Cupping my bleeding cheek, I stare at the crazed woman. Even through the spiralling chaos in my head, I wonder not only why she is so fuelled by her disdain for my sub-witch status, but how on earth she got into my home!
As if reading my scattered thoughts, she turns her sneer on me. “A real witch would know the answer to both.”
Colton blinks and looks at me, as if fully grasping that I am here, that I am injured, that his mother tried to kill me.
Brown eyes swirl with the beginnings of a storm.
I swallow, hard. Some blood bitters the taste of my saliva.
Now, I will die by witch and wolf.
20.
Colton locks his eyes with mine.
Fear freezes me in place. A cage might as well be built around me, for my muscles don’t yearn to flee—I can only stand, trapped, and watch his gaze churn.
Blade tight in her grip, Catherine takes another step forward. “Let me finish what I came here to do. Let me remove her scent from your path, her temptation away from your mind. A true wolf should mate only with a true witch. You know this, Colton. You have battled with this knowledge and disgust, and you have lost.”
The throbbing agony in my cheek dulls to an ache. My dress is stained, cheek gushing still, and there is a gash on my neck above my collarbone. Yet, I hear her words as though they are my only pain.
You have lost.
Colton didn’t come to end me last night. He does not want to kill me. My presence has lured him in, so much so that he can’t deny his wolf’s yearning any longer. Tonight, he came here with the intention of biting me.
Colton’s plans for me are mateship.
Not if I have a say in the matter. And by Mother Nature, I do.
Quick as a rat, I jump over the back of the couch and race to the front door.
Colton’s boots slam heavy behind me; Catherine sprints to cut me off at the door. One hunter to bite me, the other to kill me.
But neither of them run for their lives—their freedom. So I am faster.
I dive to the floor.
Blood makes my hands slippery. Still, I grab the phial of wolfsbane and lift it up—aimed at Colton. He stops in tracks, a metre or so from where I sit. Catherine skids to a stop so abruptly, she collides with a stand-table. Panic lights up her crazed eyes.
We are all still.
No one moves. We only share a moment of harsh breaths, rushed thoughts, and tense stares.
Then Colton raises his hands, slowly. “I will not harm you, witch. Put down the phial.”
My chest heaves with each ragged breath I take. The door keeps me upright as I sit, and the weight of my already tired arm fights against me. “I have never said this to anyone before,” I tell him. “But fuck you.”
He flinches, so small a reaction that I would not have noticed it if my gaze wasn’t pasted to his face.
“Are you so intent on killing me when I pose no threat to you?” he snarls.
“Oh, but you do. You are as much a threat to me as your crazy mother is. She wants to kill me—but you…” I shake my head. “You want to steal from me. You want to steal my choice over my life, my body. Over my corpse is when that day comes.”
Colton tightens his lightly freckled jaw.
Catherine watches, the fury burning within her shaky limbs.
I cannot hold this phial for much longer. Blood must pour from my face; a weak dizziness seeps into me and the fog returns to cloud my mind.
Colton finally looks at me. “I swear I will not bite you,” he says. “I promise you here and now, no bites shall bind us until you consent to our mateship.”
Catherine growls. She must confuse herself for a wolf. “You have lost your mind!” Her hand slams down on the table, knocking off an unlit lantern from the blow. “A made witch? Mere days ago you swore of how you will never fall victim to her like he did! Colton, you will hear me, boy.”
He does. Her voice turned so dark that it demanded both our gazes.
She points the blade at him. “A made wolf and a made witch belong together. If you do not leave her to him, I will end her, whether you abide it or not. Mark those words, for they are truer than anything you feel for this whore.”
I shove through the wooziness that drifts over me and frown. A made wolf. One who they know. One who succumbed to me.
I flinch as Catherine pulls away from the table. She moves only a step or so, but the point of the blade is fixed on me now. Confidence soars within her as my hand lowers an inch, my arm drooping. She sees that I weaken.
