“Do you think he can win?” Her fingers clenched into fists, her nails digging into her palms.
The length of time it took Henry to answer gave her his true reply. He began, “He is out of practice, my lady. But there was a time—”
“Please!” She calmed her voice. “I thank you for all you’ve done so far, and the risk you have taken. But you must tell me the truth, as he would not.”
“His death is certain.”
She’d thought hearing it would soften the blow, take away the uncertain ache from her mind. Instead, it unleashed a fresh wave of tears. Henry comforted her as best he could, one stiff arm at her back. But he was not Raf. It was Raf she must have to comfort her, alive and whole.
He stayed with her while she cried, until she sank down on the cot and escaped into sleep. She did not know how long she’d drifted in dark, dreamless succor, but she woke to a struggle on the stairs. She sat up, her hand clenching her ruined kirtle at her breast. Had Raf come for her?
But the struggle was only two servants wrestling a straw mattress up the narrow stairs, Henry shouting guidance to them from the top.
“My lady,” he said with a bow when he noticed she had woken. “I have a fresh pallet for the bed, and a bath is to come, a maid and new clothes with it. Roderick has decreed that you will not turn up at the tribunal looking a pauper.”
Days ago, she might have delighted at the promise of a bath and something pretty. Now, they were hollow tokens from a man intent on destroying her. She could only nod her thanks.
“We’ll need linens, as well. This woman is the future lady of this castle, and I will not see her rotting up here like a prisoner,” Henry called after the men when they had placed the mattress upon the bed and trooped back down the steep tower stairs. Then, to her, he bowed. “My lady, I must beg your forgiveness. I have to leave you. Raf wishes my help in getting his sword arm ready, as much as it can before the contest.”
Aurelia frowned in confusion. “They will not fight as wolves?”
“As wolf-men,” Henry corrected her. “Fights such as these usually begin as simple combat, with sword and shield. Only when one is disarmed does he take wolf form.”
She went to the window and looked down into the yard, leaning on the narrow stone ledge for what seemed hours in the hopes of catching a glimpse of Raf. But of course, he would not train in the open where he could be mocked. For a man who claimed little pride, he had enough of it.
Cold anger bunched its fist in her chest. He would sacrifice himself for honor? Honor, among these creatures?
She thought of what Henry had told her about his mother. Would she have come to the same end? She could not imagine that the Free Wolves of York were so barbaric. She could not imagine the fearsome Scottish could be so barbaric, even. Only the strong and ruthless could survive here. There seemed no soil for tenderness to grow. If she had not loved Raf, she would not have fared any better coming here.
“Do you like the view, lady?”
Her back stiffened. The voice she would remember forever, though she had heard it so little, brought bile to the backs of her teeth. “You are supposed to keep away.”
“And Henry is supposed to keep watch over you.” Roderick’s boots brushed the hem of her skirt behind her. He brushed her tangled hair away from her neck and placed a hand on the bare skin beside her collar. “Where is your knight protector?”
“Helping my true husband prepare to kill you,” she seethed. What harm could come to her? Would he strike her again? Let him. It would not match the pain she had endured thus far.
“Your true husband? He has plucked you, then?” Roderick chuckled at that. His other arm came around her, groped between her thighs through her filthy chemise. She pressed her legs together and pushed at his arm, but he withstood easily enough her attempts to fight him off. “I would never have thought it. Didn’t they take his manhood when they took his leg?”
She shoved his arm away finally, her blood a roar of indignation in her ears. “He will take yours. I’ll have it dried and salted like a fish, and I’ll keep it as a trophy!”
He leaned his mouth close to her ear, his hand tightening on her throat slowly. What breath she could manage brought tears to her eyes, and stars danced in her vision. He hissed, “You may think you are clever, saying such things to me. You’ll regret them. I can make things much worse.”
Of that, she had no doubt. Her body fought itself for the little breath that remained in her. When he released her to gasp and collapse against the moldering wall, a newfound appreciation for life flooded her. She trembled, remembering the dagger Henry had given her. But she dared not attack him now. Exhausted by travel, tears, and filth, she had no chance of overpowering him.
