Captive Heart

by Phoenix Sullivan

  It was the wolf’s jealousy I knew that kept the images so obsessively in my head, that kept them escalating my emotions till by late afternoon I was nearly blind with the seeing of them and with the wolf’s great anger coursing through me.

  That we had recently passed from the Inde Lands that Persant ruled into the Red Lands of the Red Knight could be no coincidence.

  Nimue was near. And she knew the ugly triggers of our minds.

  Chapter 29

  Gareth

  It was a joyless camp we made that evening. Because it was easy, I blamed Nimue for turning what should have been eager anticipation for another night together into a long stretch of silence and mistrust and jealousies to be endured.

  Lyn seemed mostly reserved and highly suspicious. I caught her checking out Marrok and me on the ride, casting a sideways eye at us as though we had purposefully abandoned her to her fate the past night so we could entertain Persant’s twins with impunity.

  True or not, I resented her for the thoughts I ascribed to her. Almost as much as I resented Marrok for his actions, and for his coolness after. How could I be endeared to one who showed so little remorse?

  Those thoughts were wicked enough, eating away as they did at our trust and bond. But what consequence did they hold for our quest? Yesterday I was prepared to trust my life to Marrok. Could I do the same tomorrow, facing down the doubled and re-doubled strength of the Red Knight and the callous magics of Nimue? Could I believe he and Lyn still watched my back?

  “Should we talk about this?” Lyn asked.

  A glare from Marrok was his only answer.

  “To what end?” I wanted to know. I, the courteous and sensible one, willing to forgive—unwilling to give them fair trial but quite willing to condemn them for my same trespasses. I knew how irrational that was. Knew the rabbit hole I’d gone down and couldn’t back my way out of now. I knew that yes, we should talk, share all just as Persant’s close family had. But instead I wrapped my resentment about me tighter still.

  As tightly as the dark closed around us when the fire fell into ash and the red glow of its dying embers reminded me of the glint of flame I sometimes saw in Marrok’s eyes. The bloated moon rose above the treetops. From somewhere nearby a wolf howled.

  I felt more than saw Marrok lift his head at the sound.

  One of the horses snorted.

  There were always wolves in the woods. It was the worse-than-wolves that sometimes prowled the night that concerned me more. For them I always slept with sword at hand.

  A mare whinnied. Then one of the stallions bugled. Before its echo faded, Marrok had gained his feet, the moonlight picking out his tense stance and the alert tilt to his head.

  “Lyn.” His tone was crisp in the dark. “What are they?”

  My eyes narrowed.

  “Wolves,” she said after a moment.

  Of course they were wolves.

  “Not kin?”

  “I don’t think so. I would feel their magic if they were.”

  Magic. That I understood. “You think Nimue has them ‘thralled?”

  “Enthralled?” Lyn’s voice was hesitant, as if that had not been her line of thought at all.

  “Enthralled!” Marrok repeated. “Of course.” The revelation sparked relief in him, something I had not expected. What about wolves could make them more dangerous than Nimue controlling their beast minds? And why did Marrok and Lyn both know what that thing was and I had no inkling of what they spoke?

  What more of wolves…? What—

  I shivered at the cradle tales that came unbidden. Of were-beasts that prowled on men. Hulking creatures half-man, half-wolf that mothers and fathers wove tales about to frighten children into obedience. Tales that none but children or the mad would truly believe.

  Surely Marrok and Lyn meant something else. Something fae.

  One of the wolves gave throat, joined by another, then another, till the pack—not a quarter league away—was in full song.

  Nervous, the horses snorted and pranced at the ends of their tethers. In my tunic only, I slipped on my boots, grabbed up my sword, and went to them to calm them.

  “There’s game aplenty,” I soothed, patting necks and flanks. “No wolf has reason to attack here. They’ll be gone soon enough and you’ll be feeling foolish for your fears.”

  The horses, however, didn’t seem any more convinced than I. Wolves were common enough in the woods at night. But these were wolves in the Red Lands. And Nimue was nearby.

