by Parker Foye
Griffith nodded jerkily to Ifanwy and turned his back, though his feet were like lead. He spent so much time walking away. Ifanwy’s attention weighed on his shoulders in judgement well-deserved.
When Griffith reached the cottage, his light-jar was dead. Wardings itched in his pocket, but he hadn’t the concentration. Cast a warding incorrectly and the cottage could go up in flames.
A property had stood in that space for as long as there had been wardens on the land, and Griffith wouldn’t be the one to destroy it. Even if, he suspected, there would be no one to live here after him. The cottage remained like nothing had changed, but everything had.
* * *
Dawn found Griffith sitting before the cold fire, coat tucked tight around his body. Light filtered through shards of the broken window, illuminating dust motes. Blinking to awareness, Griffith rolled to his feet and slipped outside. Dew spotted the grass and a thin line of fire split the horizon, like an eye slowly opening.
Forget Ifanwy and Llywelyn. He’d come back for magic, hadn’t he? Tucking his hands in his pockets, he paced the lines in the opposite direction to his midnight walk. Habit made him swipe his ring against his thumb to feed the wardings, though they remained quiet. Quiet was familiar as the trails. How many times had he wandered the woods, letting his feet guide him along the lines? As a child, they’d seemed to go on for years, making his world enormous. As an adolescent, the territory became a closed fist. Hard. Confining.
Travel taught Griffith the fist had been facing outward in protection, and the world was much larger than he’d dared imagine.
With more to fear from two-legged monsters than four.
Self-indulgent with regret, Griffith took a moment before thinking to see where his feet were guiding him. When he glanced up, he grimaced. The lightning tree.
Llywelyn had named the tree with the broken bough, fancying it part of a legend. Or wanting to make their story into one. They’d spent hours playing in the clearing beneath the crooked shadow of the tree, he and Llywelyn and Daffyd. Sinking to the ground, Griffith leaned against the trunk and tipped back his head. Closing his eyes, he expelled a long breath. Drew his cold hands down his face and interlaced his fingers in prayer. But he didn’t know God well enough for a conversation. Grandmother had taken him to church at high days and holidays, more from habit than any sense of religion, while wolves had their own prayers. Griffith had found his god in wardings, in the ritual of creation, and never looked farther.
A footstep, crunching over a fallen branch, made Griffith start. He rolled to his knees, one hand slipping to the charms on his belt, squinting in the early-morning light. The arrowhead remained cold but his guard stayed up.
Offensive wardings weren’t Griffith’s forte, but the flint at his belt and wards in his pocket would buy him time. Something to distract and help him run.
“Who is it?”
When Llywelyn stepped into view, Griffith’s hands dropped, and he breathed something that might have been Llywelyn’s name. Bare-chested, Llywelyn wore only tattered remnants of trousers, like he’d fallen through brambles and they’d wanted him naked. Griffith couldn’t have faulted them. Llywelyn had grown into the promise of his frame, filling out with muscle where he’d been lean, broad-chested with powerful thighs, limbs ropey with muscle. But shadows haunted his eyes, his face gaunt as if he’d lost weight quickly. Mud had dried in the uneven tufts of his shorn hair and patterned his body like he hadn’t bathed for weeks.
Even after travelling half the continent, seeing galleries and museums until his eyes were dry from staring, Griffith had never seen anything as striking as Llywelyn ap Hywel. Never would.
“Llywelyn,” Griffith said. The name a proclamation. A prayer. “Didn’t think I’d see you again. Like this, I mean.”
Llywelyn tilted his head and took a step forward, his knee noticeably buckling. Like he wasn’t sure how to walk on two legs. Having learned from their latest encounters, Griffith remained in place despite everything in him longing to offer assistance. He waited as Llywelyn took another awkward step, and another, until he seemed to realise how human knees worked and took a handful all at once, bringing him directly in front of Griffith.
Llywelyn smelled like dirt, and too long without bathing, and storms. Griffith breathed him in.
“I’m sorry,” he said. Two words that weighed heavy as grief.
