Holding the carcass up with one bloodied hand, Kitt pulled the organs down and out with the other, his face grim as he tossed them into the woods. He turned back and held open the empty cavity. "You can see the fat here," he pointed, "left over from the winter. Looks like he's been eating better than we have. We got lucky catching such a healthy rabbit. If you're still hungry, we should rinse this and get it to Etty."
The hunger had soured in her stomach, but Ember nodded.
Kitt noticed her discomfort. "The worst part's over. You'll get used to it. Maybe next time we can surprise Etty with two animals rather than one."
Let's hope so. She regarded Kitt as he tossed the rabbit's head and feet deeper into the forest. "Aren't you afraid of losing yourself when you hunt like that?"
He held the wet, bloody carcass and waited for her to stand. "When I hunt as an animal? Never. Why?"
A twinge of envy. She rose, trying to keep her voice light. "Because the animal always wants what it wants. Which isn't always what I want."
They started walking into camp. Compared to flying in hawk-form, walking in human form made her feel like a slug crawling through the dense shrubs and brambles that sprawled across the forest floor. She made herself slow to Kitt's pace.
"I find that I perform better when I follow the instincts and trust that I can regain control when it's done."
Yes, you do have a tendency of letting go. She still felt the memory of his cougar's breath wrapping around her throat, and the puncture of sharp claws in her arm.
She swallowed. "I think I'll check the perimeter." She waved a hand at Kitt. "You go without me, it was yours anyway. Thanks for the lesson."
Kitt glanced at her before looking down at the rabbit. His frown slipped into a scowl. Did the man never smile? Of course he did, Ember thought, reminding herself of when he taught the orphans. Just not around me.
"The wizard took a newborn. During the last attack."
Ember halted, straining to hear his low voice. The carcass in his hands seemed forgotten, and the leaves overhead painted his face with shadows.
"He killed the babe before defiling and killing the mother. I caught him as he drove a spear through her throat." He looked at Ember, and the shadows were nothing against the darkness in his eyes. "I cut off his hands and castrated him. Then we ate him."
Bile rose in Ember's mouth, and she saw her own disgust reflected in his expression. She glimpsed something else there, too, something she longed—no, needed—to see, but her own anger chased it away.
"Why are you telling me this?"
"You wanted to know the truth. Do you feel better for knowing now?"
Heat pounded in her veins. "Do I feel better knowing you're a cannibal?" she asked in a strained voice. "That you're more beastly than—" Arundel. My father. But Arundel wasn't her father and he had eaten animals he had killed—why not shifters, too? "No."
She wanted to scream at him; she wanted to understand. She could only walk away, and that's what she did.
Revulsion churned in her stomach. How had she not known? She had spied, yes, and heard stories before, but she'd never seen the real war of the rebellion. She'd seen Arundel abuse and kill animals, but had never ventured in the dungeons in animal-form—except for the one time as a mouse—for fear of discovery. She never saw first-hand the cruelty that took place beneath Silverglen, and she had never seen the horror other shifters experienced. Nor the horrible things the shifters did in response. So many terrible things had happened, and not just inside the walls of Silverglen’s dungeon.
I will never understand and I should be glad.
Why wasn't she?
chapter Twenty-nine
That night, ember stalked the camp's perimeter like a caged cougar. Her disgusted anger had fizzled away with a meager portion of the rabbit stew, somehow more savory than she remembered it being, and had left her feeling unbearably hollow.
Her reaction to Kitt had been foolish. Who was she to get angry with him? She had no right to judge what she hadn't been through herself. Whatever he had done, he clearly didn't enjoy the memory. And it hadn't helped that she had walked away, running from the truth just as she always did. Just as Kitt accused her of doing.
Ember tried to focus on the worn Glamour web sprawling between two oak saplings. She had helped the wizards re-cast the perimeter that afternoon, patching up the holes the rain had washed away, and still she found sections where the camp fires shone through like a beacon. With impatient flicks of her hand, she tied up the space with an illusion of leaves and twigs, even going so far as to add a thick vine of poison-birch.
Maybe the vine will be enough to keep them away. She should search for Fletch's patrol again, perhaps this very night. Finding no sign of them worried her. Patrols usually didn't give up their mission—they wouldn't want to risk Arundel's wrath—but Ember still didn't know what exactly their mission was. She wouldn't try to kill them. She would find a way to listen and watch for—
"Yip!" The distinct wolf-like noise skittered along the forest floor.
Ember crouched, spells and patrols forgotten, and peered in the direction of the sound.
She glimpsed the wolf pack through scrawny sunberry branches. White canines, lagging tongues, ears erect and tails pointed like the prow of a boat. She looked for Jinni at the lead but made out nothing beyond fallen logs and spreading dogwoods.
The spells on the perimeter would have to wait.
With hardly another thought, Ember stepped out of her dress and whirled onto all fours, trotting downwind from the pack as she followed them southwest. She caught scent of Jinni and many others whom she recognized but didn't know. Seven in total.
The group traveled west around the base of a mountain. They climbed over jagged outcrops, splashed through a shallow stream, and skirted the edge of a blackened clearing smelling of lightening and ash.
The wind stilled and shifted.
In one jagged inhale, the pack ahead turned their black eyes on Ember, their lips curling back into snarls. Jinni turned and spotted Ember, and suddenly the leggy wolf sprinted like mad toward her.
