by S. A. Swann
“Please, now. There is nothing more important for you to attend to here.”
The intensity of his words, and of his look, pushed her away. “As you wish,” she said, backing out of the room.
She left wondering if, somehow, he knew about Darien.
Even so, there was little chance of her leaving before nightfall. The feasting had still been ongoing when she had brought Josef his meal. She couldn’t go until the revelers themselves had decided that the evening had concluded. So when she left Gród Narew, the sun had long since set.
Once she had no work to occupy her, her thoughts drifted to her face. On her way out, she stepped through one of the display halls where the devices of many allied clans hung on the walls: the threefold cross of Bojcza, the double-headed arrow of Bogorya, the cross-studded horseshoe of Dabrowa, the split-tailed cross of Kostrowiec.
What stopped her wasn’t the collection of arcane glyphs of the many clans allied with Wojewoda Bolesław but the weapons on display between the painted shields and banners. The blades had been polished before being set to peacetime rest in this hallway, and she could observe her reflection in the flat of an axe blade.
Her face was clearly unmarked.
It made no sense to her. Yesterday her eye had been inflamed, her cheek livid with the bruise from Lukasz’s blow. Josef had been right to wonder. But perhaps she had been mistaken about the severity of her bruise, because it was clearly healed now.
It took an effort of will not to rub her cheek, drawing even more attention to her sudden healing, as she left the fortress.
Outside, the night was starless and without a moon. Dense clouds glowed a dull silver, giving the landscape an unearthly aspect beyond her lantern’s reach. She walked to the edge of the woods, thinking of Josef. His warnings frightened her, but some other part of her welcomed his concern. She had spent so long being burdensome, irrelevant, beneath notice, that just an interest in her welfare from someone without any obligation to care was comforting.
If only …
But even though she could still feel Josef’s heartbeat beneath her fingertips, she didn’t finish the thought, because there was nowhere good it might lead.
When a man finally took her, it would not be someone young or handsome or noble. Her marriage would be to an old widower looking for someone to care for his children or his household. The best she might hope for would be some measure of kindness.
She walked home on the path, her mood darker than the woods around her. Was that her life? Was that all she could look forward to? A reward in Heaven? And what would she have before then?
Perhaps she should follow Josef’s example and join a holy order.
With her downcast mood, it wasn’t surprising when Darien chose to reveal himself.
Why are you haunting me? she thought when she saw his lithe, muscular form stride out of the woods in front of her. She stopped walking and they stood facing each other, just a few steps beyond arm’s reach. For several moments, the only sound came from the wind rustling through the treetops.
The woods always turn silent around him.
“So you took it off, didn’t you?” he said finally.
She caught her breath, then placed her hand over her heart, holding the cross, and shook her head. “No, I didn’t.” I’m still wearing it. It’s still protecting me.
“Lies do not become you,” he said. “The marks on your face are gone.”
She touched the side of her face where Lukasz had struck her.
“Do you understand yet?” he asked.
“Understand? You talk in riddles that don’t make sense! How could I possibly understand?”
He took a step forward, his smile sharply underlit by her lantern’s flame. “I told you, Maria. That chain around your neck keeps you imprisoned. You remove it, even momentarily, and you become much more than you think you are.”
“What do you mean? Why is my bruise gone?”
“It is gone because you chose, however briefly, to be who you really are. It means that you need only cast off your chains and you can become as free as I. It means we’re fated, sweet Maria.” He reached up and gently touched her cheek. The feeling of his skin against hers sent a jolt through her body. He looked down at her and said, “I have been looking for you for a long, long time.”
She sucked in a breath and whispered, “Are you the Devil?” She wondered if, right now, she cared what the answer was.
Darien laughed and shook his head. “I have nothing to do with God or the Devil, or anything so common from the world of men.”
His hand slid back, caressing the nape of her neck and sending shudders down the length of her body. She breathed in his scent and felt the muscles in her legs melt like wax in the sun. His face was now so close that his breath danced across her lips as he spoke. “You must know how much better you are than the rest of them. You’re stronger, faster. You can endure so much more than they can, even with their chains on you. You must know how beautiful you are.”
You lie, she thought. But they’re such lovely lies.
He brought his other hand around her back, pulling her gently toward him. She let go of the cross and touched his chest. His shirt was loose and open down the front, and her hand slid in to touch skin. She felt downy hair, and a warmth that almost burned. She felt him breathe.
Then she remembered Josef’s skin under her hand, the feeling of Josef taking breath. And something in her felt as if this was a betrayal.
But before she could push herself away, Darien’s lips touched hers.
The feeling made her forget every reservation she’d had. It didn’t matter who he was, or where he came from, if he could make her feel like this. For a brief, ecstatic moment, she tasted him, almost became a part of him. She lost herself in the smell, the touch, the need.
Then he let her go and took a few steps backward, chuckling to himself. Maria’s pulse raced, and her breath caught in her throat. Why did he stop …
“No.” She saw something dangling from Darien’s hand, and her own hand went to her neck. “Give it back!” She stepped forward and grabbed for her cross, but Darien skipped backward like a child teasing a hungry cat.
