by Blake, Laila
Owain had a certain amount of influence on the beast when they shared his body, just like the wolf had a certain sway when they shared Owain’s human form but it generally came down to more of a consciousness and a certain ability to push a situation this way or that. And the night before, the wolf had denied him even that. Owain had been a spectator and he could feel his insides drumming a little at the memory of her laughing face and his enchanted wolf.
Shaking his head, he heard the dull sound of his fork on the empty plate and he was a little surprised to find it empty. He could have eaten the same portion again, but he was late already. As unsure as he was of the prospect of seeing her, he was her guard and the least he could do was remain at his post and make sure he was there when he was needed. Always the dutiful soldier.
When he reached her corridor, however, he easily heard her quiet and regular breathing through the door. The young lady was actually sleeping. It shouldn’t have made him smile the way he did, but it was too late for that. On the way back to his chamber, he allowed the wolf’s self-satisfaction to permeate through the both of them and he collapsed on his own bed with a deep breath. He was sharply attuned to her now, and he knew he’d wake up when he heard her move around upstairs. He could afford a little nap of his own; build up his own low-burning fire for an hour or so.
It was almost noon when he woke; wide awake in an instant at the sound of her voice so many rooms away. It was dull and hard to make out, but it had a relaxed cadence. She was talking to her maid, which he had come to understand as one of the few people that never caused that trill of panic in Moira’s voice or drive her to seeking refuge in silence.
He shook his head a few times in a distinctly canine gesture and then quickly dressed in a fresh set of garb. He didn’t wear the guard colors; nobody had asked him to or provided them for him but he did wear the Rochmond crest on his chest now, engraved in a leather plate one of the servants had left in his room along with his cleaned and pressed clothes. He fetched himself another snack from the mess hall. It was getting quite easy to predict the young lady’s day. If her maid was to get her ready to be among people, especially the young nobleman who seemed so intent on winning her heart, it took them at least an hour to get her ready. That was more than enough time to feed his recharging body.
When she was ready to come downstairs, however, he stood by the staircase as he always did, straight and proud and silent. She didn’t look at him but he couldn’t help it. She was wrapped in fine fabrics and jewels; they shone and glittered. Her head was held high and stiff and her expanse of hair was tamed into braids that elegantly curled around her head, supporting a crown of pearls.
And just like that, the night seemed like a dream, far-fetched and impossible. This woman wasn’t the one who had played and run with his wolf. This woman was silent and hard and utterly tamed. And finally he looked away as he fell in step behind her, wondering at the hurt this caused him.
She was led up another flight of stairs and into a circular sunroom. It was beautiful and filled with windows. The bright light made Owain blink a little. It was only slightly uncomfortable but especially so around the full moon. Moira chose that moment to finally acknowledge him and he immediately adjusted his features, steeling his eyes against the sun.
He could smell Sir Fairester quite a while before he actually arrived. His odor of scents mixed a masculine musk with flowery notes Owain associated with females. On the battlefield, men did not bother with such trifles and given the man’s other shortcomings, Owain found it difficult not to wrinkle his nose when he caught the scent.
He didn’t look at the young lady when her suitor entered to take her hand. He brought it to his lips, offered her compliments that sounded hollow and human to Owain and then they sat together in the sun. He knew of Moira’s discomfort, the way it inhabited her muscles and her face, all the way down to her toes and the way they scraped against the inside of her slippers. It was in her smell, too, and in the strange quality her voice attained each time she hummed assent or thanked him. Who was that girl? Or, he supposed, the right question was: who had been the girl who had run with his wolf the night before?
Owain tried not to listen. If they got married, he would most likely be relieved from his guard post, but he couldn’t entirely lament the fact. He didn’t belong here, and that had been abundantly clear from the start. Exhaling a very small sigh, he permitted himself to come up with plans for the future. How many more years of fighting did he have in him? It wasn’t a thought he enjoyed entertaining. In contrast to many of the soldiers he had met over the years, he saw no honor in dying in battle anymore, maybe just because so many people had told him he was supposed to. In the end, however, he didn’t really have an image for a death he considered more worthwhile either. If he aged into a wizened old man, he would most likely be starving or maybe train some younglings how to fight. Human ones, he supposed, unable to imagine a pack that would take him anymore.
It was a gesture that tore him out of his thoughts. Sir Fairester was trying to close in on Moira again, but this time she didn’t shrink back so hard. He could still see the tension in her muscles, the strained quality of her breath but no immediate need for him to step in. Just for a moment, her eyes met his, and they triggered a surprisingly painful pull in his gut. The next moment, she was looking at the young nobleman again as he pushed a small velvet bundle over the table toward her.
Owain didn’t want to watch but for his kind, even with his eyes averted, his nose and ears provided all the information he could want and so the scene simply unfurled while he stood there. Moira opened the bundle. Owain smelled precious metals and heard the jingling of jewelry. He listened to her expressions of gratitude, hollow and human again, and then watched her flinch when Fairester insisted on putting it around her neck. It was gold, Owain noted with distaste, human metal. Blaidyn didn’t use it, it felt uncomfortable on their skin and could burn; it weakened the wolf with its sunny, golden sheen.