Nineteen and panicking in a park in London, his stubborn temper finally bowed to reason, Griffith had made himself a promise and held on to it for four years. His apology to Llywelyn had been a long time coming. With the words spoken, he stood straighter. Awaiting judgement.
Llywelyn bared his teeth but the motion seemed a reflex, and his mouth quickly went soft with puzzlement. He cleared his throat. It sounded like gunshots. He opened his mouth, and Griffith’s breath caught, waiting to hear Llywelyn’s voice. Sometimes he thought he’d dreamed him. Words would make Llywelyn real.
But Llywelyn didn’t speak. Instead he raised his hand to Griffith’s face, rubbing his thumb—and mud—over Griffith’s cheek, frowning like he didn’t believe what he saw. He sniffed once and surged forward to press his face into Griffith’s throat, crowding him against the lightning tree.
Scenting. Of course. Wolves needed their noses to make things real. Perhaps Llywelyn had been as surprised to see Griffith as the reverse was true. Griffith cradled Llywelyn’s shoulders, daring to touch him. To make both of them real.
He should’ve kept his hands to himself. At the first touch, Llywelyn lurched away, eyes wild, only to tilt his head and dart back in. He gifted a chaste kiss to Griffith’s cheek and retreated once more, before Griffith could react. At arms-length, Llywelyn’s chest heaved, and he stared at Griffith like he’d stepped from a dream.
Griffith knew what running looked like on Llywelyn’s face.
“Please, don’t—Llywelyn!”
He might as well have pleaded with the sun to stop rising.
Llywelyn ran. Again, he ran. And when wolves ran, none could follow. Llywelyn fled into pack territory like the hounds of Annwn were at his heels, looking to drag him to the underworld.
Cursing beneath his breath, albeit mostly at himself, Griffith touched his cheek. He remembered their last and first kiss, the day they’d parted. When Llywelyn had been the one left behind.
I suppose this is what revenge feels like.
* * *
Llywelyn sprinted through the forest, toward the hills that had once promised safety. He longed for four feet but his brain was scrambled like eggs. If he changed now, he’d be stuck. Like his mother was stuck. Reaching packlands, he scrambled through unfriendly trees to the hidden way his family preferred. He continued through dark tunnels toward the alpha’s chamber and fell to his knees in front of the fire, rolling onto his back. Breaths came short, like he’d been running his whole life. Maybe he had. The familiar scents of pack and home helped steady his breathing, though nothing could steady his heart. Not with Griffith Jones at the warden’s cottage.
Scent of fire-and-salt. Ifanwy. She toed his ribs and he blinked up at her. Taking in his expression, she snorted.
“You ignored me, then.”
“I might have. A little.”
Ifanwy folded her arms. With fire limning her, she seemed like she’d stepped from myth. A warrior of old. Scarred by claws and grief, like they all were.
“And how was it?”
Llywelyn covered his eyes with his hands. How was it? Four years and Griffith was the same and an utterly different person. A man. Llywelyn hadn’t realised how young they had been until he saw Griffith with dawn behind him. Until he’d used human eyes. Griffith was tall and beautiful, and he smelled like cedar and magic. The late Warden Jones had smelled like magic left too long in a cupboard, but it trailed Griffith like a pup at heel. Like Llywelyn once had.
And I kissed him.
“Terrible,” he said, answering Ifanwy’s question. “It was terrible.”
She lifted his hand away, her expression soft. He hadn’t seen Ifanwy be soft since spring and the RMS Titanic.
“He can’t stay. You know he can’t. The pack—”
“I know.” Llywelyn didn’t need reminding. He’d lost enough brothers. “I know. I’ll get rid of him.”
Before someone else did.
Chapter Two
Griffith scratched his face, itchy with exhaustion, and let his gaze roam across the trinkets at Aberarth’s market. He needn’t have bothered. Anything of use had been picked clean before supplies crossed the border into Wales, and what remained were for tourists and weekend hobbyists. Those longing to brush shoulders with magic but not believing in it. Meanwhile, true wardens were withering for want of magic’s return.
