As I reached the clearing in front of the main tent, I found Ashera and Toross both waiting for me, as well as several of the other faces I’d come to know, like Praxis and Jaleem. There were so many of them here, I wasn’t sure what was going on, but whatever was about to happen, it was going to be a spectacle.
Thinking about it that way made it less surprising to see so many fae out here. Whether they were castle fae or moon children, the love of a good show really was universal. Even I could understand I was probably the most entertaining thing to have happened to this camp in a while, at least.
“Here,” Lora said, grabbing my shoulder once I’d reached the center of the space around which all the fae were assembled.
I stopped and looked around. I’d been given a new shirt to wear, so at least I wasn’t mostly naked, which would’ve been a literal nightmare. I couldn’t find the Prince, though. Maybe he was still too injured to stand, or maybe he hadn’t been allowed out here. Quietly, I waited for someone to speak.
Ashera was the one who spoke first. “Today we find out who you really are,” she said.
Good luck. Even I don’t know that. “What do you mean?” I asked.
“Last night you demonstrated to me you could change your shape… but you were not very good.”
“It was my first time.”
“There are children who can shapeshift better than you.”
“Yeah, okay.”
“You are bad at it.”
“Alright,” I groaned, “I get it. Move on.”
Another pause. “The white wolf is said to be our savior, the one who will help us take back what was stolen from us, but to do that she must be a warrior without peer. The best among us. Are you the best of us?”
I scanned the crowd. “I… no. I’m not.”
“This must change. The best way to learn how to swim is to be thrown into the deep end of the icy lake. If you do not swim to the shore fast enough, you will freeze and die.”
“Wait, am I being thrown into a lake?”
“No…” she turned her head to the side and looked at Jaleem. “Yours will be the honor of doing battle with the white wolf,” she said.
Jaleem nodded, turned to look at me, and took a few steps away from the crowd and into the center of the clearing that had been made for us. He looked eager. Happy, in fact. Maybe even a little hungry. I remembered what the Prince had said about these people being cannibals, and the look on this man’s face supported the theory, but it was probably just a theory.
He wasn’t going to kill and eat me.
Right?
Already I could feel my muscles tightening. My heart started pounding hard inside of my chest, and in my mouth, my teeth were beginning to throb and ache. “Not this again,” I said. “I already caught him last night.”
“Do not argue this,” Ashera said, “Defend yourself. He will not stop until you are dead.”
Jaleem’s hungry smile widened. “Gullie, go!” I yelled, just as the fae threw himself to the ground. Donning his wolf form in a flash, he launched himself toward me with his teeth bared. I backed up a step, then another, and another, my mind racing, my body tingling. I still wasn’t totally sure how to channel my inner wolf, or whatever. It was supposed to be instinct.
So, instead of backing up any further, I planted my foot firmly in the ground and used it to spring toward him with my hands outstretched. By the time our bodies collided, we were both wolves, and it couldn’t have been weirder.
As a wolf, I was easily two times my original size, and way stronger than I was used to. The entire world opened up to me in a barrage of smells, and sounds, and sights. My senses weren’t just sharper; I developed totally new ones when I transformed. And even though my mind had the capacity to process them all, I wasn’t totally sure I understood any of them yet.
Beating Jaleem to the ground wasn’t difficult once I’d found my footing. The smaller wolf scrambled away from me, circled around, and snarled. I paced around him, matching his footing, trying to keep him away from me. I could feel him, understand him, he wanted to kill me; not because he was angry at me, but because his Alpha had told him to.
I lowered my eyes and growled at him, trying to intimidate him, but it didn’t work. He threw himself at me again, taking my snarl as an invitation to fight. This time, I tried to dodge out of his way, but he was faster than I was, and he sank his teeth into my throat. I shook him off, batting him away with one paw and then snapping at him with my own jaws, but he got away, and I was bleeding.
The injury wasn’t bad. I knew it wasn’t. And once I started focusing on it, concentrating, I could feel it starting to knit and close. But this was the way Jaleem fought. He nipped and snapped and tired his opponent out. Death by a thousand cuts. He was going to make me tired before he killed me, and the more I healed, the quicker I’d get tired.
I had to end this fight faster than it had started if I wanted to win.
The wolf glared at me, his eyes wide, his lips peeled back over his teeth. I lunged at him, diving to the left and flushing him to the right. Before I’d even reached him, I quickly banked to the right, catching him by surprise and biting down hard on one of his back legs.
I could taste his blood and his fur. I didn’t think I’d get the taste out of my mouth for days, but it felt good to fight. It felt right, like I was meant to be doing this. As we tussled and rumbled, and I felt the rush of the wind in my fur, and our bodies knocked, and kicked, and scratched, and bit, for the first time, I felt more like myself than I ever had.
More comfortable, more settled, and more at peace—despite the adrenaline coursing through my body.
After a couple of rounds with him, I could anticipate his movements. When he would go left, I would be ready to counter. When he tried to snap his jaws around my leg, I would buck and kick him away. When he tried to use speed, I would use strength to keep him at bay. He came for one of my front paws, but I reared onto my hind legs and bashed him across the snout with my other paw, laying him low.