  The plaintive howls drew closer, louder, the horses more nervous yet. Then all at once the singing trailed away.

  “See?” I chided the horses, although the panicked whites of their eyes still gleamed in the starlight.

  “No,” Marrok said, standing between me and Lyn, in his tunic only too, but bootless and swordless in the clearing. “They’re coming.”

  His voice trembled. Not with fear but with…anticipation…yearning…lust.

  Marrok’s horse bucked, kicking out in terror. I danced away from the flailing hooves that would protect them from snapping jaws better than any defense I could devise.

  “To your sword!” I shouted at Marrok, brandishing mine at the unseen wolves as I backed toward him. By his blanket, I saw Lyn in her shift pick up Marrok’s blade, freeing its sheath from its blade with a quick jerk.

  Marrok still did not move.

  When I reached him I laid my free hand on his shoulder in concern. Swift and unexpected he turned on me with an animal snarl. He met my eyes in the moonlight, one moment of lucid thought in them before he was completely lost to madness, stripping his tunic away, naked and weaponless before me.

  I grabbed for him, to hold him safe in the circle of my blade, but with viper-quickness he eluded me. I lunged for him again, and suddenly he was…

  Gone.

  But…not gone.

  I fell to my knees in disbelief, astonishment.

  He lifted his lip and snarled at me, then turned to face the pack of wolves that now approached. He was a little larger than them, and a shade darker, perhaps, but in all other aspects, he appeared as much a wolf as they.

  I was still trying to wrap my mind around it all when the wolves, as one, charged.

  “’Ware!” I cried out to Lyn as I raised my blade, determined to let none by, with no plan for how to make good on it.

  Then Marrok sprang away from my side, away from my blade, away from safety. Right into the very teeth of the wolves he sprang, launching into the one foremost. They met in a frenzy of snarls and snapping jaws, tumbling and rolling, clawing, trailing strands of moonlit drool in their wake.

  Others in the pack swarmed by, wary of the horses’ nervous hooves, two of them arrowing toward me, and the third—

  “Lyn!” I bellowed, but my cry was lost in the need to defend my own flesh from the ravaging wolves. With nothing but my sword and tunic between them and me, I beat back one, catching it over the thick hackles of its shoulder, allowing the other to charge inside my guard where the blade became more a hamper than a boon.

  Teeth raked across my outer thigh, rending tunic and flesh in their path. I slammed the hilt of my sword into that offending jaw and heard bone break. With a yelp, the wolf bitch fell back, leaving a split instant for her bloody mate to spring.

  Shunning my sword arm, he came for my throat. I tried to block him with my arm, clinging still to the useless blade as the wolf lunged into me. Grabbing the fur at his neck with my left hand, I held the snarling, eager jaws a breath away from my naked throat.

  When he twisted, his weight threatened my grip, and I had no choice but to loose it or fall with him. Letting go wasn’t an option.

  We hit the lea together, knocked into the grass where my brute mass was enough to overpower him and wrestle him down. Knees on his chest and arm locked across his throat, I wished for the hunting knife by the fire instead of the yard of steel that was never made for this kind of slaughter.

  At the corner of my sight the wolf bitch watche
d, head hanging low between her paws, nose crinkled, mouth wide where she could no longer close it, blood and spittle dripping from her tongue.

  For a breath my heart bled. I held her mate’s life in my hands and somehow she knew. She and he who had been compelled to attack as no sane wolf would. Just as Persant’s daughters had been compelled to mate. Daughters, sons, wolves, us—we were all innocents in whatever game Nimue played.

  And alive, we all remained weapons yet.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, even as I slid the blade between her mate’s ribs and into his heart, that beat once, twice, then no more as I yanked the blade away.

  I caught the wolf bitch as she tucked tail and turned to flee. A wolf without means to catch and crush her pray would be dead of starvation within the month. A tortuous, slow and ignoble death. A lonely death.

  I could give her better.

  When she fell, her eyes were on her mate.

  I whirled to find Lyn.