“Anything here for you, sir? A book, perhaps?” the stallholder asked, her southern accent out of place.
Griffith poked an inkwell, long dry. His time would be better used searching out his own warding ingredients—graveflowers and driftwood and the like—to act as loci for his craft.
“Not today, I think.” And certainly not at these prices.
At his answer, the stallholder directed her attention to more likely customers. In turn, Griffith made for the village proper. Better to find something or else the whole excursion would be a waste of time.
A dog barked as he passed.
It smells the wolves on me.
A single day and Llywelyn had burrowed beneath Griffith’s skin enough for the dog to sense. How long until the scent faded? Griffith shook his head, letting the thought roll over him like the wind blowing in from the sea and ruffling his hair.
Driftwood and graveflowers. Something to make wardings, or at least to trade with. Loci were points of focus used in warding creation, typically larger workings; some classic wardings, such as those for light, used Norse runes, but Griffith had too much appreciation for the varying meanings of language to rely on runes. Better to use a physical object. Concrete instead of abstract. Whatever he could salvage—and carry, to wherever he went next—would be of use.
Aberarth’s shore offered no driftwood, and the tide was rising, so Griffith turned his attention to graveflowers. Little blooms growing wild along the edge of ancient gravestones were the most potent; Morgan had shown Griffith the dark strength of wardings made with loci imbued with grief. Griffith would never need a compulsion warding, but growth near loss had strength. Griffith picked among the headstones with care. Touched petals and considered. Sat on his heels and tried not to think of anything at all.
He didn’t know how long the crying had been going on before he heard it. Leaving the graveflowers unpicked, he tracked the sound to the edge of the graveyard, where the stone wall had crumbled under long winters. He sat hard when he recognised the woman in the severe black dress.
“Angharad?”
The youngest Hywel, Angharad was pale and blond where the rest were dark, like they’d run out of colour for her. Last they’d spoke, Griffith had threatened to stuff Angharad’s mouth with leaves because she’d stolen the last of his grandmother’s baking. With wet red eyes and a glower, Angharad looked like the kid Griffith had known, though four years had made her a woman.
Seemed Griffith looked much the same too, since Angharad glared at him only briefly before recognition lit her face.
“Liked you better when you were gone, I did. Go away.”
Griffith got more comfortable, folding his coat around his legs. “No. What’s wrong?”
Angharad eyed him like he was a fool. Griffith felt one. At least she looked at him, spoke to him, thought enough of him to be irritated by his denseness.
“You—you’ve been back, what? A day? I heard the howls. Have you seen my brother and sister yet?” Angharad flicked her hair from her face.
Griffith tilted his head, aware of a trap closing in on him. “I’ve seen Ifanwy. Llywelyn too.”
“Well I haven’t,” she spat, eyes flashing. “Not since May.”
Six months apart when barely a handful of miles separated town and pack? Aware he trod dangerous ground—the youngest she might be, but Angharad had claws like the rest—Griffith tried to feel his way through the problem.
“And you’ve been, what, seconding another pack?”
“No.”
“Trading?” Hywel wolves had long traded coal for goods.
“No.”
“Then what? Angharad, what is it I’m missing?”
With a great sniff, Angharad tossed her head and jutted her chin. Her eyes were still red but they were hard, like Llywelyn’s had been. Like Ifanwy. Something had happened to the pack, and Griffith couldn’t read it like he used to, like their story was in a language he didn’t know.
Angharad worked her jaw and began to speak slowly. “Magic broke, it did. The boundary lines. I was in the village when—And now I can’t go back.” She scuffed her eyes with the heel of her hand, but Griffith thought the tears were frustrated. “They can’t come here and I can’t go back. Well? Are you here to fix it?”
Magic can’t break. Especially when there’s nothing there to break.
Griffith had admitted as much to himself, after his failure the previous night. There was no more magic in the earth. Whatever he’d imagined as a child, he recognised the only magic remaining came from what wardens could create with their hands, snatched from loci and centuries of learning. Fragments of magic, like begging the universe for scraps. For something to “break” the boundary lines, he would have felt an abnormality when crossing them. Yet there’d been nothing.