“You’ll learn your place among us,” he said confidently. “You’ll bear me some half-man sons and I’ll spend your father’s money. In time, you’ll come to accept it.”
In time, you will be dead. But she didn’t feel it the way she had felt it before, with surety and despair. Her nurse had always scolded her for her strong will, and that will did not serve her now, either. She wanted to live, would perhaps not have the strength to see her plan through to the end, even if the most dire should occur.
Roderick smiled, seemingly satisfied that he had cowed her. She watched him go, then turned back to the window. She spied Henry crossing the courtyard, and after him, limping on his iron leg, Raf.
He looked up. Her heartbeat caught, and she wondered if he could see her. The walls were too thick and too high, she knew, but he looked up, anyway. His face was grim as his eyes searched for her. He did not slow his walk, and followed Henry out of her view.
They would live. Both of them. She would see it done.
Henry returned as the sun set, with a trencher of meat and gravy for her. She fell upon it like a starved dog, not caring that Henry watched in mingled shock and amusement. A serving maid came with a clean shift for her to wear abed, and blankets to warm her. She went to sleep, appreciating the clean smell of the fresh straw, despite her own uncleanliness. Her dreams were feverish, visions of blood and the wolf that had plagued her. But now the wolf was Roderick, and he ripped pieces from her as she stumbled through the forest, screaming for Raf.
If she had cried out or whimpered in her sleep, Henry did not say so from the uncomfortable cot beside the cold wall. He rose the next day and saw her fed, then broke his fast in the hall and sparred with Raf for much of the day. Aurelia’s world had been reduced to her tower cell and the narrow slit of courtyard she viewed from the window. Though she sat for hours, she did not see Raf again.
It was after dark when Henry returned and brought her food, apologizing in a distracted way before running off again. Later, servants came with a wooden tub and placed it in the center of the room, but, despite the darkness below, Aurelia returned to the window. Something was happening in the castle. Isolated as she was, she could feel the tension in the very air. At first, she’d thought it was merely her anxiety at waiting, imprisoned. When the light of extra torches cast the courtyard in an angry orange haze, her suspicions were confirmed.
Among the flickering torches she spied Roderick, turned out in splendid black armor and cape. Beside him stood Raf, almost unrecognizable in similar dress. Their father stood beside them, his red cloak flowing like blood from his shoulders.
Would that it were his blood, spewing from his neck and onto the ground.
There was a fearful trampling sound, heard even in the tall tower, and Aurelia craned her neck futilely, trying to view the portcullis that now opened with the grinding of heavy chains.
Huge black wolves, larger than Aurelia had ever seen, thundered into the courtyard. Odd swaths of fabric flopped from their backs, their use becoming apparent as they smoothly took the shape of men, the cloth falling into the shape of long, hooded cloaks that covered them from their heads and pooled upon the ground. Even Lord Canis appeared uneasy in their presence, and the men in the yard scrabbled to bow to the wol
ves, who strode with silent authority toward the hall. This time, Aurelia leaned against the other side of the window, to watch Raf for as far as she could as he, Roderick, and Lord Canis followed the men, the rest of the assembly rooted to their places in the courtyard.
“My lady?”
She turned sharply, a startled cry upon her lips, to see that all the while she had been intent on the courtyard, servants had been lugging water up the stairs, and such was her fixation upon Raf that she had not heard them.
Chapter Ten
Raf glanced up at the tower, then cursed himself for it. Roderick had seen, and smirked as they entered the great hall, behind the tribunal.
“Do you see the trouble you create for me?” Lord Canis scolded them, his voice low as they stood before the head table in the hall. The lord of the castle would not sit there tonight, not so long as the tribunal stayed.
The men of the tribunal sat, their faces shadowed always by their cloaks, though a beard or the tip of a nose showed under some, destroying the illusion of the tribunal as faceless specters.