It shouldn’t have concerned him; he knew that well. It wouldn’t have. But it was moon day still and the wolf inhabited a large part of who he was, especially on that emotional level. And the wolf had his hackles raised and wanted to growl at the nobleman, wanted to tear him limb from limb if he got close to the girl again that the wolf had claimed for his own.
The wolf was another reason why Owain knew he couldn’t leave this place early enough.
• • •
The night was bright under the moon and Moira was climbing the circular stone steps up the tower, dragging the hem of her skirt behind her in a constant brushing sound. Her fingers traced the round wall until, out of breath, she found the stone give way to wood. Her shadow wasn’t far behind, she knew, but she had been ignoring him all day, not quite knowing what to say or whether it was proper to say anything at all.
The door was old and creaky; she had to lean her entire weight against it to make it swing open, but when it did, the moon stood high in the sky, reflecting on the light-colored stone of the battlements. It still looked full to her, but it had passed its peak the night before.
Not looking back, she walked out breathing the night air in deeply until she reached the center of the battlements, the drawbridge somewhere far below, and carefully climbed into a crenel, feet dangling off the wall, the side of her forehead leaning against the cool stone.
She loved it when the moon was bright like that; so bright you could almost not see the stars anymore, cool and silver and full of ancient power. Up there, she could hear the wind in the trees, and if she listened very closely, she was sure there was the bubbling sound of the water in the distance or the swaying grass or so many little insects. It was more than she had in most other places and it was closer to the moon.
Owain was growing harder to ignore. She was sure it was some illusion of the mind caused by her experience the night before, but she could almost feel the large beast,
right there, where she knew he was standing in the shadow of the doorway. It was patient and satisfied and just for a moment, she was almost tempted to get up and pet it again. Except, she wouldn’t find a trace of the beast, only the strong and silent guard.
“You can come out,” she said quietly. She spoke the words in her natural tone and if there was one positive aspect to his super-human senses, it was never having to raise her voice to make sure he understood. For a long moment, a few slow inhales of breath, nothing happened. Moira frowned and closed her eyes. Could she be mistaken? Had she heard anything at all? She didn’t remember. But she felt him so strongly, what else could it be?
Finally, there was the rustle of clothes against wood, and he emerged from the doorway. His head was bowed, the moon finding the smallest strands to highlight in his dark hair.
“I assumed Milady would wish to be alone,” he answered, and she liked that he didn’t raise his voice either. There was no need. His reply made her shrug, though. Did she? The answer was yes, it always was. It was the only answer she knew and still, with her shoulders pulled up to her ears, she wasn’t sure.
“I knew you were there,” she finally answered. Being alone was out of the question since he had come to the castle.
“I tried to be quiet, milady, I shall endeavor to … improve on that front.”
Moira frowned, but she didn’t know why the answer didn’t meet her pleasure. For a while, she eyed the crenel wall in front of her. She closed her eyes and breathed; almost instantly it was as though the wolf was standing next to her. He was nicer than the man, smiling his wolf smile with his mouth a little open as he breathed. She had liked him and just for a moment, she looked back at the man, just to make sure it was another image conjured up by her imagination. But there he was. Had he moved at all? A tremendous sense of loss washed over her and she couldn’t explain it. She wondered if he even knew about that night or whether it was something she had only shared with the large and proud beast. She hadn’t thought so; something about him had felt like her silent guard, too. But it was hard to try and reconcile that feeling with the reality in front of her.
“Did you … find your way back easily last night?” she finally asked. A test, maybe. Or just the need for the silence to cease.
“I did, milady, thank you.”
Clipped. Careful. She pursed her lips and then bit at the soft flesh and pulled up her shoulders in a protective gesture. He was a servant, but he was not hers. He did not answer to her, nor was he bound to her command. It struck her that she found herself wondering if he simply disliked her.
“I didn’t know you would … he would be so close to the castle,” she tried again.
“Neither did I, milady.” His voice was low, a little rough around the edges and she turned back to him when he continued. “He usually stays away from inhabited areas. Something must have … drawn him back.”
Both of them fell silent for a while but where most people bothered her by their mere proximity, by the sound of their breath or the way they switched their stance, Moira couldn’t help but notice that Owain didn’t make her feel that way. It was almost comfortable.
“He isn’t completely you, is he?” she finally found herself asking, too curious to maintain the polite distance she assumed was most appropriate.
“No,” Owain answered. Again, he paused, but when Moira turned around to look at him, and raised her brows, he relented and continued. “We share an existence, we influence each other but we are not of one mind. He has his own ideas and opinions. As do I.”
Moira offered a low humming sound. She turned around in the crenel until her feet were on the stone floor again and she could look at him without craning her neck. There was a certain secrecy about his kind and she assumed this was by design. She couldn’t help herself, though; after a night of getting to know the animal, she felt like she deserved to know something about him.
