by S. A. Swann
The old-timers Lankut talked about were dissatisfied by the fact that someone who, in their view, had been a German puppet was now chief of Mejdân. Ever since Uldolf had begun working in town, barely a week passed without one of these men approaching him and talking about the grand days of Reiks Radwen Seigson, mentioning the current opportunity to reclaim them. Of course, these old men often saw themselves as having some important role supporting Uldolf, should he make any claims to his rightful position. Uldolf thanked gods both Christian and Prûsan that those old men had no power base of their own to be more forceful in their suggestions.
“If ever you change your mind,” Lankut said, “remember your friends.”
“I will.” Uldolf walked through the gate wondering if Lankut was just teasing him.
“Gedim's waiting for you,” Lankut called after him.
Uldolf paused. Master Ryliko's shop squatted just inside the city gate. And when Uldolf stopped, he had already walked in far enough to see the front of the old man's shop.
His father stood outside the shop, leaning on his cane, and waved at Uldolf. “There you are.”
Uldolf walked over and set down his burden inside the doorway. “Here I am.”
“You look well.”
Uldolf nodded. “How is the farm?”
“The harvest goes well.”
“Good.”
“We miss you there.”
Uldolf nodded. “You know why.”
“Yes. I understand.” He put a hand on Uldolf s shoulder. “And you had to make your way sooner or later.”
Uldolf looked down at the leather bundle, feeling a wave of guilt. “I didn't want to force you to—”
“Look at me.”
Uldolf looked up.
“I told you, this had to happen sooner or later. I only had an independent farm because I was tied to the past, a little sliver of an estate the Order let me keep. After everything, the land doesn't seem that important anymore.”
Uldolf shook his head. Because he left—because he had to leave—Gedim had to negotiate with three neighboring farms. The three families now farmed all the land in common, sharing the crop and the labor. “It was everything you had.”
“You, Hilde, my wife—that's everything I had. Still have. The land ...” Gedim shrugged. “I know why you couldn't stay.”
Uldolf sighed. “You're not here to ask me back?”
“No. But I'm asking you to talk to her.”
“I can't do that.” Uldolf bent to pick up his bundle, and Gedim grabbed his arm.
“Yes, you can.”
“Please, don't.”
“I'm the one who carried you out of that slaughterhouse when Mejdân fell. My brother, his wife, my niece. I saw. I understand.”
“Father—”
“If you don't do it for yourself, then do it for me.”
Uldolf looked into his father's face, and realized that it was more deeply lined than he remembered. He saw a pleading look in Gedim's eyes.
Uldolf asked him, “You brought her here, didn't you?”
Gedim nodded.
“Why?”
“Because I asked him to.” Her voice came from the shadows inside the shop. Uldolf straightened up and watched as a young woman stepped out into the light. Her hair was red, except for a single white streak emerging from her temple, and she looked at him with deep green eyes.
“Would you please walk with me?” Lilly asked.
***
Uldolf followed her down the road, out the gate, and into the woods. “You seem well.”
“Your mother took good care of me,” Lilly said. She shook her head. “I didn't expect to live.”
No one expected you to, Uldolf thought. He remembered his shock when Lankut announced that she was still breathing. Even as his mother organized a wagon to move the injured away from the chaos that was the fall of Johannisburg, Uldolf kept expecting that life had fled Lilly's broken body.
But she had hung on.
She had hung on, and Burthe had insisted on taking her back home. Even though they knew what she was, and what she had done. Not only was this someone they had already taken into their home, but all of them owed their lives to her. Uldolf was silent for weeks afterward, as she lay unconscious and healing in his family's home.
When Gedim told him that he was considering easing the harvest by joining his land with the two neighboring farms, Uldolf decided to find his apprenticeship in town. He had left before Lilly had recovered enough strength to speak.
He didn't know if he left because he couldn't face her, or because he couldn't face his father. Uldolf still had trouble understanding how Gedim could reconcile her nature, and her past, more easily than he could. Gedim's loss at her hands was as deep as Uldolf s own. He had lost his brother ...
Why was it so hard to accept when Gedim said, “She was a warrior.” Was it because Uldolf could see Radwen Seigson saying the same thing? She was a warrior, son. In war, people die.
“I didn't want to drive you from your home,” she told him as they walked through the woods.
Uldolf shook his head. “My father must have told you. It was going to happen eventually.”
“But it was because of me.”
Because I didn't want to face you, or because I didn't want to face my feelings for you?
“My mother was right to take you in.”
“Even if it hurt you?”
Uldolf walked off ahead, staring up at the orange-red leaves. A chill was already in the air, and he could feel the first bite of winter when he took a deep breath. After several moments of silence, he said, “Why are you here?”
“I wanted to see this place with you, one last time.”
Uldolf lowered his gaze. He had been so wrapped up in his own discomfort that he hadn't realized where she had been leading him. There was the pool, reflecting the blazing orange canopy. There was the mossy boulder next to the creek, and there was the oak, the claw marks dried and healing.
He stared at the wounds on the oak. The marks were permanent, but the tree itself lived on, scars covered by new bark. The canopy was as broad as ever, the leaves as vibrant, the branches just as inviting for a child who wanted to climb.
“You came here to find me, didn't you?”
“I was so confused, Uldolf. I don't even know if I can put it into words. The girl you found here, she was a part of myself I had locked away. For a long time I thought she had died.”