The rest of the wolves remained outside. Without the normal crowd inside of it, the great hall seemed draftier than usual. The night had been cold. He wondered how Aurelia had fared during the night in the ruined tower.
“Lord Canis, you have summoned us?” The leader of the tribunal began the traditional exchange, his long chin and longer gray beard moving ominously below the darkness of his hood.
“I submit to your will,” Lord Canis replied, and for the first time in his life, Raf saw his father drop his head in supplication to another wolf. Resuming his regal posture, Canis continued, “My sons have become entangled in a mating dispute. My eldest seeks the bride promised to the younger.”
“This is of no concern to us,” another hooded man answered. “This is to be decided in blood.”
“My eldest is maimed,” Canis explained. “He cannot inherit. I have named my youngest my heir. Should he die, the future of my line would fall to a cripple.”
“It is his right,” the leader answered. “The eldest may regain his claim to his birthright.”
“I don’t want it,” Raf said without thinking. To speak to the tribunal without invitation was a grave transgression. To argue with them, unconscionable.
Roderick, ever one to stand on ceremony, made a noise of disbelief. “When I thought you could not be more pathetic, brother, you lower my expectations even further.”
“Quiet, fools!” The red of his father’s face nearly matched his cape.
Now that he had already broken the sacred peace, Raf found words coming to him much easier. “I throw myself upon the wisdom of the tribunal. I ask only for the right to this woman. I forsake her dowry, and any claim to inheritance I have, but ask that I may keep my mother’s house, which her father bestowed upon her first born child. I will fight my brother if must, but I see no reason that this cannot be resolved equitably between us.”
“You fucked my bride,” Roderick seethed, fury ablaze on every feature. This was the storm Raf had feared would arise. In front of the other wolves, Roderick had played amusement, as though this were a clever jape. If he hadn’t, he would have shown his weakness. In private, before the tribunal, he was free to unleash all of his venom upon his brother. “You presumed to take something of mine that you were not entitled to. I will not bear it.”
“You will do as the tribunal commands!” Lord Canis barked, turning uncharacteristically nervous eyes to the cloaked figures. “My apologies, my lords.”
The leader did not acknowledge Canis’s contrition. “If such a grave injustice has been struck against your younger son, he must defend his honor within the pack. But a lame wolf must never hold the lives of others in his grasp. We shall see this battle. Should the elder survive, Lord Canis shall grant him the woman and the land he asks for. Lord Canis is granted the power of this tribunal to name any successor of his choosing, if he be a wolf that will honor the pack.”
And not a worthless cripple, Raf silently added. In the past, he would have pathetically agreed with them. Now that he had been awakened to the truth of the kind of men he shared blood with, he knew that it was not he who was unworthy of the pack. He would not stoop to lead them.
“Your will shall be obeyed,” Lord Canis said with a deep bow.
The tribunal rose and filed toward the stairs. They would not ask to be shown to their quarters. No matter which castle they slept in, they did so in the lord’s chamber. They belonged to no pack, but to wolves throughout England, and they sat higher than any pack leader. Wise though they claimed to be, Raf thought them as useless as his father’s pack.
“How will you fare on your own, dear brother, when I am gone?” Roderick laughed. “Living as lord of the manor at Havenshire, with its pathetic lands and sickly sheep?”
“Silence!” Lord Canis had gone from blood red to bone white in his fury. He lifted his arm and struck his youngest son across the jaw. An explosion of blood flew from Roderick’s mouth, and he wiped it gingerly with the back of his hand, chuckling under his breath though his eyes squinted in pain.
“Your behavior profaned the proceedings here. I should have asked them for the right to rename my heir regardless of the results of this mockery of an honor fight.” His red cape swirling behind him like a tide of anger crashing about his ankles, Lord Canis paced the hall. “Raf. Go to your woman, while she is still yours.”
“You can’t be serious.” Roderick spat a mouthful of blood onto the rushes and grimaced.