Grandmother. I need Grandmother. Her treatment, her presence. Lest I bleed out.
“What you feel for her,” says Catherine. “Made witch or not, it is not love. You stalk her in the woods, watch her in the Square because of her smell. A mere perfume from her gifted power. A trick, an illusion. Do not be fooled by tricks, son, for you are no fool.”
Dazed, I look at Colton.
He studies me with eyes that battle with his mother’s words. Instinct and logic are at war behind those eyes. Still, he considers my death, a part of him even wants it. I see that in his eyes.
Catherine sees it too.
A proud smirk slips over her lips and twists her cruel face. Her grip is tighter on the blade, confident, and she moves toward me.
Colton turns his cheek.
At first, I think he looks away to avoid watching my death, to grant his mother permission to end me. Then, I trace his gaze to the rear door.
The door is wide open, still. A man stands there, a dark silhouette of thick furs and coats. A man whose midnight eyes glitter from even afar.
My shriek rips through the house and tenses everyone. “Dante!”
Blood drips into my eyes but I blink it away. My hand drops to the floor, and not a second after, Dante has barged into the house and drawn his sword.
It happens so fast. All of it jumbles in my mind like scrambled eggs.
Across my home, I see a flash of yellow in Dante’s eyes—it’s gone before he whips off his cloak and the sword winks at me. Colton’s back is to me, but I see his fingernails—growing longer, darker, coarser. His growl is so deep it shudders the floorboards I slump on.
“Dante,” I urge, though my voice grows weaker. “He’s the wolf—”
Catherine flies at me.
She uses the distraction. I’m too weak to move, to jump from the path of the blade coming down at me. With a cry, I ram my fist up and shove the phial into her mouth. Then I kick out my feet—my boots smack into her stomach and send her reeling.
Catherine crashes into the table; they both collide to the floor. The shatter of the phial is unmistakable. It breaks in her mouth. It is the only sound I hear before her wails fill the house.
Colton roars.
I gasp and swerve my gaze to him; he rounds on me, polished-lemon eyes burning bright for my head. But then, Dante hurls himself over the couch and swings out his sword. It slices down Colton’s arm. The wolf gives another savage howl, and turns on him.
Dante glances at me. “Go!” he bellows. “Get to your Grandmother’s! Now!”
I listen.
The pair move in a blur that my hooded eyes cannot follow. Consciousness is drifting from me. Blood leaves my face. I am bleeding out. I am dying.
I manage to climb onto my feet and stagger out the rear door. A final glance back churns my stomach. Dante is knocked off his feet, the sword flies from his grasp, and Colton leaps over half the house to land before him. If I had the energy, I might’ve called out for him, helped him in some way.
Dante then proves, he needs my help not. A knight’s son he is.
He is on his feet, another blade in hand—longer than my forearm—and hitting out at Colton with ease.
I turn my back on them and stumble up the lane to the wall. I head straight to the woods, and stop only when I am through my secret passage and on my knees in the snow.
My blood-stained hands pack snow before smacking it against my cheek. It should numb the pain a
while. Then I am staggering through the woods to the cabin, with a single prayer to the Goddess of Nature, the true Mother—
Let me make it to Grandmother.
21.
I am floating somewhere. Or nowhere.
Dark space is all around me. I lay flat on eternal space and gaze up at nothing.
It’s calm here.
Not peaceful, not soothing. It just…is.
I might like it here, if I remembered what ‘like’ was, how it felt. But I don’t. I have forgotten.
Then, it dawns on me. I am not floating in nothing.
I am nothing.
I find it is rather serene.
22.
A face breaks through the darkness.
Grandmother.
Her lips move, she speaks to me, but I hear muffled sounds rather than her voice. My shoulders rattle and I suspect she is shaking me.
Grandmother’s face turns cross and snaps in a distant, far-away voice; “Wake up, girl. Wake up, wake up—now, Ella!”
A breath tears through me.