  Relief caught in my throat when I saw she stood yet, her shift ghosting about her in the moonlight, dark stains spoiling its hem as they spoiled the white coat of the wolf sprawled at her feet.

  I knew the look of guilt about her, but there was no remorse in the hand that held the blade.

  She froze as I at the renewed flurry of snarls and yelps behind me. Then she was running on bare feet toward the fray, and I was hard-pressed to get there before her.

  One wolf lay dead, another mortally injured. The other two were locked at each other’s throats, neither giving ground as they reared and fell and rolled together in a fury of blood and fur.

  Clouds scuttled across the moon, darkening sight. One of the wolves was Marrok…only—

  Only I couldn’t be sure which one.

  Chapter 30

  Gareth

  My arm, hard and unwavering, blocked Lyn’s frantic advance. “Hold!” I insisted. “Marrok—” How to even begin to explain?

  “I know.” She struggled against my grip.

  “No! Listen. That’s Marrok.” I stabbed a finger at the brawling wolves. “One of them. One of the wolves.”

  She twisted against me. “Yes, I know. Now help him!”

  It was her exasperation that got through to me. This was the secret they shared. I nodded. “Stay back. Stay safe.”

  The clouds parted as I circled the wolves; moonlight glinted on the whites of their eyes. Ears flattened, lips curled back and growling intimidation at one another they gripped each other’s necks in iron jaws that wouldn’t loosen now, I suspected, until one of them was dead.

  Which one? In the dark, locked together… I had only seen Marrok’s wolf for a moment. And whatever size advantage he’d had over the rest of the pack, the pack leader he wrestled with now seemed to meet him shoulder-to-shoulder in the sprawl of the fight.

  Panic filled me. How could I not tell apart the man whose body I had worshiped and whose heart I had adored from a common wolf?

  “Marrok’s tail ends in grey. Do you see?” Lyn, at my hesitation, had come up beside me.

  “Yes!” The fringe of grey hair that haloed the brush of his tail was clear. As was the blood splattered across his flanks, his chest, his legs. I sucked in breath at sight of that blood. But I knew him now. And I would never forget.

  The pack leader swung his hips, leveraging Marrok between us as I circled. As I drew closer, I could see Marrok weakening, hear his labored breathing.

  “We’re here, Marrok,” I assured him, using his name so he’d know I was privy to his secret. Wondering then even if he knew his name. Was it Marrok within that form, or just some beast? I could sort that later. After he was safe. After the deathlock on his throat was eased and his hurts staunched. After, we had much to discuss. “Hold him.”

  Marrok threw his brawn against the pack leader, halting his sidelong dance. Just as two wolves together could bring down a deer with little effort, the pack leader stood no chance against both Marrok and me. He might have fled knowing he was trapped. Maybe he knew his pack was dead, that he had already lost the things that made a life—any life—worth living. Maybe it was only nature he bowed to now that cursed him to stay and give battle even in the face of certain defeat.

  Whichever case, I saw the moment his great heart accepted what would come and he knew there was no turning back. He never flinched as my blade slid between his ribs.

  I had to pry the wolf’s jaws from Marrok’s neck. Blood and fur tangled in his teeth.

  Once loose, Marrok stumbled before he collapsed, and Lyn was there to catch his fall, to soothe his hurts. My heart pressed me to go to him, to comfort him as Lyn did. But to touch him—to touch that wolf when what I wanted was to cradle Marrok, my Marrok, in my arms and feel the hard, reassuring strength of him, no wolf, against me…

  I crossed to the mortally injured wolf-bitch who was beyond knowing anything around her anyway, and separated her head from her shoulders with one quick swing. There was as much anger as mercy in that blow. Not anger toward the wolf, but toward Nimue, toward being forced to kill these wolves to keep my friends alive. Toward Marrok for being a thing I could not bring myself to name. And toward Lyn for holding the trust of that secret and not me.

  I checked the other wolf Marrok had killed, not to ensure it was dead but simply to stall for time.

  “I need your help.” The fear in Lyn’s voice as she called across to me melted my anger like a hot knife through butter.

