by Parker Foye
He wished he’d been dreaming.
Daffyd dead.
Alpha Hywel dead.
While Alpha Hywel had been a distant figure, a black-furred behemoth with red eyes and a rumbling howl, Daffyd had been a second shadow. Llywelyn the sun, of course, and always, but Griffith and Daffyd had grown long under his light. Brothers, making Griffith’s family large.
They’d fought, naturally. Hellfire, how they’d fought for Llywelyn’s attention, until Daffyd went to a pack in the Midlands for training, leaving Llywelyn behind.
Griffith had learned, then, that “brothers” was not the correct word for he and Llywelyn.
And now Llywelyn had no shadows at all. No wonder he darted from Griffith. Like a man seeing the dark for the first time.
* * *
Anxious with nerves, and with Angharad’s instruction in his ears, Griffith once more turned his attention to the curving lines of the ancient wardings. He didn’t try to wake the lines, but their path brought a certain comfort. More of his family sat beneath the soil than above. He walked with their ghosts.
“Are you here to fix it?” Angharad had asked. But Griffith didn’t understand how the wardings kept her out, when they were as dead as everything else. He hadn’t thought to ask her to try, to mark the effects. Perhaps Llywelyn would know how to find her, to ask?
Llywelyn had the ill manners not to appear for Griffith to interrogate, so Griffith turned his mind to what he knew about the wolf’s side of things. Though the boundary had been created by Jones wardens, they’d shared their security with the Hywel pack to ensure both would survive. While the twentieth century had none of the wolf wars or territory grabs of previous generations, there was comfort in knowing home was safe. As Griffith had dared to believe the territory had remained, despite magic leaking out like water in a sieve.
He kicked at the soil, irritated. His walk had taken him to the other side of the hill, where rocks made fields unsuitable for farming. When he straightened, he saw Llywelyn in wolf-shape sitting not ten feet away.
Smoothing out his hitched breath with a deliberate exhale, Griffith inclined his head, as one should to wolves, and showed the palms of his hands.
“Llywelyn,” he said. Polite.
Llywelyn, somewhat predictably, said nothing.
“If you run, I’ll set your tail on fire,” Griffith said, meaning not a word. Meaning every one. Daffyd and Alpha Hywel and who else? “And I saw Angharad, by and by. When were you planning to mention that business?”
Wolves couldn’t glare, but Llywelyn tried his best. For all their time apart, Griffith fancied he could read the expression. You weren’t here to tell, it said. Griffith’s guilt writ in fur.
“She said she can’t cross the lines. Though that’s clearly nonsense. Care to explain?”
Llywelyn ears twitched. They regarded one another until Llywelyn, with a heaving breath, got to his feet and flicked his tail. Come-along-then. Griffith darted a look over his shoulder, half-expecting lightning to strike. Or Ifanwy. Shaking off his shivers, he kept at Llywelyn’s heels, following him past the fields to where trees packed close together, ducking under wolf-height branches. Twice, he tried to get Llywelyn’s attention, and twice received a snap of teeth in reply.
But Llywelyn kept his pace slow enough to follow.
They broke through a particularly thick tangle of trees and unwelcoming brush, which bit at Griffith’s face with thorns. Realising where they were, Griffith cursed. The base of the wolf’s hill. He glanced at Llywelyn, who looked back like he heard the questions Griffith didn’t ask.
Am I allowed here? Are you allowed to bring me here?
Griffith knew where the wolves lived, but he’d never been invited inside. The hill was sacrosanct. He took a step backward but Llywelyn nudged his legs, urging him to move.
“All right, okay, I’m going,” Griffith whispered.
With trepidation thick in his throat, he followed Llywelyn inside.
Fires burned in the hill, smoke and warmth and wet fur somehow contriving to smell like home. Griffith’s shoulders relaxed and his stride loosened as he followed Llywelyn through torch-lit tunnels, trying to read the history scratched into walls at wolf and man height. Burn marks and gouges showed the hill hard-won, while tunnels stoppered with dirt told of the hill fighting back. Time’s teethmarks. Averting his eyes, Griffith found Llywelyn looking at him. Llywelyn kneaded the ground and stretched into two legs.