Dashing toward him and dropping to my stomach by his side, I wrapped my jaws around his neck—but I didn’t bite. I wanted only to show him that I’d beaten him. I wanted to show all of them that I had done this, that I could do this. The only thing I hadn’t shown them was my magic, but I still felt like that was out of reach.
I had only ever used it in a moment of extreme danger, and I didn’t feel that here.
“Good,” Ashera said, her voice sending a ripple of murmurs through the gathered crowd. “Now, kill him.”
What?
I wanted to speak, but I was worried if I let the wolf go, he would try to turn the tables on me. Instead, with my mouth full of neck, I yelped and moaned, making a sound that hadn’t come from any conscious thought, but out of instinct.
“You must do it,” Ashera said, as if she’d understood. “It is our way. You have defeated him in combat, and now he deserves death.”
I made another sound that I had hoped meant I won’t.
“If you do not kill him now, you will do him a great dishonor.”
Jaleem made a struggled groan that, to my wolfish sensibilities, felt like I want to die, but I couldn’t believe that. Nobody wanted to die. This whole honorable death thing was barbaric, and I just couldn’t go through with it. He had done nothing to deserve death—it was basically a play-fight! Were these people insane?
Against my own better judgment, I let go of the wolf’s throat and backed away so I could speak. “I can’t kill him,” I said, “I don’t hate him, and he isn’t my enemy.”
“He is today,” the Alpha said, “If you are the white wolf, you will kill this man and send his spirit to the warrior’s afterlife. Otherwise, you will fail my test, and you are no white wolf.”
I looked over at Mira and Melina, and there was a time where perhaps I would’ve seen the ice cold of winter reflected on their faces. It was a face the other fae were wearing. None of them seemed even the slightest bit upset about what was happ
ening here, but Mel and Mira were. They looked mortified, and I was proud of them for that.
I had touched them with my humanity, with my capacity for compassion, and I wasn’t going to let them down now.
I turned to Ashera. “I won’t kill him,” I said, “I don’t care how you do things here, but from where I’m standing, this isn’t a good reason to kill him.”
The Alpha glowered. “You dare disrespect our way of life here? On our sacred land?”
“If you want to kill me, fine. But you’ll have to do it yourself. Maybe I’m not the white wolf. Maybe I’m not the one that’s going to bring justice to the wrongs that were done to you. Roll those dice and see what happens.”
I was playing with fire, and I knew it.
Ashera took a step toward me, but Toross held her shoulder. “Ash, don’t,” he said.
The Alpha turned her head and glared at him. “Why not?” she hissed.
“You know why.”
She scowled. I could see her mulling something over in her own head, trying to figure something out. I couldn’t tell what that you know why had been about, but it had sounded ominous. Toross, the man who had captured me, always stood at her right side, which made me feel like he was her Beta, her second, or possible her lover.
Maybe all three.
I got the impression that if anyone else had stopped her from doing what she wanted to do, she would’ve torn them to shreds with her own teeth, but not him. For some reason, she wasn’t acting against him. In fact, when she shrugged out from under his grip, she simply stared at him, long and hard.
“Let me teach her,” he said.
“If she cannot kill, then we have no use for her,” Ashera said.
“I warned you she would not kill him, if she succeeded in defeating him. Allow me to try, now.”
The Alpha gave me a sidelong glance, then turned to look at Toross again. “On your head and your honor be it, Beta. Get her ready to face my tests.”
Without another word, Ashera removed herself from the situation and returned to her tent. Praxis and Lora started scattering the crowd of gathered fae. Jaleem, meanwhile, picked himself up and scampered off with his tail between his legs. I realized I probably had done him some kind of dishonor by not killing him, but living was surely more important, right?
Melina had already scooped up my clothes from the spot where I had been standing when I transformed. I knew I couldn’t take my human form again because I would be naked when I did, so I sat upright instead.
Even though Toross was a tall man, sitting up I was about level with his chest, so he didn’t have to kneel to speak to me. He looked down on me all the same, angling his head to one side. Looking up at him, I wasn’t sure what I expected to see, but now that I caught a whiff of his scent with my wolf nose, I realized something.
Somehow, incredibly, he smelled familiar.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. “She was about to kill me.”
“Ashera has her ways,” he said, in a gruff voice. “They are usually effective, but you are different.”
“Because I’m the white wolf?”
He paused. “No, because you are as stubborn as your mother.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
“I’m… what did you just say?”
Toross paused and watched me closely. He narrowed his eyes. “Come with me,” he said.
“Wait, no, answer the question first. What did you just say?”
He cocked an eyebrow. “I said you are as stubborn as your mother.”
My heart had been hammering against the insides of my ribcage and I hadn’t noticed it until I started feeling a little faint. All I could do was stare at this man who had just invoked my mother. A man from a different world. No, it wasn’t just different, because this place wasn’t the Arcadia I had come to know.
This was a step removed even from the castle, from Windhelm, which meant he and I were two worlds apart instead of just one.
“And how could you possibly know that?” I asked.
Toross approached, and my mind conjured an image of him in his substantially large wolf form, his snout dripping with blood. He had just killed the Wargs, had torn them apart with his massive jaws, and when he took his human form, the blood was still there, dribbling down his chin.
