by Lizzy Ford
“Do you not see I have always had to choose between everyone and you children? Between my brother and you, between my sister and you, between my own life and you?” Simon replied with heat. “Can you not appreciate what I have sacrificed to bring you to this very point?”
“I can never appreciate someone who lies to me.”
“For your own good!”
“If that is true, then I am old enough for the truth!”
Simon released a slow breath, fighting for control of his temper, and leaned back. “There were … are three of you,” he said. “There have always been three of you. Your father burnt some slave and her daughter at the stake after Tiana’s birth, because too many witnesses saw Tiana’s eyes at birth. Too many people knew the truth.”
Arthur waited, arms crossed.
“Tiana’s mother was a Ghoul. It was thought that the Ghouls, who have specific abilities Hanover’s had never possessed, would make the Hanover line stronger. If you were to be the heir, and you bred new abilities into the Hanover line by taking Tiana as your wife, you would have expanded the magic. Several generations tried this, but Edwin was the first to breed successfully with a Ghoul who made it to term before he had her murdered after Tiana’s birth,” Simon explained. “Two slaves saw Tiana after her birth, and they spoke of her Ghoulish eyes to anyone who would listen. In return, your father burnt one of them with her infant child at the stake and claimed it was the deformed child and her mother.”
Arthur sought some objection but could not find one, not when he, too, had often wondered about Tiana’s eyes. Before meeting a Ghoul weeks before, he was able to write off the strangeness of her appearance as part of her deformity. His confrontation with the Ghouls, where the spirit wolf saved him, left him uncertain how it was possible for Tiana to resemble the inhuman creatures if she were not one.
“You are saying my father slept with a Ghoul,” he stated.
“Raped is more accurate, and he was not the first Hanover to try it,” Simon said. “Rather than be pleased with Tiana’s birth, he abhorred her. Always. I think the experience of taking a Ghoul soured him on Tiana before she was born.”
Anger flared within Arthur whenever he thought not only of his sister’s treatment at their father’s hands, but how he had done little to help her.
“You said there were three,” he said. “Who else did my father rape in his attempt to produce the perfect mate for his heir?”
“A skinwalker. Her child was born around the time Tiana was. It is the reason why I helped her escape to the city. When I saw her …” Simon drifted off. “After I saw what my brother had done to our own sister, and to the creature from the forest, I could not bear the thought of another Hanover child being born to the monster my brother had become.”
Arthur’s anger vanished. The skinwalker in the pyramid’s attic loathed Hanover’s. He assumed it was because she was enslaved. How much worse was it that his father had forced her to give birth to a child?
“So you smuggled the pregnant skinwalker out and what? Made a deal with the chief of assassins?” he pressed.
“No. I was wounded in the pursuit. She disappeared, and I left the city. I did not know where she went before I saw the girl you brought to protect Tiana,” Simon said. “However, I am all but certain your father knew about Aveline.”
Arthur’s face flushed with heat. “Aveline. You knew all along who she was.”
“I did. What I could not know was what was in her heart, if she had inherited her father’s madness or her mother’s insanity. It was not until Matilda’s death that I understood her nature. She had managed to escape the Hanover and skinwalker curses and posed no danger to Tiana.”
Arthur stood and circled the chair. He leaned against it and gripped the back hard, until his knuckles felt ready to pop. He felt his uncle’s eyes on him.
“Two sisters. And I have never done anything to protect either,” Arthur said at last through clenched teeth.
“You did what you knew to do,” Simon replied. “How could you do more? You were raised to be ignorant of the world, of family ties and any duty except that of ruling one day.”
“I should have known to do more, or even who Aveline was when I first experienced a vision of her!”
“That you did experience a vision of her, and you brought her to Tiana, had a far greater impact than anything else you have ever done.”
“I found Aveline in a whorehouse and threatened to leave her there,” Arthur said. “If I had known …”
“We have all had to make sacrifices and tough choices.”
Arthur shook his head. He kept his comments quiet. His uncle could not understand how hard it was to discover how ignorant he had been his entire life. Not to know who Aveline was, not to side with Tiana against their father, not to question his father’s madness and fail to do what was just … Arthur had never considered himself a failure before now, and he had never seriously considered giving up the city to a better leader before this day.
He glanced at his uncle, who claimed to have tried to help him and Tiana. Hanover’s were poison in the well. Even their best efforts were wrong or bad or ineffective. As much as he hated to admit it, Arthur began to think he should not lead the city after all. No Hanover should.
“We do not have much time. You freeing the skinwalker will set your father’s madness in motion and place both your sisters in danger,” Simon said and stood once more.
“On that we agree,” Arthur said. “If it were not for their danger, you would be dead, Simon.”
“When this is over, you can do as you please with me. But I did my best, Arthur, whatever you think.”
Arthur said nothing. He sensed his uncle, too, was experiencing the regret of knowing he had failed, even when he did his best.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
“This is a mistake,” Diving Eagle said as they approached the outermost scouts of the village belonging to Chases Deer.
“Then stay here, and I will go,” Black Wolf snapped.
“Me, too,” the Hanover girl seconded.