Llywelyn evidently hadn’t found time to bathe between their meetings, since mud daubed him and his hair was wild. He wore an untucked shirt that had once been white, and the same tattered trousers. He scratched his stubble and didn’t meet Griffith’s eyes.
“How was she? Angharad?”
Weeping. Angry. Engaged. Griffith blew out a breath. “Well, I think. She misses you. All of you. Why does she think she can’t come home?”
Llywelyn nodded absently, eyes distant. “Good, good. That’s—” He stopped himself, focusing on Griffith. “You’ve been away. I’m sure you’ve seen some things.”
“That I have.”
“Don’t mention Mother.”
Griffith had no time for questions before Llywelyn shoved him ungently in the small of the back, making Griffith stumble into a large chamber crackling with fire. Smoke spiralled through a chimney arrangement in the domed roof, encouraged by an elaborate arrangement of clay piping. Ifanwy sat on one side of the fire, a huge black wolf pacing behind her. Griffith realised the wolf must be their mother. Don’t mention her. Don’t mention the absent spots at the fire. So what the hell should he do? Griffith tilted his head, showing his throat, and tried desperately to remember their mother’s name.
He needn’t have bothered. After giving Griffith a cursory sniff, and sneezing once, the black wolf grabbed a hank of meat from the plates nearby and trotted down the hall. Llywelyn huffed at Griffith when he turned questioning eyebrows on him, and gestured to the fire. Take a seat. Griffith sat. Llywelyn sat beside him.
“You came, then,” Ifanwy said, sullen, not looking from the flames.
“Should I—I can go?”
Llywelyn placed his hand on Griffith’s leg. A brief touch, but brands were brief. “Stay.” To Ifanwy, he said, “He’s seen Angharad.”
“And what else’s he seen?”
They both turned to look at him, fire flickering over their faces. Griffith shifted, uncomfortable. He’d never excelled at conversation. Morgan had attempted to teach him to assess a room and its occupants, to find the most useful person and ingratiate himself, but Griffith preferred the puzzle of magic. As boys, he and Llywelyn could idle the day trying to skim stones on the curling waves of the sea with nary a word spoke between them.
He cleared his throat. To get information about Angharad, he’d have to give. Griffith understood that much, at least.
“I apprenticed to a warden for a time, in London. We travelled to France some, so when—when my apprenticeship ended, I continued travelling. That’s what I’ve been doing, until I returned to Britain,” Griffith told them, pleased and alarmed how few sentences covered four years and countless bad decisions. The gaps the words had left—how he dreamed of evil, how he’d seen the dead spaces where magic no longer ran, days starving and nights sweating from fever—spoke more than they didn’t. But those weren’t interesting stories.
“And what will you do now?” Llywelyn asked, tossing bones in the fire like they’d offended him.
Learn what you’re hiding. Wake the wards. Protect the pack.
Try and stop looking at your lips.
“I don’t know.”
Llywelyn fished around behind him, firelight making his shadow enormous and jagged. Griffith glanced at Ifanwy, poking the fire with an iron, while Llywelyn produced a thin pipe and lit it, turning the air pungent with tobacco.
“Why did you return?” Llywelyn asked, his words curling with smoke. “After all this time. You could be in China by now.”
Griffith snorted. “China’s farther than you’d think.”
“The truth, Griffith. Da—We sent you that letter but didn’t think to see you again. Not after all this time. Makes us nervous, it does.”
And there’s the crux. Making wolves nervous was dangerous. Griffith’s reasons weren’t secret, but they weren’t important, either. He leaned back on his hands and stretched out his legs, warming himself by the fire.
“Tell me why Angharad can’t return. Magic’s dead, Llywelyn.”
“Not here,” Llywelyn said, quick, like he’d been waiting for the question. He nudged Ifanwy. “Tell him about the al—”
“You brought him here. You do it,” Ifanwy said, like that was the beginning and end of the matter. Unfolding from her seat by the fire, she changed into a sleek wolf with red-ringed eyes. The mark of a pack second. With a flick of her tail, she left the cave. Never much for conversation, Ifanwy.