Their father rounded on them, eyes blazing. “Your brother conducted himself as a man. A sniveling, crippled man, but he did not behave as a spoiled child. I see fit to reward him with your bride for the night.”
“Father,” Raf began to argue, thinking of Roderick’s threats and the punishment he would surely mete out should Raf lose.
But now, it did not seem to him that he would be certain to fail. His time spent with Henry had not provided a miracle, but Raf had found, to his surprise, that it was not a miracle he’d need at all. As though the iron leg had become a part of him in the intervening years, he’d been merely out of practice, not out of balance, as he had when he’d first tried to fight after the injury. He no longer feared he was marching to his certain death, though he did not believe with surety that he could not fail.
And for that, he would let himself take the blessing his father had bestowed upon him. That his father had only been capable of kindness out of anger was not lost on him.
The stairs curled inside the tower like a serpent, and he struggled, his body growing more weary with each step. Perhaps this was what his father had planned, to weaken his body so that Roderick’s victory was assured. Father would already see the outcome of the fight as fact. It would never occur to him to sabotage his crippled son.
By the time he reached the door, he knew she must have heard him. His iron leg scraped every stone. Yet she had not come to him. When he found her, she sat at the end of the bed, her hand wrapped around one cracked wooden post. She did not look at him, and a tear slid down her cheek.
“You should not have come,” she whispered, and he saw then that her hair was wet, and she trembled in her thin shift. “Your brother will kill you. Your father will kill you. I would have you in the world for as long as I can.”
He thought to tell her that he’d been granted a boon, that no one would punish him for his presence, but those excuses came from the vein of self pity that Raf would no longer allow to bleed into his mind. He went to her, lifted her up with one arm, and bent his head to capture her mouth.
She sobbed as their lips touched, her arms coming up to push him away, but she did not resist him, opening her mouth beneath his in a sob of relief. He shared her feeling, for he, too, felt as though they’d been separated for centuries, not days. The unpleasantness of the past and the uncertainty of the future disappeared in their kiss, and she wrapped her arms around his head, drawing her down to him.
He broke free and se
ttled her on the bed. “Take this off,” he rasped, balling the hem of the garment in his hands. She eagerly complied, baring herself to his gaze, then, remembering her modesty, covered her breasts with her arm and blushed.
He dropped beside her, and she laughed nervously, scooting a short bit away, so they were no longer touching. He smiled up at her. “Have you forgotten what we shared on our journey?”
She shook her head. “I have not. But it is different, now.”
“Because you fear for me? Pity me?” He stroked his fingertips from her knee to her hip, and heard her sharp intake of breath. “I would not waste our time on pity.”
She shivered as his fingers repeated their pattern, skimming over the gooseflesh that had raised. In mock concern he said, “You’re cold. Allow me to warm you.”
Her skin was sweet and fragrant from the rose oil they’d put in her bath. As he pulled her down to him, coaxing one thigh over his head, she wriggled in protest, but he did not let her go, planting a kiss on the soft, pale flesh on the inside of her leg. All around him was the scent of roses, and her cunt, already glistening with anticipation despite her shyness. He held her hips tight as she squirmed, and despite her murmured protestations, she slid closer to his mouth. When he delved his tongue into the furrow of her cunny, she bucked wildly, holding his head with fingers like talons digging into his hair.
He lay on his back, pulling her with him to straddle his head with her knees, burying his face in her soft blonde curls, tasting her at his leisure. When he plunged his tongue inside of her, she whimpered. When he teased the tight bud of her desire, she screamed. Hot moisture slicked his cheeks, the mingling of his breath and mouth and her own slippery juices. Like eating a ripe plum, she spilled down his chin, sticky and sweet. He sucked at her, swirling his tongue around the knot of flesh that would bring her to her pleasure, the curve of her buttocks fitted to his palms as he supported her. Her breath quickened, rasping desperately in the cold room, and she let out a low wail, her thighs trembling beside his head.
Brlde of the Wolf Page 9