—a table shattered as Wolf staggered away from a towering kraken, slashing off a tentacle at its root.
—Wolf stood with his foot on his brother’s throat, Fox limp, eyes rolled up, bleeding from the stump of his right arm.
I staggered to my feet, gasping as the sharp pain of my broken ribs stabbed freshly, trying to breathe shallowly. Using the backs of a couple of the chairs that still stood upright and in one piece, I managed to make it around to where Wolf could see me without having to move his head. I touched him.
“Go ahead,” I said.
“If I kill him here, his dra’aj will be lost forever. All the dra’aj that he has taken in all his time.” He shut his eyes tight. “Nighthawk.”
I shook my head. Fox didn’t have Nighthawk’s dra’aj, but I couldn’t take the time to explain that now.
“Go ahead,” I said again. I already knew what he was planning. “Go. I’m okay here. Someone will come and help me.”
And they were gone.
I looked around me and swallowed. There would be water and who knew, maybe even food in the fridge.
Though it would take more than the cleaning crew to fix up what had happened to Union Station’s Panorama Lounge.
Chapter Twenty-four
“ARE YOU READY?” Wolf raised his hands as if to place them on my shoulders, but lowered them when I flinched. Everybody was being very careful not to touch me, and normally I would have really appreciated that. But just now it reminded me of how alone I was. I managed to nod.
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” I was hoping I’d imagined the flatness in my voice, but I doubted it. I sighed. I’d been doing that a lot lately.
“You don’t have to do this,” Nik said. He and Wolf exchanged glances. They’d been doing that a lot lately.
“Yeah, I do. You know I do.” It’s not that I’d been putting it off, but a part of me had definitely been relieved at the week or so it had taken to set this up.
Wolf undid the buttons of his shirt, exposing the dragon tattoo. The colors were so rich that they made the furniture in my living room drab. Wolf nodded at Nik, and the two of them clasped each other’s wrists. Nik had argued hard that another human should go with me, and even though Wolf had maintained that, first, it wasn’t necessary and, second, Nik wasn’t a regular human, he’d given in.
I swallowed and placed my hand flat on the center of the dragon. At first, all I felt was the warmth of Wolf’s skin, and then I heard Ice Tor’s chuckle, and Wolf’s warmth became the heat from the forge, but before I could become afraid of the fall of the hatchet, the room around us dropped away and was replaced by one about half again as big. Soft light came from all directions, even the floor, diffused through what looked like the silk walls of a tent.
Cassandra, the High Prince of the Lands, was standing to one side of a table set with four armed chairs, plates, goblets, and platters of food.
“Where are we?” I said as both Nik and Wolf backed away.
“I’m not sure, exactly.” Cassandra was examining my face, her eyes huge and gray. “It’s a space Ice Tor arranged for me, when I explained that I could not go to you, and that you could not come to me.”
“I…” Suddenly my lips were trembling and my tongue wouldn’t work. Cassandra made a “tsk” sound and then I was in her arms. I stiffened, but instead of a cascade of smothering images I got nothing. Exactly nothing, except the strength and warmth of her arms around me, her hand patting me on the back, and the smell of saffron as I buried my face in the crook of her neck. I’d been unable to take this comfort from anyone else, afraid of what I’d read when I touched them. I wrapped my arms around her so tightly that I could feel the tiny scales on the mail she was wearing under the fine cloth of her shirt.
All of a sudden I was weeping. These were the tears that hadn’t come when they’d told me what had happened to Alejandro. I hadn’t even been able to say good-bye; he’d Faded while I was still waiting for help in the Panorama Lounge. His dra’aj was spread through most of the Outsiders who’d been in the Gardens that day, but it hurt me to touch them. The arms around me tightened.
“He was your fara’ip.” The liquid tones of her voice seemed to swirl around me, warm and comforting as a hot bath. “He honored us all with his life, and with his death. It was a proud ending, and he was ready.”
I nodded. But I wasn’t. I didn’t say the words aloud, but somehow I knew that Cassandra heard them.
What I did hear was a shuffling of feet behind me. I drew in a ragged breath, and Cassandra’s arms loosened but still supported me as I straightened.
“We have all the time we need,” she said, shooting a glance behind me. “This space is apart from all things.”
I heard her, but I was focused on the shoulder of her shirt. The material was perfectly dry and unwrinkled, not at all as though I’d just been wiping my snotty nose on it.
Come to think of it, I didn’t have a snotty nose. Cassandra caught my eye and smiled. The smile I gave back to her was shaky, but real. She lifted my left hand and touched the scar with her gra’if-covered fingers.
“Valory, I do not think I can heal this without removing my gra’if, and that might do you more harm than good.”