A muscle ticked in Llywelyn’s jaw, and Griffith caught himself thinking how fine a profile Llywelyn had, like statues he’d seen in Italy. Like someone had carved him from stone.
Tapping from Llywelyn, as he emptied his pipe, broke the moment. Griffith watched him blow a messy smoke ring.
“Did you want to tell me, then? Whatever it is.”
“It’s—When you came back. Did you feel the air change?”
Griffith shook his head. “I felt nothing.”
“Nothing,” Llywelyn repeated, rolling his pipe in his hands. An unconscious habit he’d developed in their time apart. Griffith watched him, trying to learn the man Llywelyn had become. His gaze kept drifting between Llywelyn’s agile hands and his lips.
“Should I have?” Griffith asked, trying to get his thoughts on track.
“Wolves do. Used to be gentle, like. But when—When the alpha died, it did something.” Llywelyn lit his pipe again, his eyes hooded. “If I’d known you were coming back, I might’ve wondered how you’d get here at all.”
Griffith realised he sat with a stranger around the fire. The man shared features with Llywelyn, but his history had years Griffith didn’t know; loss had left shadows in Llywelyn’s eyes, and Griffith didn’t have the courage to shine light there. Not yet. He wanted to express sorrow for Llywelyn’s loss but how would giving grief voice atone for years of silence?
“Yet here I am,” he said, voice scratchy from the heat of the fire.
Llywelyn blew out smoke, not looking up. “Here you are.”
“And you’re saying I shouldn’t be.”
“I’m saying I don’t understand, Griff.” Llywelyn’s eyes shone in the light from the fire. “My sister is stuck in Aberarth, but you crossed the lines without stumbling. Maybe you’re a ghost.” He shook his head. “Maybe we all are.”
The soft despair in Llywelyn’s voice, and his use of the old nickname, seeped through Griffith like a brand. He thought to be stronger than he was, to let Llywelyn be, but Griffith had always thought more of himself than bore to be true. Glancing at Llywelyn, heat rose to Griffith’s face as his gaze again dropped to Llywelyn’s mouth. He got to his feet.
“I can’t do this right now. I can’t—” I can’t stop thinking about kissing you. Griffith shook his head. “Everything is—is fucked, is all. I shouldn’t have come.”
“Here? Or to Aberarth?” Llywelyn asked, like he didn’t care either way. He hadn’t moved from his place by the fire.
“I can’t,” Griffith said, not knowing what he referred to, but knowing it was true.
“Griffith—”
Whatever Llywelyn intended to say, Griffith was too cowardly to hear. He walked fast, charms tight in his hand.
* * *
For all he’d cursed Griffith Jones six ways to Sunday, Llywelyn had never thought him weak. Selfish, yes, and stubborn, and precious beyond the telling, but not weak. Yet he ran from Llywelyn like a fool in a fairy tale.
In the stories Llywelyn knew, the wolf always won. Griffith would be safe with Hywels, but more than Hywel wolves hunted in Aberarth of late. Keeley wolves worried the territory and didn’t care for humans. Curs to the last of them.
Llywelyn needed to see Griffith safely home. For that reason, and no other, he dropped to his paws, following Griffith’s tracks. Nothing to do with not being able to unsee the hunger in Griffith’s eyes. Nothing to do with the storm of grief raining in his chest, when he’d finally glimpsed a promise of clear skies.
He took a wandering route, not wanting Griffith to be nervous of noises following him, and had reached the edge of packlands when he smelled not-pack. Snarling, Llywelyn hunted the scent to its origin.
The unpleasant sour smell of the warding lines grew stronger as he neared and his ears flattened. Since May, the stench had polluted Hywel territory, as if reflecting the way the pack mouldered inside the hill. Llywelyn hoped the air was fresh for Angharad. He couldn’t see her, knew nothing of her and had no way to contact her but howls she couldn’t safely return, not with her human at hand. But he thought of her often. Thought of all the lost Hywels.
Sourer than sorrow and spoiled magic was Emery, sat by the stream delineating the southernmost border of packlands, paws crossed and waiting. Red fur and black heart, Emery was second in command of the Keeley pack, and he’d torn a chunk from Llywelyn’s ear in June before Ifanwy chased him off. Before Emery’s alpha declared intent to take Hywel territory by force, if not treaty. Keeley had been worrying at Hywel heels since.