  I was back by their sides in a breathspace.

  “I need bandaging.” Her hands were covered in blood. Marrok’s blood. I ran back to the fire for the hunting knife and rummaged the packs for soft garb to rend.

  Lyn was near to tears when I returned. “His fur’s so thick and it’s so dark. I’m not sure I can find all his wounds. And if I bind them now, what if he shifts? Will the binding strangle him, or fall away completely?”

  “What harm to him if he shifts back now?” I asked. Because I couldn’t bear to see him in this form. “How can we make him be a man again?” I gripped her wrist. “Be Marrok?”

  She shook away my hand. “He is Marrok.” Then she shook her head. “I’m sorry. I want the man back too. But I only knew he was cursed. I know nothing more of werewolves than you.”

  “I won’t have him die a wolf.” My voice was grim.

  That made her smile a little. “I don’t think his hurts are mortal. Not if we can tend him. Prevent contagion. And something of werewolf lore pricks at my memory—that they heal faster than mortal men. They do seem to recover faster in other ways.” She blushed.

  As did I, remembering my envy at how much quicker Marrok always seemed to be to rouse.

  “But I still have to staunch his wounds.”

  “Marrok!” I spoke sharply into the wolf’s ear and was rewarded with a twitch and a sneer. “You’ve played at wolf long enough. It’s time to be a man again.”

  He opened his eyes, and the silliness I’d felt at chastising a wolf vanished. Those might have been dark wolf eyes that opened, but it was Marrok’s soul that stared back at me.

  “God’s bane!” I shouted at him. “You’re a man, not this thing you’ve become. Be a man, for pity’s sake! Be a man—for my sake.” My voice broke on a sob. “Because I-I don’t think I can love you like this. And I don’t want to—not—love you.”

  Bending my head over him, I closed my tear-filled eyes. Love. I had said it. I had meant it. But could I still love Marrok now?

  The hand on my cheek brushed a tear away. “I don’t want to—not—love you, either.” Marrok’s voice was weak.

  I opened my eyes.

  Marrok, son of Adam, lay before me in all his bloody, naked splendor. My heart welled at the sight, and I knew—knew—I loved him still. How could I not? How could I have doubted?

  I fell over him, locking my lips to his, not caring about the wolf blood on them. He returned my kiss first with surprise, then with ardor, then with pain.

  Lyn’s strong hands on my shoulders pulled me away. “Enough
of that. It’s breath and binding he needs now.” Though that didn’t stop her from brushing her lips across those sensitive planes where mine had just left.

  Together we cleaned him up and bound him, swaddling his neck where the pack leader had gripped his throat and held him.

  “You’ll have scars there,” Lyn told him.

  “Just more to count when we’re in bed,” Marrok said.

  “Let’s make that soon.” But for now, I held them in my arms, chaste and safe, until the sun rose.

  Chapter 31

  Lyn

  By morning light, Marrok’s wounds, looked raw and rude, but already his lesser scratches were nearly healed. Gareth’s patches of flayed skin would likely sting far longer than Marrok’s.

  Thankful beyond measure I was that neither had been hurt worse, but a forced delay now when we were so close to Nessie? Merlin and Persant had told me I needed both champions to win back my sister, but I had seen Gareth fight—what if he was enough alone?

  I commanded Gareth yet. If I ordered, he would ride away with me and leave Marrok here. To mend, I could tell him and tell myself. But thought of Nimue sending more thieves or villeins or wolves to cut Marrok down in his sleep or even awake and too weak to defend himself…

  If I sent Gareth from Marrok’s side and Marrok were to die, Gareth would surely be lost to me in grief and resentment. And for what gain, assuming he could win through alone? Nessie was no doubt broken by now. Whatever Ironside intended for her he would already have done. Might still be doing, true, but it was as Merlin had said. She would still be alive whenever I found her. Ironside would see to that. Another day would not change it.

  Sweet Nessie, I grieved, stay just a bit longer within whatever green fields and happy times your mind devises. God keep you—we’ll be there soonest.