“You heartless cur, you are nothing more than a thief!”
Darien backed away again, dodging her grabs. “Oh, I am not a thief. I will gladly give this back to you.”
“Then please return it.” Maria held out her hand, surprised at the coldness in her voice and the tone of command she found there.
Darien shook his head. “This is my game. If you want this back, you’ll have to catch me.” Then he turned and ran down the path ahead of her.
Maria ran after him, her pulse thudding in her ears. In her gut churned a mixture of embarrassment, self-loathing, and growing anger. How cruel and thoughtless could one man be, coming to her just when she was aching for someone to care for her, then making a game of the most precious thing she owned?
He knew what it meant to her. How could he do something like this?
The anger throbbed in time to her pulse, pushing her legs to move faster. She barely noticed when the lantern’s flame guttered out. Darien reached a straight part of the path, and he was little more than a blurred shadow against the silver-lit darkness.
“Stop!” she yelled at the retreating shadow. Darien refused to listen, diving into the woods with an infuriating grace.
She was not going to allow him to get away with this. She couldn’t. He was not going to steal her father’s cross.
Her lungs worked like a bellows as she turned to follow him into the woods. She grabbed the trunk of a downed tree and leapt over it without caring about dropping the lantern, or the rip torn in her surcote. She focused all her attention on the fleeing form of Darien, barely a shadow within a shadow ahead of her. But even though she couldn’t quite see him, she still heard him running through the woods, crunching dead leaves and branches, tearing through the underbrush.
Even more than that, she smelled him. The
intoxicating, earthy maleness that had turned her insides to water hung in the air, marking his trail more clearly than any sounds or any footprints.
She pushed herself, racing after him until it hurt. Past the point where it hurt. Not only her muscles but her skin and bone burned, as if she were running through hellfire after him. The pain throbbed through her core until it became something else—a pulsing release that pushed her forward, her body shuddering in rage, her attention focused completely on the object of that rage.
For a time, it was as if the thinking part of her mind had shut down, ceding all authority to the ecstatic wrath within her. She felt the seams give way on her clothes, but her only reaction was to cast her skirts aside because they encumbered her legs.
His scent grew sharper, closer, and she snarled without thinking how inhuman the sound seemed.
She was catching up to him, closing the distance as her stride lengthened. Her tongue lolled out of her mouth, and she started grabbing the ground ahead of her with clawed hands, pulling herself more quickly through the forest.
Then he was in front of her.
She screamed, “Darien!,” her voice half a growl as she leapt at him. He tried to dodge, but she wasn’t about to let him get away. She swung her arm at him as she passed by him. Her hand connected with his back, and he tumbled to the ground with the force of the blow.
She felt her claws bite flesh, and suddenly the air was filled with the scent of blood.
Claws.
Blood.
She slammed into the ground, rolling across the forest floor. The focus of her rage crumbled.
Claws.
Blood.
Maria swallowed as she pushed herself up out of the dead leaves and undergrowth. She panted, shaking her head, trying to deny the things she felt. The things she saw. Her hands weren’t her hands. They were the hands of some demon—clawed, black-furred, twice as large as her hands should be.
And even though the hands didn’t belong to her, they moved when she flexed them.
“No,” she whispered, tears of fear and rage blurring her vision. When she spoke, her tongue felt a mouth too long, teeth too sharp, lips too thin. Her entire body felt as if it were on the verge of explosion, every muscle vibrating with the effort of remaining still.
He is the Devil, she thought, and he has taken me.
“You win.”
She spun her head around, muzzle snapping at the sound of his voice. She saw him clearly in the silver-gray light, holding her cross in front of him.
“You can have it back, if you still want it.”
She roared at him and jumped. “What did you do to me?” This time, he managed to dodge aside with a speed he hadn’t shown before.
“I set you free,” he called to her. “I set you free, and you are magnificent!”
She spun around, but she didn’t see him. “Don’t hide from me!”
His scent was all around her now, and so was the sound of rustling underbrush. He moved faster than even her demon senses could follow. It was as if he was on all sides of her at once. She kept turning, trying to discern where he was in the shadows around her.
“I won’t hide from you, Maria.” The voice came from behind her, and she spun to face it. “But I don’t wish to face you in anger.” Behind her again, farther away.
She turned, screaming something that was half words, half a lupine howl: “Face me!”
“Return to the woods with a calm heart, and I will show you things you’ve never imagined.” His voice was far away now.
“A calm heart? Are you mad?” She struck out at a shadow. It wasn’t Darien, but she attacked it anyway. When the haze of anger faded, she found herself in front of a young tree, its trunk the thickness of her thigh, splintered and bleeding sap.
Maria, do you know what you are?
“Darien!” she screamed into the night.
He didn’t answer.
She stared down at her hands.