My body arches up as my lungs suck in as much air as they can hold. Grandmother pushes me back down with all her might—and she is mighty. With a grunt, I am still again on a … mattress.
I jerk up once more and scan the room. Darkness is gone, replaced by Grandmother’s cabin.
She slams me back down. “I said wake up,” she snaps. “Not sit up.”
My dazed vision finds her, perched on the mattress edge.
“Grandmother,” I utter. “What…happened?”
With a tut, she grabs a goblet from the bed-table and forces some down my throat. I am practiced enough not to retch, but it tastes worse than the magic-transfer goop she served me last. Bitterness clings to my tongue, but at the back of my mouth a sour tang settles. A shudder runs through me.
Yet, each drop of the pungent brew wipes away a wisp of the fog in my head. It is slow work, but effective. Only once I have finished the entire goblet’s fill does Grandmother answer me.
“I found you on the path,” she says.
It might be her mysterious brew that confuses me, but she almost sounds concerned. If I had the energy within me, I would scoff at my foolishness.
Grandmother rests her hand on mine. It feels odd to the pair of us. She pulls it away and touches it to her chest instead.
“Your death came to me,” she says, tapping her fingers against her breastplate. “Here—Your pain filled me and grief blossomed. So, I ventured out to the woods to find you. A good thing I did, too, or you would have bled out in the snow. I have been feeding you brew all day.”
I let my eyes flutter shut as the morn’s pain consumes me.
Grandmother wipes my forehead with a damp rag. I wince when she dabs down to my sore cheek. Then I remember what I did to the one who cut me there.
My eyes open and find Grandmother. “I killed her. The other witch.”
“Dearest Ella. Did you think I did not know? Her energy passed by me hours ago. You would have felt it too if you hadn’t fainted in the woods.”
“Grandmother, this is nothing to dismiss.” I look at her as she wipes at my throat sweat. “Her son, Colton…he’s the wolf. To avenge his mother, he will come find me.”
My gaze follows her as she wrings out the rag in a bowl of water, then places it on a flower-patterned dish. “Colton has been a wolf of sound mind since his birth,” she tells me. “Never has he killed anyone. He hunts under the moon in the woods, but no more than he needs to.”
Shock almost takes me. It begins to seep into my veins, but then I frown at her. Of course she would know Colton is the wolf. She knew Silas, who he married, who Catherine gave life to. For nineteen years, she knew and never once did she tell me.
She reads my thoughts: “I never thought it necessary to tell you, Ella. A wolf’s identity is not mine to share, and he kept to himself. Your dislike and mistrust of him was solid enough without my meddling.”
Despite her words, a sting of betrayal cuts behind my chest, as sharp as Catherine’s blade to my cheek.
“How could you not warn me?” I ask, stunned. “All this time, you could have at least told me to be wary of him.”
“Warn you,” she repeats, a smile of pity on her lips. “Warn you of what, Ella? A peaceful, forest-dwelling wolf? Colton never sought revenge for his father. He came to me for answers one day. I offered them, he listened, then he left.” She shrugs and looks at the drapes that separate the bedroom from the front area. “The hunter is a wise wolf, ruled by his human mind, not his animal one. Emotion has no drive in him.”
“I killed his mother. Granted, she tried to kill me—” I gesture to my wounded face. “—But it’s his mother. Colton wants revenge. You did not see him when I did… when I took her life. He was going to tear my head off my body, and would have done if Dante hadn’t stopped him.”
For once, Grandmother truly listens to me. Her eyes rinse me over a long moment, then she nods firmly. “I will prepare. You, stay a while in bed. We have some time.”
Grandmother rises from the mattress and gathers the cleaning dishes and rags from the bed-table. Before she leaves, I stop her at the drapes:
“Grandmother…” I swallow; the sour tang still lingers at the back of my mouth. “Catherine spoke of another wolf before her death. A made wolf, she called him.”
Grandmother looks at me over her shoulder. “Colton must have bitten someone,” she says. “To make another wolf takes great restraint, yet a great loss of control.”