The western Native did not respond. Neither did he stop walking. Rocky brought up the rear of their procession, while the Hanover girl hurried to keep pace with the Diné Native ahead of her.
One scout shouted a challenge without showing himself, though Black Wolf assessed he was in a tree ahead of them.
Diving Eagle stopped walking and responded. Seconds later, the scout beckoned them to follow him into the village.
“No magic, no transforming into forest creatures, no drawing weapons,” Diving Eagle told them all firmly. “We fetch your pet and leave.” This he addressed to Black Wolf.
No one asked where they went next, and Black Wolf suspected the Hanover girl already knew she was not being kept around as a guest. Each of them had a purpose in the vengeance Diving Eagle was determined to see through.
When they reached the village, Chases Eagle was waiting for them at the center, half a dozen burly Native warriors at her back. Her gaze was hard and settled on Black Wolf the longest before her attention shifted to Diving Eagle.
Expecting an argument, Black Wolf’s attention went past her, to the building where his spirit wolf and her pups were located.
“Come with me,” Chases Deer ordered to Diving Eagle. “You, fetch what you came for and return to this very spot.” She snapped to Black Wolf. “You two stay here.”
Black Wolf did not wait for her to change her mind and strode past the warriors, to the clinic. He entered and paused, allowing his eyes to adjust, before he walked to the bed where his guide’s body lay. Sorrow and loneliness trickled through him.
Black Wolf knelt beside the deceased wolf wrapped in a white sheet. His longtime companion, and only friend, would never speak to him again. He began to think he had never appreciated her enough during the hundred years they spent together.
He sat in contemplative silence, replaying the memory of when they had first met over and over in his mind. His guide had take
n a frightened and special little boy from a lost tribe and groomed him into the predator he was. Everything he had become, and all he had done, he owed to the spirit wolf who was more of a mother than his own had been.
After a moment alone with the wolf, the mewling sounds coming from a basket on the bed beside the wolf drew his focus from the past to the present. Black Wolf shifted to kneel beside the basket and gazed into it. The pups’ eyes and ears were opened. Their clumsy squirming, and developing bodies, would one day be replaced by the grace and beauty their mother had possessed, though he would not be around to see them transform.
He listened hard, uncertain if the pups were old enough to speak yet.
His wolf had told him what to expect, but she had never birthed pups before. One would be a spirit wolf, though which one it was, Black Wolf could not know, if it did not speak up.
He waited to hear a tiny voice in his head before reaching in to pick up two of the pups in one hand. They stilled at his touch, and their energy tickled his palm. Neither spoke. Setting them on the bed, he picked up another two and listened. More energy but no voices. He tried with the last two and concluded the spirit wolf was too young to know his or her role in the world yet.
Black Wolf replaced them in the basket and bowed his head, praying over them briefly and promising their mother he would care for them as long as he was able to, before he gathered the basket and stood. He tucked it under one arm and then carefully lifted the body of their mother under his other arm.
He left the clinic and strode into the common area, where Chases Deer and Diving Eagle argued, while the Hanover girl and assassin looked on. The girl’s gaze shifted to him as he approached.
Black Wolf handed the basket to her wordlessly then continued walking, heading towards the forest with the wolf tucked under his arm.
No one stopped him, though he felt everyone watching him. For once, he did not care. The heartbeats of those in the village pattered painfully against his brain, but nothing compared to the empty ache at his core where his spirit wolf had once been connected to him.
He chose a spot he thought his guide would appreciate: a small glen, near a cheerful stream. He gently laid her body on the ground and began to gather wood for her pyre. He used no weapons, and did not change forms, to gather, break and position logs, instead opting to honor his guide one last time by using his human physical strength to create her final resting place.
She had found him as a human, and she had often reminded him that no matter what else he became, he was always a human at heart.
Not that he had a heart. She had been his humanity, and her compassion and wisdom made up for his brute strength and power.
Black Wolf allowed his mind to wander as he concentrated on preparing a pyre worthy of his guide. He cut his hands, bruised his arms, and smashed his toes more than once by dropping logs. He persisted, resisting the urge to transform and make his duties easier. When he finished, most of the day had passed, and he was drenched with sweat.
He dropped onto the ground beside the unmoving body of his guide and rested. Withdrawing the braids from his satchel, he studied the white strands interwoven among the black ones.
He unwrapped the wolf’s body, whose marbled fur resembled his hair, then carefully stretched and wrapped the braids around her. When he was finished, he picked her up and rested her on the pyre.
He hesitated. It was harder than he had ever imagined letting go of his companion. When her body was gone, there would be no part of his friend left, no one to advise or guide him, no one to share long days and longer nights with. He gazed at her still form for a long moment, until the chill of dusk brushed his baldhead.
“We will not be separated long,” he promised his guide quietly.
Black Wolf knelt and lit the brush at the base of the pyre on fire with his flint and then stepped back. Fire spread quickly across the dried grass and up the logs until it licked at the body of his guide. He resisted the need to protect her, to take her lifeless body away and instead, forced himself back a few more steps.