Uldolf felt the socket where his arm used to be. For the first time he thought back to Mejdân, his first parents, and he remembered clearly without the gasping panic that had plagued him for years. Instead, his thoughts were colored only by a deep sadness.
“I fell in love with you here,” she whispered.
“I—”
“I know you can never forgive me,” Lilly said. “You gave me the happiest moments of my life, and all I've ever given you is pain.”
He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Don't, please—”
She sniffed and turned to look at Uldolf. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “I don't want you to hurt anymore. I brought you this.”
In her hand she held a silver dagger by the blade, hilt toward him. He stared at it, and for a moment the only sound was the leaves rustling above them.
“Take it,” she whispered.
***
She held the handle of the dagger toward him, her pulse thundering in her ears. She could still see the anger in his face, the grief and loss etched there.
He took the dagger from her, holding the handle so the blade glittered between them. She steeled herself, drawing herself upright and facing him. Uldolf deserved this, and she deserved to atone for what she had done—for what she had done to everyone, but to him most of all.
Besides, she no longer wanted a life that didn't include him.
The blade shook in his hand, and she stared at the wicked edge. She wanted to close her eyes as he drew back the weapon, but she had spent the
last
eight years turning away from her life, turning away from what she had done to him. She would not do that now. She refused to allow herself to flinch from her fate as Uldolf thrust with the dagger.
He is not a brutal man, she thought as the blade slashed forward. He will make it quick.
But he didn't swing it anywhere near her, he swung it over his head and, to her astonishment, he let it go. It tumbled through the air in a lopsided spin over the lake. She watched it twist in the air, arc downward, and finally cut into the water with a splash.
Ripples tore through the mirror surface of the water, breaking everything into fragments. She stared at the ripples, not daring to breathe.
She felt his hand on her shoulder, spinning her around to face him.
“You think I want that?” he shouted at her.
“U-Ulfie?”
“I thought you were dead! Because of me! For a month, I woke every day afraid that Mother would tell me you had slipped away during the night.” He shook her. “I don't want to lose anyone else!”
Lilly stared at him dumbstruck.
“It has been eight years, and I can only now think about what happened without crumbling under the grief—I keep asking myself how could I forgive anyone that?”
“I am so sorry, Ulfie.” She reached up and touched his cheek.
“And ...” his voice lowered to almost a whisper, “how can I repay you? For Gedim, Burthe, Hilde?” He reached up and took her hand in his own. “It's as if the gods, in their cruelty, decided to settle accounts with equal measure of flesh and bone.”
He bent down and, very tenderly, kissed her.
Lilly embraced him, pulling her to him, her heart racing.
He stroked her hair and whispered, “I still love you.”
“B-but you left,” Lilly whispered.
He pulled away from her and shook his head. “I didn't want to lose you.” Lilly opened her mouth and Uldolf laid a finger on it.
“You survived. I convinced myself that was enough. But I didn't think I could look at you and not see past the thing that tore my life apart. I didn't believe I was strong enough to love you, as wounded as I was.”
As we both were, Lilly thought.
Uldolf lowered his hand and walked over to the edge of the water. The ripples had finally ebbed, and the surface was as smooth and as motionless as a stone. Lilly walked up next to him and saw their reflections in the water.
Uldolf muttered something and Lilly felt as if her heart had fallen out of her chest. Her legs suddenly felt weak, and it was hard for her to breathe. She wasn't sure if she had heard him correctly.
“What did you say?” she asked him.
***
When he had looked into her eyes as she handed him the dagger, he had found the strength. She had punished herself enough. She had nearly perished to save his present family, and she had still stood before him offering her life.
Standing next to her, staring into the still water, Uldolf spoke the three hardest words he had ever had to say. “I forgive you.” She grabbed him, turning him to face her. She was shaking her head, her intense green eyes shiny and wide with disbelief. “What did you say?”
“I forgive you.” The second time, it was easier to say, especially when he saw the weight lift off of her face. With it, he felt a weight lift off his own heart.
He pulled her close and said it again. “I forgive you.”
***
For so long she had run away from the past, run away from what she was, what she had been, that it was inconceivable that anyone could care for her, love her. Even her master had turned from her in the end.
But Uldolf held her now. After everything, he accepted her. After everything, he loved her.
He gave her something she could never have asked him for. Hope.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
According to the author, “I went to college at Cleveland State University to study mechanical engineering, but I dropped out when I sold my first novel. Since then, I've had a variety of day jobs including working as a lab assistant, doing cost accounting, managing health benefits for retired steelworkers, and most recently managing a database at a large child welfare agency. In the same time I've written almost twenty novels under various names, of which I think Wolfbreed is my best work.”
S. A. Swann grew up and still lives in northeastern Ohio, along with three cats, two dogs, a pair of goats, a horse, and one overworked spouse.
Lilly lived a life of lies,
hiding her wolfbreed nature from those she loved.
But what if you were wolfbreed
and didn't even know it...
In 1343, Poland is a newly reunited kingdom enjoying a tenuously brokered peace with the monastic state in conquered Prussia. Maria, a young woman of low station, lives a quiet life, except for the unwanted advances of a crude soldier and her father's frantic insistence that she never remove the silver cross that hangs around her neck.
But Maria's blood holds a terrible secret, one that will leave her torn between the injured Teutonic knight she's caring for and the savage male wolfbreed who is the cause of the knight's wounds.
A secret that will change her life forever.
Make sure to read the next WOLFBREED novel
WOLF'S CROSS
from S. A. Swann
A BALLANTINE SPECTRA BOOK
FALL 2010