“This made wolf … I think he is my lover. Dante Bennett.”
Her eyebrows lift at the arches. “The Knight’s son?”
Stiffly, I nod and shift in the bed. “The very one.”
Her gaze is firm on me. I frown at her knowing look. Then, Grandmother tells me to rest and leaves through the drawn drapes.
I roll onto my side and hug a pillow.
An emptiness carves itself inside of me, a hole in my gut where my organs should rest. The times I laid with Dante, I can forgive. Those were transactions, simple business. Last night was neither of those things.
A part of me blossomed a feeling last night, though I only realise it now. It is one I don’t understand or recognise, yet I feel it as fresh and strong as my wounds. It could be what causes the empty sensation inside of me.
I wonder, is this pain?
It is stronger than the pain of flesh and bones, yet different in some way.
I shake off the thoughts, but they do not leave my head. They are stuck to inside of my skull, where they nest and breed tenfold.
Isn’t it so wretched that I know not of his fate? Colton could have well killed him. Dante could have escaped. Perhaps they are both on my floor like Catherine.
There, but gone.
Either way, Dante is in my head to stay.
23.
Grandmother gave me a half-hour in bed before she forced me out. “Sunset is within the hour,” she told me. “Reasonable or not, wolves will be here tonight if either survived. While I hope for the best, we must prepare for the worst.”
Soon after, I am dressed in a corset-less dress and I paint blades with wolfsbane. Grandmother fills a bucket with the poison, then we coat the windows and doors with it. We finish these chores with ten minutes to spare.
I stand by the window and watch the orange seep into the sky behind the clouds. Sunset is near. Ten minutes…
The longest ten minutes I have ever suffered.
Colton plagues my mind. Despite Grandmother’s assurances, the glow of his wolf-eyes haunts my mind. There was murder in those eyes, bloodlust. If he lives, he seeks revenge.
At the end of it, he is a wolf. A wolf can only be so rational, so reasonable.
Does the same apply to Dante?
He is a made wolf, I suspect. What that means for me, I cannot imagine.
Still, I know our times were of the Witch Lure, not of real desire, not of natural want, and not of our bonded minds. I loathe to think why that p
ains me so, but it does.
This isn’t love.
At least not the sort that rattles one’s mind, body and soul. To Dante, I shall never fall to pregnancy. I could kill him to save my own life without hesitation. What I feel for him is not a Hemlock woman’s love. But should that mean it isn’t love at all?
Grandmother shatters my thoughts to pieces. At the window on the other side of the fireplace, she stands and looks through the drapes. Her voice is a whisper when she speaks and ends the ten minutes we waited through:
“Someone is coming.”
My fingernails dig into the wooden windowsill.
A man, hunched in a fur coat, limps up the path. He moves quickly for an injured man. One of his hands disappears behind his coat, as if to press against an injury.
Heart beating in my throat, I study him hard. It could be Colton, it could be Dante. It could be a complete stranger. Then, he comes close enough to the cabin and I notice the golden hem of his gloves.
I rush to the door, and before Grandmother can stop me, I shove it open.
The cold beats against me, but I race down the stairs to meet Dante.
“Heavens,” I say and touch my hand to his cheek.
He tries to turn away from me, but my grip hardens. Blood smears over his jaw, dries his hair together in clumps, and coats his lips.
“Come inside, quickly. The sun is setting.”
Dante leans against the stairs’ barrier. His fingers curl around my wrist and peel my hand from his face.
“Red.” He breathes my name as if it will be his last word. “I need you to listen to me a moment. Please—” His grip on my wrist tightens as I make to speak. “Please, Red. If I do not survive the night, I must have you know the truth.”
My gaze tries to find his under the drawn hood. He avoids me on purpose, to hide his eyes from mine.
Feared Fables Box Set: Dark and Twisted Fairy Tale Retellings, (Feared Fables Box Sets Book 1) Page 10