I took in a deep breath, all the way in, something that, until now, I hadn’t been able to do without a sob catching me in the back of the throat. “That’s okay,” I said. “It…it reminds me that everything is real.”
“I understand. Come.” Holding me now by the arm, Cassandra turned me toward the table and indicated a chair. “Take some food, and some drink, and then we will talk.”
I took the nearest chair, and Cassandra sat down across from me. Wolf sat down in the chair to my right, and Nik to my left. Nik perched right on the front edge of the chair, and looked from the food to Cassandra’s face as if he didn’t know which was more marvelous.
“Is it safe to eat?” he asked, his voice pitched low.
Wolf frowned, but Cassandra only smiled again. “I know what you’re thinking of, and yes, it is. The food is charmed—all food in the Lands is—but not to keep humans here.” Her smile changed a little, and Nik swallowed. “We use other charms for that.” Then she laughed, the spell broke, and Nik was able to lean back in his seat. He shot a quick look at me, raised the center of his eyebrows and half shrugged. Even a few hours ago that shrugging would have reminded me painfully of Alejandro, but now the pain was gone.
Cassandra truly didn’t seem to be in any kind of hurry, smiling as she let Wolf and Nik pour the wine and offer meats and breads from the platters and baskets, but I was feeling so much better I was ready to begin. As if she sensed this, Cassandra put down her goblet.
“Valory, when did you know that the Horn would be blown by Fox?”
Nik moved as if he was going to reach toward me, but let his hand drop. Wolf put down the roll he’d been layering with cheese and looked up. His eyes were a little bit like Cassandra’s: gray, with fire behind them. Though his fire was oddly dampened. I was suddenly reminded that I wasn’t the only one who’d lost somebody. He inclined his head ever so slightly, as if acknowledging my thought.
“I knew when I touched it in my dining room,” I said. “Not just that it would be him, but that it had to be.”
“When I told you that you would not have an easy time of things, I had no idea.” Cassandra sighed, shaking her head slowly from side to side. “And the relationship between the Lands and the Shadowlands, how sure are you that it is as you described?”
Here we go again. Was this going to be my curse? Would people only believe what they wanted to hear?
“It is certain.” Wolf answered before I even opened my mouth. “Like so many of the memories of my life before the Hunt, I did not remember this until Valory spoke it aloud. But it is true. The Lands will not survive without the anchor of the Shadowlands.”
“It’s like a double solar system,” Nik said. I’m afraid we all blinked at him. He shrugged and went on talking. “Or a binary
star, whatever they’re calling it these days. Two masses revolving around each other, each dependent on the other.” He moved his fists around in front of him to illustrate. I nodded. “Take one star away,” he put one fist under the table, “and there’s nothing to keep the other one in place.” He let the other fist drop.
“And in order to create this anchor, dra’aj was taken from the Lands and stored in the Shadowlands?” Cassandra looked around at all of us, as if she wasn’t sure who would answer.
“That’s what I got from Ice Tor,” I said. “The Dwarves and the Trolls were the ones who created the doorways between the two worlds.”
Cassandra narrowed her eyes and began to nod. “Now I know who to ask to fix the broken Portals.”
“They were the ones who figured out that the anchor could be made by spreading out dra’aj,” I said. “And how much needed to be moved.”
“And Wolf was involved with this project?”
Now we were all looking at Wolf again, and I could read the respect, and even the awe in the face of the High Prince. Wolf had been born into a time before any history that any of them could even remember. Not just lifetimes ago, but Cycles.
Wolf looked up from the piece of bread he was crumbling, turning his head to me. “He was a courier,” I said. “Wolf and others, all of them Riders.”
“Did they all become Hounds?” Nik asked. “So all the ones we killed –?”
“No, some of them came along later.” Cassandra made a movement with her hand, and I looked at her.
“Couriers,” she said.
“Well, the dra’aj had to be transferred somehow.” I glanced back at Wolf, and he was still looking at me, his gray eyes cold and bleak in his pale face. I cleared my throat. “I didn’t know until I was touching both of them at once,” I said. “Both Wolf and his brother. Then I could see it. How they had started out the same way.”
“The High Prince—not you, Truthsheart, the High Prince of that time—was a Natural and he could give us the dra’aj to carry.” Wolf reached out for his goblet of wine, but he only turned it around, without picking it up. “There was a Chant—there is a Chant—that draws dra’aj out of the Lands.” He looked up. “And also, as we later learned, out of the People. It was important work, it carried much prestige and honor.” Wolf dropped his eyes again. “I asked for my brother to be made part of the group—”
“You mean he nagged at you until you gave in,” I corrected. “Fox couldn’t stand that Wolf had something of importance that he didn’t have himself.”