Dense he might be, but Griffith knew enough to bite back his first response. And his second. Finally, he shrugged, arms wide.
“I’ll try my best?” He’d ask Llywelyn what had happened. Nothing more he could do.
“You better had.”
Falling silent, Griffith touched the charms at his belt, needing their reassuring presence. He’d made each charm with his own hands, more a part of him than merely an extension of his warding skills. The arrowhead, the little wooden horse, the flint. They needed a fourth, but he wasn’t sure of the shape. The absence was acute.
“I’m to marry a boy from the village. A human.”
Griffith’s gaze darted to Angharad, eyes wide. She looked at the charms, a little dreamily.
“A human?” Four years ago, the idea would have been preposterous. Wolves might deign to trade with humans, as the Hywel wolves did with Aberarth, but they would never marry outside the pack. “Where did you even find a human?”
“He was lost.”
I’ve definitely heard this story somewhere. It hadn’t ended well for the wolf.
Griffith rubbed his face. “What did the alpha say? And Ifanwy? And—Christ, what about Daffyd? He’d been taken with that woman from the other pack and you never let him forget it.”
A Hywel cousin, Daffyd had visited for a time when they were young. He and Llywelyn had been thick as thieves, and Griffith had thrown himself into warding lore, pretending he wasn’t jealous. He’d fooled no one, but learned a lot about spellcraft. Daffyd’s romance with an “outsider” had been gossip for months.
Angharad’s dreamy expression crumpled like paper in a fist. “You don’t know. Of course you don’t. How could you?”
Griffith didn’t want to know. The hue of loss colouring pack territory was darker than his own. Fuller. A cloud brooding with storms. He’d been ignoring it. Griffith tugged his jacket closer around his body and folded his arms.
An image of Morgan, his yellow teeth flashing as he called Griffith coward.
“Tell me,” Griffith said.
Angharad wrung her dress in her hands. “Da—Daffyd died. And father.
They were travelling on the Titanic to the Council summit and—Details aren’t important. They’re dead, they are. Some of the others left, after. Without an alpha, who would stay?”
“Without an—But Ifanwy is heir. She’d be alpha. Wouldn’t she?”
Angharad swayed close, lowering her voice. “I’ll tell you a wolf secret, Warden. We fight for succession. Civilised as we fancy ourselves, with gaslights and pretty dresses, we’re fang and claw beneath. Who can Ifanwy fight? And the land won’t recognise her without blood.” She flicked her fingers. “But this is old news, this is. Like we’ll all be soon.”
Griffith’s mouth filled with a hundred questions, but Angharad cackled and shoved him backward, displaying the wolf-given strength in her lean frame, before curling against the wall. Griffith nearly cracked his head open on the damn wall, fumbling gracelessly to avoid accident. Cursing, he scrambled to his feet.
Old news. Mouth numb, he mimicked Angharad’s words like a child learning to read, following along with his finger and struggling all the while. Sounding out the notions to make them stick. His fingers clenched around his arms. Old news. Grandmother and Daffyd and Alpha Hywel. Christ.
Trembling, Griffith sketched a bow to Angharad’s curled-up body. Formality was important to wolves.
“I’m sorry, Angharad. I’m so—And thank you. If there’s anything—Thank you. Sorry.”
He didn’t think she’d reply, but Griffith had taken few steps when she shouted.
“Run the lines, Griffith Jones!”
She almost sounded like the mischievous imp whose legs weren’t long enough to follow her brother and his friends adventuring. Her voice cracked, but Griffith told himself it was the wind. The wind or the salt in the air, making his lips dry in turn.
Losing his taste for Aberarth, Griffith returned to the cottage. He walked dully, trusting his feet to know the way despite the world having formed into a new shape when he wasn’t looking. When he’d turned his back and chosen ignorance. Fuck and hell and goddamn. Griffith ran his fingers through his salt-stiff hair, tugging on the ends. The pricks of pain told him he was awake.