“Like what?”
“He doesn’t have the same … restraints or considerations of decency and propriety.” Owain replied after a few heartbeats of silence. He seemed uncomfortable to her or maybe it was just the contrast between his stiff stance and the way his wolf felt to her, relaxed and quite happy to be near her.
Moira eyed him for a long time and finally replied, “I won’t tell anyone.”
“Of course you won’t.” Owain’s answer had come quick but he immediately changed his mind and corrected himself; “My apologies, milady. It’s not my place to assume.”
Moira waved this off, frowning at him. She would never say it out loud, but she liked the wolf better. “You aren’t very happy here, are you?”
“Milady, if I ever offended you, I apologize. I truly do.” His voice was low, earnest but distant and Moira huffed out a breath, frowned and ran her fingers through her open hair.
“You haven’t.”
He bowed and Moira turned around again. This time, she didn’t dangle her feet off the battlements, she just squeezed herself into the crenel and rested her face on her knees, facing out over the dark landscape. Her fingers fanned out over her shins and she gnawed on her bottom lip for a while. Finally, she reached into a pocket and pulled out Deagan Fairester’s necklace. It gave a small, dull sound of tinkling metal and sparkled in the moonlight.
Heaving a heavy sigh, Moira laid it down on the merlon in front of her, then balled her hand to a fist and fanned her fingers out again. Free now.
“Do you think it’s pretty?” she asked after a long silence between them.
“I am not sure it is appropriate for me to have an opinion, milady.”
“I asked you a question.” She was getting frustrated with his non-answers and his need to remain distant when she wanted to talk to him, wanted to pet the wolf again.
“My kind is not fond of gold. We dislike the sheen; it makes us uncomfortable. We prefer silver.”
This made her smile a little and she looked over at him. “I do too. But gold is more expensive so … I’m supposed to wear gold when he’s around.”
He didn’t offer an answer. Moira wondered for a moment whether this was why people disliked her, because it was so hard to have a conversation with her. Not for everybody, of course, not her father when he stopped worrying about marriage and heirs, not Brock, and not Bess, her maid.
“I don’t like it,” she finally offered herself and leaned her head back against the wall of the merlon she was leaning against. She inhaled the cool air and felt her lungs swell nicely in a way indoor air never quite managed to do. “He hopes to buy me with trinkets when I know as well as anyone that he wants me for the riches of my fief. He must think me very stupid.”
Again no answer. And so Moira continued; “I am to marry a man who thinks I can be bought with something I could have in abundance if I was so inclined. Does that make sense to you?”
At that direct question, Owain shifted from one foot to the other and finally he shook his head. “No, milady.”
“Of course it’s not mine. Not the fief, not the riches.” She wasn’t looking at him, eyes cast up to the sky, the stars still mostly outshone by the bright moon. “I am not deemed intelligent enough to own anything myself. Not because someone talked to me or tested me, but simply because I was born a girl. So maybe he is right in trying to buy me with jewels and hollow flattery.”
“I don’t think you stupid, milady.”
Moira turned around, for the first time there was something like an emotion laced in his voice, a darker layer beneath the distant propriety. Moira shivered but she wasn’t cold. Still, she wrapped her arms around herself and finally her cheek came to rest on her arms. She looked tiny like this, a little package of a woman, nestled in a crenel in an ancient battlement.
“I liked your wolf,” she admitted quietly and a smile stole over Owain’s features.
“He … is quite fond
of you, too.”
For a moment, they smiled at each other; then Moira’s face grew warm and she looked away. Her chest felt different, constricted but not in the painful way it usually did.
“Tell me about them? I mean you … your people?” A little shy now, she brushed her wild hair back over one shoulder and Owain smiled at the way she sucked her bottom lip between her teeth while her brows were still raised in hopeful expectation.
“What would you like to know?”
Moira decided that he didn’t sound as distant anymore. He seemed to have shed the formal address for the moment and there was something in that concession that made her feel lighter, less tense. She eyed him again and his arms had moved from his sides to his back. He seemed to be leaning forward the slightest bit.
“Anything? About … how you live? What it’s like?”
“We don’t naturally live in towns. Our groups are smaller. I have lived in cities sometimes, but those were human ones. It is more natural for us to stay in smaller packs and family structures. We have camps in the less populated areas of Lynne and we try to stay in touch, try to exchange news and information. Is this at all what you were looking for?”
“But you don’t have a central organization … like a king?”
“No. Technically, your kind is my king. We swore fealty to the human crown generations ago. It isn’t natural for us to elevate one of our own into such an exalted position. The packs are led by a strong Blaidyn but their power does not extend past the camp. And even inside … we don’t have such a strong distinction between the ruling class and the rest.”
Moira thought about this. It was clear that he was talking about her, that he disapproved but she couldn’t change how her world was organized. Nor did she particularly relish it herself.
“What about women? I have never heard anything about them … ”