Wolf shrugged. He knew I was right, but that didn’t make it easier for him to acknowledge. “We did not know our danger—no one did—until it was too late.”
“Only the High Prince can be exposed to so much dra’aj without becoming addicted.” Cassandra had the air of someone who was putting some pieces together herself.
Wolf grimaced. “I do not know how it was done, but when the danger was discovered, the dra’aj of the Lands was cut off from us, to keep us from glutting ourselves.”
“But not the dra’aj of the People.” Cassandra poured herself another goblet of wine. The food on her plate was untouched.
“No, that was not possible.”
“But they had the Horn,” I said. Wolf looked grateful to have the focus taken off him. “And they used it to put the Hunt to sleep—like hibernation,” I added when Nik made a noise in his throat. “So that the couriers wouldn’t be a danger to anyone or to themselves while they figured out the problem.”
“But they did not figure it out,” Cassandra said.
“Well, no.” I shrugged. “Later on, much later, maybe even after another Cycle, someone found the Horn who didn’t know what it was for, and blew it.”
“And we awoke, and became the Hunt.” We all heard the whisper of a growl in Wolf’s voice.
Somehow I wasn’t surprised that it was Nik who finally broke the silence. “I can see it’s good to know all this, the history of how our worlds connect, and how important we are in the larger scheme of things, but what happens now?” he said.
“I understand that some of the Hunt escaped?” Cassandra said.
“Seventeen were killed outright, including Foxblood.” Wolf didn’t raise his eyes from his own clasped hands. I wasn’t the only person feeling alone just now. “Five submitted and have been Healed,” he continued. “They have been placed with the Wild Riders for their own protection and security.”
“A safe enough haven while we see if the Healing takes,” Cassandra said.
“So that is twenty-two, leaving five unaccounted for.”
“And they are scattered, no longer a Pack.”
I cleared my throat. “That’s if we go by how many there were when Wolf was Pack Leader,” I said. “There may not even be a whole Five left. We know some were killed before. Wolf and Nighthawk killed one in Spain. Alejandro killed one outside Union Station.” I was proud of the way my voice didn’t change. “But our count may be off just the same. Something I picked up on when I touched Fox,” I said, turning to Max. “I think some of the Basilisk Warriors got hooked.” I looked at Cassandra. “I know you killed one once,” I said. “I don’t know if that one was part of the original count.”
Wolf shook his head, once, still not looking up.
“We can try to create another Horn, but Ice Tor is not optimistic about our chances.” Cassandra picked up her goblet and put it down again without drinking from it. “The danger is not great, with so few left, but we cannot ignore it. Wolf. I fear to ask this of you.”
“If we had nets, made of gra’if, I believe they could be captured. I will not hunt them, unless the attempt is made.”
Nik looked as though he might say something, but he glanced at me and stayed quiet.
“I will ask for volunteers,” Cassandra said, “and speak to the Solitaries about the possibility of such artifacts.”
She’d get most of her volunteers from the Wild Riders, I thought. That was a bunch willing to try out new things.
“But I must do something more. Now that the Hounds are stable, and can Move, I must consider that they may also be able to use the Portals. For that reason, I must order them closed.”
Wolf looked up, startled.
“I hope this will be only temporary, until a Horn is made, or the nets that Wolf suggests,” Cassandra was still speaking. “I acknowledge our responsibility to deal with the Hunt. But I still cannot spare any large force. Any Rider or Solitary who wishes to stay—Mountain Crag, the Troll, has already returned—may of course help the Outsiders. But any who choose this may be stranded there—at least for a time—as you may be yourself, Stormwolf.” It was clear from her expression that Cassandra had asked a question, and was waiting for an answer.
Wolf was silent for a long time, looking at Cassandra. I couldn’t tell what passed between them, but some kind of communication did. Wolf put out his hand to me and I reached for it, figuring that he wanted me to confirm something, or to answer some kind of question. Then I saw it was his left hand, and that, like me, he was still missing a finger.
As he took my hand, he looked across the table at Nik. And Nik grinned, shrugging with just his right shoulder, and nodded. So I knew what Wolf was going to say before he said it.
“I stay in the Shadowlands,” he said. “I stay with my fara’ip.”
I let out a breath I didn’t even know I was holding.
Violette Malan lives in a nineteenth-century farmhouse in southeastern Ontario with her husband. Born in Canada, Violette’s cultural background is Spanish and Polish, which can make things interesting in the kitchen. She has worked as a teacher of creative writing, English as a second language, Spanish, beginner’s French, and choreography for strippers. On occasion she’s been an administrative assistant and a carpenter’s helper. Her most unusual job was translating letters between lovers, one of whom spoke only English, the other only Spanish.
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