Llywelyn kept his paws on the right side of the border. The wardings had been strange when it came to wolves, ever since his father died. Like the land didn’t know how magic worked without an alpha to anchor it or a warden to direct it. Angharad had been in the village when the wardings flared in May, and couldn’t return. Their mother had tried to leave and couldn’t. Llywelyn had stayed inside their bounds since losing Angharad, afraid he’d be next. Every night he ran the lines, not knowing if he wanted them to fail or the opposite.
Yet Griffith said magic was dead, despite travelling halfway around the world to prove otherwise. He should have stayed.
An old thought, worn at the edges with time. Not relevant to the present moment. Llywelyn flickered into human shape. Better to curse with.
“Piss off, Emery. You’re not getting this land. The Council would have your hide.”
Rumbling with growls that continued when he switched shape, Emery looked like he’d been living under the valleys his whole life, like an ancient Celtic warrior gone to seed. Red hair and bowed shoulders, riddled with scars, his clothes streaked with coal dust. The red ring of an alpha’s second circled his eyes.
“Sitting pretty behind your lines. How long d’you think they’ll last without an alpha?” He spat. “Not long enough for the Council to finish arguing for and against.”
Llywelyn kept his face blank, his hands still, for all he wanted to tear out Emery’s throat. The Council were notorious for inaction, worse since the loss of several alphas on the Titanic in April. They barely had enough for quorum, last Llywelyn heard.
He put that aside and snarled at Emery. “You’re just a second. Where’s your alpha to talk so big?”
Emery’s grin was sudden and bright. “He’s on his way. Best keep a weather eye on that boy of yours, if you want to keep him.”
Emery ran before Llywelyn could leap for his throat and damn the consequences. Before he could tear strips from the bastard’s skin until he freckled with blood for daring to threaten Griffith. As who else could Emery mean but Griffith? Years from being boys, but Griffith seemed younger than Llywelyn felt. Less weathered, like his magic made years pass over him
like rain.
Unless you looked into his eyes, as Llywelyn kept telling himself not to. There the years were easy to spot.
Llywelyn dropped to four feet, running for the warden’s cottage. Back to his purpose, though Griffith’s biggest threat waited on the other side of the lines. But Llywelyn needed to see Griffith. To smell him.
Branches and moss crumpled beneath his paws as he ran. From beyond the hills, a wavering howl started up. Ifanwy. She called for Angharad, for Llywelyn, for the family they’d lost. Come-on-home. Like Daffyd used to, when Llywelyn spent too long at the far reaches of packlands, imagining he might be strong enough to leave. When fragments of news Daffyd eked from packs in France and farther afield, about the tall warden with charms and clever hands, hadn’t been enough to sustain him.
Llywelyn ducked his head and upped his speed, following the smell of magic and blood. When he reached the cottage, Llywelyn wavered. He’d not been close to the property since Warden Jones passed.
A sound of distress made his ears prick, and he bounded closer, ready to slaughter whatever caused Griffith to whimper. Scenting nothing untoward and forcing his heart to calm, Llywelyn crept to the broken window and peered inside. The night parted for wolf vision and he saw Griffith sleeping fitfully by a low fire. Only dreams haunted Griffith.
Let it always only be dreams.
Thwarted of something to rend, Llywelyn kneaded the earth with his paws, indecision stymieing him, before curling nose to tail outside the cottage door. He listened to Griffith’s nightmares until the sun rose to banish them.
Chapter Three
Llywelyn had said the lines were real to wolves, but when Griffith walked them the next morning he found the same silence as always. His grandmother had led Griffith along the route regularly as a child, until Griffith’s feet could trace the boundary years had hidden beneath the soil. Yet as yard after yard brought only the peace of the hills, Griffith worried he’d forgotten the true location of the stones. Surely he should feel something, as Llywelyn did? Chewing on his lip, Griffith expanded his exploration, walking farther from Jones-Hywel territory in search of magic wolves could sense.