. “The red side of the cloak shields the wearer from the eyes of the Sworn. What a happy incident of defiance on your father’s part, and yours for wearing it. He was right to give it to you tonight. I wish I could tell him he was right.” She fell silent again. She turned her head toward the house as if trying to make a decision.
“Can we go back now?” I ventured to ask.
“No, Meredith,” my grandmother said gently. “There is nothing there that you want to see. Come. You’re going home with me.”
My grandmother reached out her hand, and I took it, and we stepped together into the forest.
NINE YEARS LATER
CHAPTER ONE
I WAS ON my way to a hanging.
The cloak that had saved my life as a ten-year-old child lay around my shoulders again, the black side facing out this time, the golden embroidered flowers shimmering faintly under the early morning sunshine. Dread lay in my belly like a dead snake, but determination danced atop it like cold fire.
The cart I drove rattled on the cobblestones of the city street as I steered it left toward the correctional yard and the gallows. My stomach curled into a hard ball as I caught sight of the structure and the rope that dangled from it. The noose, twisting in the wind. The hangman, leaning against the steps, smoking a cigarette with a bored expression on his face.
I pulled the cart to a stop and climbed out. My pulse hammered in my throat as I approached the steps.
When I reached the hangman, I licked my dry lips and tried to summon moisture into my throat. The wind blew, making the cloak flutter around my ankles. It was not quite autumn, and the air was still heavy and humid even in the early morning.
The hangman looked up, his eyes bright and brown as they met mine. Human eyes, instead of the strange moon-silver irises of the werewolves. He wasn’t a Sworn. He was human.
A traitor to his kind.
He was young, with curly black hair and smooth brown skin. I’d imagined the hangman to be a monster, burly and cruel-faced, with a mask on and a crooked, sadistic smile. But this young man looked more tired than anything else. Tired and defeated, as if he’d already seen enough nightmares for a lifetime.
Still, I hated him.
I began, “I am here to formally protest the execution of—”
“Can’t yet,” he interrupted, cutting off my prepared speech. “You have to wait until they arrive.” He took another drag of his cigarette and turned his head to blow the smoke away from us both.
“When are they arriving?” I asked. “The edict said sunrise.”
For a split second, I was terrified that I’d been too late, that he was mis
taken somehow or thinking of a different wagon of prisoners, but my fears were soothed at the man’s reply.
“These things rarely happen on time,” the hangman said. He finished his cigarette and dropped it to the stones, grinding out the burning bit with the heel of his boot. “Little warm for a cloak, isn’t it?”
I drew the folds around me stiffly. “Executions chill my blood.”
He jerked his chin to say he didn’t care as he turned away. I stepped back to the side of the cart to wait.
If there was any mercy left in this world, I wouldn’t be forced to wait too long.
I heard the procession before I saw them. The thud of the brute-beast’s feet on the road, the creak of the execution cart’s wheels. The gray-skinned behemoth swung into view, drawing the wooden vehicle with the cage in the back, two Sworn sitting in the driver’s seat, wearing their black armor and masks, and three men huddled inside, dressed in rags, their hands curled around the bars between them and freedom.
My eyes found those of the one I sought.
Neil.
On his way to his execution, and still, he shot me a cocky smirk and an exaggerated salute in an effort to make me smile. Only the tension at the edges of his mouth and eyes and the stiffness of his shoulders betrayed his terror.
My heart pounded harder. I didn’t smile back. My lips were too stiff to force into the shape of the lie.
He didn’t know why I was here. He must think I’d come for moral support. To watch the escape.
He was expecting a rescue, of course.
But not from me.
The prison cart stopped, and the two Sworn stepped down to open the cage. They were tall and muscular. Their black, sculpted body armor seemed to suck all the light into its wicked depths, and their wolf helmets made them look even more inhuman. They moved with a sinuous grace that unsettled me, a kind of animal fluidity that left me prickling with unease like a mouse in the presence of a snake. While I’d gotten more glimpses of them since the day my family had been murdered, and I knew they looked human beneath the armor, I still thought of them the way the stories described them—monstrous, with faces like dogs beneath their masks, and hard bodies ridged with unexpected skeletal protrusions and masses of dark, wiry fur beneath their black armor.
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