He’d looked like a savage, a beast. He was as terrifying then as he was now, only now the fear came from somewhere else. It was that feeling of recognition, like I knew his scent, that was starting to play on my mind. The fear that my world was about to be shattered once more.
“I am your mother’s brother,” he said.
My heart gave a loud thump, then fell silent. “You’re… my uncle?”
Toross nodded. “I knew from the moment I smelled you.”
“Why didn’t you…” I paused, blinking hard and shaking my head. “Wait, why didn’t you tell… me…” I was having trouble speaking, and breathing. Toross called out to someone, but I couldn’t hear what he’d exactly said. My vision was swimming, consciousness slipping. I felt myself fall to the ground, and as the darkness settled, the last thing I saw was Toross draping a blanket over me.
When I came to again, I was on my back somewhere quiet, and comfortable. My back was stiff, my bones ached, and my head was still pounding, but I realized quickly I was on a bed. I tried to get up, but someone placed a hand on my chest to stop me from moving.
“Not so fast,” Toross said, “You fainted.”
I blinked at him, then looked around him. We were in a tent, but it wasn’t my tent. This one was larger, there were furry blankets everywhere, and bits of furniture and decorations I didn’t have in my tent. It was rustic in here, like a shaman’s temple, with candles burning and the bones of animals arranged around the place like they had some kind of spiritual significance.
“I fainted…” I repeated.
“I expected something like this,” Toross said.
I realized suddenly, I’d been in my wolf form when I fainted, but now I was in my human form. Panicked, I tucked the blankets that had been thrown over me up to my neck. No one had clothed me after I had changed shape. That was something I was going to have to get used to, and maybe even anticipate.
I couldn’t very well be in my starkers all day long and have my bits constantly on display.
“You… told me you were my uncle,” I said, “Is that true?”
“It is. The revelation proved too much for you to handle.”
“That’s an understatement.” I paused, searching his eyes. I couldn’t see much of myself in him, but then again, I was thinking of my old self—that mousy girl from Carnaby Street. When I thought of myself as the fae that I was, with my silver hair and pointed ears, and my bright blue eyes, then yes; he was something of a mirror, even if the image was a little warped.
“I… I have so many questions,” I said.
“I know,” he said, “And I am willing to answer them. In truth… I knew you would come back one day.”
I frowned. “You did?”
He turned his head to the side. “Your mother did.”
I swallowed hard, dreading the next question, and the answer. “My parents…”
Toross turned to look at me, his eyes softening, darkening. He shook his head. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to tell you.”
I shut my eyes, fighting the sudden and immediate surge of tears. My heart clenched tightly, my breath hitched, and cold filled me like I’d been dipped in an icy lake. I knew they were dead. I had known, in my heart, for a very long time, but I guessed there was more hope in me than I had anticipated.
Hope that they would still be alive.
Swallowing again, inaudibly, I allowed the moment to sit and simmer. Eventually, I opened my eyes again and looked up at him. “Can you tell me what happened?” I finally asked.
“Your mother was… powerful,” he said. “Her name was Evelynth, although she liked to be called Eve. She was our Alpha before Ashera. Proud, strong, fiercely cunning and easily the m
ost intelligent woman I had ever known. I looked up to her, not only as my Alpha, but as my big sister.”
“Alpha…” the word fell out of my mouth. It conjured images of a snarling wolf beating down her foes, tearing into them with her teeth, then howling at the full moon in the night sky. Never in a million years would I have guessed my mother was anything remotely close to that.
“She didn’t want the responsibility,” Toross said, “But after our father was killed trying to defeat the King and his forces, the mantle fell to her as the eldest of us to lead us.”
“The King killed my… my grandfather?”
“And grandmother. We retreated after he killed them. Thinking us defeated for good, he declared his new family name to be Wolfsbane.”
Another push of sinking cold worked through me. Wolfsbane. Was the Prince involved in that fight? Did he have a hand in killing my grandparents? I had questions, so many questions. I couldn’t think of which to ask first, which was the most important one to ask. We sat in silence for a moment while I went through it all in my head.
Finally, I settled on what seemed the most obvious question.
“Who was my father?” I asked.
“Your father… his name was Michael, a human who had fallen through a portal on the Winter Solstice and gotten lost in the woods. Your mother found him, freezing, dying. She did not want him to become Wenlow, so she brought him here, warmed him, nursed him back to health. Our people objected. A human had never been brought to this place before then, but she was the Alpha, and her word was law.”
“She saved him…”
Toross nodded. “For days she would not leave his tent. They spoke well into the night and into the morning. She was curious to know more about him, his world, where he came from. Some say her curiosity was always her biggest weakness. Others would disagree; say she had a human heart well before she gave hers to him. Eventually, most of us accepted him as her mate.”
I could almost see it in my mind. My mother, strong, powerful, falling in love with a man who didn’t belong in this world, who was not built to survive out here, and yet she couldn’t keep away from. It reminded me of the Prince, and the way he took a shine to me.
Marked (The Coldest Fae Book 3) Page 8