Splinters and bark stuck to black fur on the backs, and when she turned them over, her fingers and palms had pads like a dog’s or a wolf’s. She licked her lips unconsciously and felt her nose at the end of a long, pointed muzzle. She raised her hands to her face.
It isn’t true. This is some sort of nightmare.
She turned away from the tree and tried to take a step, but now that the rage had leaked away, she suddenly became aware of the changes in her legs. She tangled herself up in them and toppled over.
She curled into a ball on the forest floor, crying.
“What am I?” she sobbed.
But no one answered.
XV
After a time, praying to God to return her body, Maria began to itch. She rubbed her arms and realized that her fingers touched naked skin. She sat upright, hugging herself, realizing that her prayers had been answered. The skin she inhabited was suddenly her own again. Like the change before, she had been too absorbed in emotion to remember exactly when it had happened.
A dream, she thought. It had all been some nightmarish fantasy.
But when she looked behind her, the wounded tree still bled sap from its splintered trunk. And bark and splinters were caught under her fingernails.
She was also sitting naked on the forest floor.
“This was no dream,” she whispered, flexing her now-human fingers.
She stood, brushing leaves and branches from her skin. A few paces away, the cross lay where Darien had dropped it. If you still want it, he had said.
She picked it up.
Was this all that had been keeping that nightmare from happening?
The wolf thing she had become, was that the Devil her father had been warning her of? Was she the Devil?
That thing protects them, not you. Darien’s words echoed, unwanted, in her skull.
Her hands shook as she placed the cross around her neck. She stood in the forest, naked and alone, staring up at the small sliver of glowing cloud visible through the shadowed trees.
“What do I do?” The words were barely a whisper, but her whole body shook with the anguish of the question. “God, please help me. What do I do?”
Somewhere, far away in the forest, she imagined she heard Darien laughing.
For a long time she resisted going home, afraid that the beast within her might hurt her family. But where else could she go?
After a while, she decided to trust in the cross. Removing it had been what had called forth the demon. If she obeyed her father and kept it on, her family should be safe …
“Forgive me, Papa.”
She followed her trail back to the path, finding her damaged, mud-stained clothes. She barely remembered shedding them in her fury.
I have never been so angry. Not even at Lukasz …
But what would she have done to stop Lukasz if it weren’t for the cross she wore? Even without it, she had landed a blow that had broken his cheekbone. What if that hand had been massive, furred, and clawed? What if she had done to Lukasz what she had done to that tree?
I could have been that angry at him. If Darien hadn’t stopped him.
She walked home, her mind tumbling over itself, asking questions she didn’t have answers to. Who was Darien? How did he know what lived inside her? Why did he find such glee in drawing it out, tormenting her with it? Why was she cursed with this thing?
What do I do?
She stumbled though the gate and pushed open the door to the cabin.
“Maria, my child, what happened?”
Her stepmother ran to her out of the darkness and grabbed her shoulders. “Where have you been? What happened to your clothes?” She looked into Maria’s eyes with a familiar intensity. Even in the dim, overcast night, Maria could see the same fear and terror in her stepmother’s eyes that she had seen in her father’s before he died.
“Did you take it off?” her stepmother asked.
Something sank in her heart as she suddenly realized why her father had screamed the same question at her. The Germans had been t
orn apart by some vicious animal, and that news had reached him before she had returned from the fortress. He had heard the descriptions of what had happened to the Germans and he had thought she had done it.
“Maria.” Her stepmother shook her shoulders, trying to get her attention. “Your cross. You still wear it?”
Maria blinked up at her stepmother and nodded. It wasn’t quite a lie, but she could barely bring herself to speak. She pulled aside her immodestly torn chemise to show the cross resting over her heart.
“Thank God,” her stepmother whispered. She pulled Maria into a hug and rocked her back and forth. “Thank God, you’re safe.”
Do you know what you embrace?
“Please, child, tell me what happened.”
“A man, in the woods. He …” She sucked in a breath and buried her face in her stepmother’s shoulder. “He frightened me,” she whispered. “I saw him, and he frightened me. I ran. I ran for a long time.”
“Oh, my baby. You’re safe home now.” Her stepmother paused a moment and asked, “Did he harm you?”
“No.” Not in the way you mean. “I was lost, and I didn’t see him again.”
“You’re safe at home now,” her stepmother whispered. “Nothing will happen to you here.”
As Maria cried into her stepmother’s shoulder, she began to realize that her stepmother didn’t blame her for her husband’s death, or care that she was her husband’s bastard.
But maybe she should.
A calm heart.
Darien thought of the words he had spoken, and what he had asked of her. He knew more than ever that she was his, that their meeting was fate. More than fate—it was something as self-evident as the coming dawn.
It didn’t mean that things would be effortless, however.
In the years he had hunted the creature man and sought revenge on the Order itself, he had never come across another of his kind. Not living, in any event. When she’d chased him through the woods, he had not even seen her embrace the wolf in her rage. When she had jumped upon him, he’d been ill-prepared to feel her claws dig through his back. Though it had been glancing, he’d felt a rib give way under the blow.