He stood and watched for hours, while the flames of the pyre stretched towards the night sky and died down into embers with dawn the next morning. He ignored the wind, the chilly night air, the drizzle that began shortly before the sunrise. The skinwalker remained dutifully in place as his friend, and his hair, swirled upward into the sky, returning to the spirit realm.
The cold void inside of him was larger this morning. He began to think it would soon swallow him, that his death would not come from external forces, by from the abyss inside him.
Only when rain extinguished the embers of the fire did Black Wolf move. He gathered up his belongings slowly. Ignoring the cold spring rain, he turned away from the pyre and headed towards the gentle pulse of his pups.
The moment he set foot in the village, Chases Deer’s burly men appeared from the forest to flank him. No one interfered, and no one spoke to him. Black Wolf ignored them as he sought his destination and was not surprised to discover his three companions in a cabin surrounded by more warriors. He entered, and his escort remained outside.
Rocky was awake, tending the fire. Diving Eagle paced, and agitation rendered his features tight already. The Hanover girl, and the pups, were behind a closed door. Black Wolf glanced at it, which drew Rocky’s attention.
“Your pups are safe. Tiana’s sleeping,” Rocky said. “She told us about the vision.”
Black Wolf’s jaw clenched until it hurt. He sat beside the fire and began to pluck food from the platter on the table nearby.
“Do you understand its meaning?” Diving Eagle asked.
“Visions are what they are,” Black Wolf replied. “They are not to be interpreted except as they appear.”
“Then how can there be two versions of the future?” Rocky asked.
“The future can be changed. For reasons no one is capable of understanding, the future is split,” he replied. “It means events are occurring now that will later decide which outcome is realized.”
“It’s not chance,” Diving Eagle said and crossed his arms, frowning. “It can’t be.”
“It is never chance,” Black Wolf agreed. “You could keep the Hanover girl out of the city. That would stop both outcomes.”
The silence that met his words confirmed his hunch. Each of the other men had a reason to send the Hanover girl to the city.
Black Wolf was not the only person destined for Lost Vegas. “I need the pups,” he said to Rocky, suspecting the assassin would not allow him to enter the Hanover girl’s room.
Rocky crossed the living area and disappeared into the bedroom, reappearing a moment later with the basket. He set it down in front of Black Wolf. “I fed them an hour ago.” He indicated a bottle of milk on the table.
Black Wolf studied the pups. They were dozing again. He willed any of them to speak, but none did.
Diving Eagle’s arms slid to his sides, and his expression grew concerned. He sat near the basket and leaned over.
Black Wolf eyed him, willing to incur the Hanover girl’s wrath to protect the pups.
“Are these …” Diving Eagle stopped. He paused before speaking again. “Can they … are they special?”
“Very,” Black Wolf confirmed. “Too special for you.”
“Is this one any different from the others?” Diving Eagle pointed to one of the white pups.
“Why?”
Diving Eagle glanced at him and then leaned back. The look of consternation left his features. Rather than answer, he stood and began pacing once more.
Black Wolf studied him then the wolf he indicated. He picked up the fat puppy whose stomach bore a tiny black star birthmark. The animal was awake and calm. It said nothing to Black Wolf, though its energy tickled his hand.
Did the fact that all of the pups possessed enough energy for him to feel mean anything? His guide had said one of the pups would be like her, but she had never mentioned if it were normal for a spirit wolf to bear more than one pup.
He replaced the pup. The only brindle wolf, which appeared also to be the runt, squirmed. Black Wolf withdrew it and peered at its legs. It was one of two females, and one of its back legs was half the size it should have been. If it survived long enough to grow up, it would not be healthy, and no imperfect creature could be a spirit guide.
“This one will not make it to adulthood,” he said and replaced the basket on the cabin floor. Intent on sparing the pup the pain of trying to mature with only three good legs, Black Wolf gripped its tiny head in one hand and its body in the other, preparing to snap its neck for a merciful death.
He felt the Hanover girl’s magic graze his baldhead a split second before she smashed him into the wall of the cabin. Black Wolf was frozen in place, the pup in his hands and his body pinned to the wooden wall.
Diving Eagle whirled, and Rocky leapt to his feet.
The Hanover girl was glaring at Black Wolf from across the room. “What are you doing?” she demanded quietly.
He almost laughed. “It is weak and crippled. I plan to spare it the pain of trying to survive,” he said simply.
“Because it … she’s deformed?” she snapped. “Because she was born that way, you consider her lesser?”
“Because survival does not favor those who cannot take care of themselves.”
Anger was in the girl’s eyes – but it was her pain he felt to his core.
You are not the only deformed one here, he told her telepathically.
She glanced towards his blackened leg.
You can spare the wolf the cruel life you and I have experienced.
Neither the western Native nor the assassin seemed to know what to do. The Hanover girl approached and held out her hand.
“She spoke to me. She is mine,” she said.
“Fitting,” Black Wolf growled. “A deformed guide for a deformed girl.”
The Hanover girl’s face flared red, this time in embarrassment. She looked down and released her grip on him.
Black Wolf slid to the ground and held out the pup.
She took the brindle wolf and cradled it in her arms before walking away, to the table with the food.