There would be no polite discussion. No reasonable explanations or excuses. The light from the fading sun burned orange in Jinni's eyes and dyed her tongue a brilliant red. Her paws stained black from the ground, and the dust churned up behind her like a shroud.
RUN! Ember's muscles screamed to move, yearned to work under the tension of her own wild pulse.
Instead, she pulled her lips back and gripped the ground, flattening her ears and raising a tail in defense.
Jinni lunged.
Piercing canines constricted Ember's throat and forced her down, threatening to crunch. The sting of drawn blood and the wheeze of her own breath made Ember struggle harder. Jinni pinned her to the ground. Perhaps she wanted Ember to fight back, to satiate her need for hateful bloodshed. Ember rolled instead, her muzzle grinding into the charred earth, and exposed her belly.
Submission.
Panting, Jinni released her and snarled. I am the leader, her eyes said. Defy me and I will kill you.
As quickly as Jinni had come, she trotted away. Ember leapt up to see the rest of the pack follow their leader beyond the clearing and deeper to the south.
Feeling somehow more confident, Ember shook herself and followed, keeping behind the last of the pack.
Two wolves veered east, splitting up so that one went north while the other curved to the south. The others in the pack continued to follow Jinni.
Ember lowered her nose close to the ground. A faint, musky scent warmed the sedges. A doe. And another subtle smell that sent a shiver down her spine. But she wouldn't think about that now. The others had already picked up the doe's trail, and now Jinni guided them southwest, shifting downwind of the potential prey.
Ember followed, watching the pack for signs of what to do. They edged around a clump of alders, and the smell of deer excrements hung heavy in the evening air.
The trotting wolves burst
into a run.
Ember joined them, panting to keep up. Through the oaks, she saw the doe approach at a sprint, chased by the lone wolf who had veered north.
The doe jerked left of the pack, her tail a white flag through the trees and her muscled legs leaping unbelievable strides.
She is made for this.
The pack turned sharply, their shortened strides keeping them just behind their prey. The doe smelled fearful but strong, which worried Ember. Kitt had told her during their lesson that wolves usually took down the weak, the old, and the young. To try for a healthy adult was risky, if not foolish. Ember had a feeling that neither of those things mattered to Jinni.
The doe spun around, halting Ember's human thoughts. The pack circled the doe, lunging at neck and rump, but she kicked out with pummeling hooves and wound in tight circles to prevent any one wolf from grabbing her.
She stood her ground as night’s face darkened the woods. One of the wolves latched onto her rump and yipped when she kicked him. The sound of his cry pulled Ember closer, and her wolf's instincts yearned to attack. Another wolf lunged to bite the doe's rump, and the doe spun with such force that she tossed the wolf aside. A flap of hide dangled from her open wound, but the doe fought on.
A third wolf grabbed the doe's throat and earned a sharp kick to her ribs. That wolf fell back, limping, but continued hovering close by, offering her support to the others with snarls and snaps. Jinni, Ember realized. They followed her lead, even though their leader had chosen a dangerous prey, and they trusted her with their lives.
Ember felt the pull, too. She was part of the pack now, if only temporarily. The pack meant survival. And family.
As though sensing her wolf-thoughts, Jinni turned and gave her a challenging, direct look. Why aren't you helping, her look said.
Ember's human mind struggled to find an answer, and in that space of a moment, her wolf's senses picked up a subtle shift in the doe's stance. Only three wolves toward her front including Jinni, while the others gathered at her back and sides. Her tattered rump and front limbs bunched. Her head lowered.
Jinni turned back to the doe, not realizing the doe moved on the verge of jumping, or that she stood directly in the doe's path.
Ember's wolf instincts caught fire in her limbs. She shot toward the doe, watching as the prey began moving into the leap.
Within half a second, Jinni and the others realized what was going on, but by then the doe was arcing through the air, strips of hide dangling after, her muzzle bloody from a bite and frothing with exhaustion.
The doe landed heavily, her grace gone and panic riding every inch of her like a hoard of stinging ants. One leap ending began the start of another; a few more and she'd be safe.
That sliver of freedom slipped away as Ember lunged and clamped down on the doe's neck.
Terror filled her nose. Sweat and blood and hide filled her mouth. Ember swung in the air as the doe jerked back, but then Jinni and the others swarmed the deer, pulling with determination.
Trembling, the doe tried to leap again, but the weight of the pack forced her down. She kneeled, hot breath gusting through wide nostrils, and her eyes, like black pools, seemed already empty as she succumbed to shock. Ember released her grip.
Jinni sliced the doe's throat with an un-wolf-like deftness of a claw. The doe shuddered violently as the blood streamed from her.
They waited while night dimmed the sky, until the doe's gaze turned flat and dull. Ember's wolf-side wanted to eat with the others, but her human-side wished to retreat into solidarity.
She shook herself. It is for the children.
Another smell that she had caught earlier trailed into her senses.
Ember bent her face to the ground and followed the scent away from the doe, tracing back to where they first found the prey. Her human-mind felt numb, empty, but her wolf senses drove her forward.
She traced through a clump of sunberry shrubs and over a small hill, around three huge oak trees, and into a thicket of brambles. She squeezed past the piercing thorns, hidden by darkness but unable to keep silent.
A faint scent of milk, hide, and hunger. Curled tightly among the short sedges, leaf litter, and brambles, the fawn formed a small speckled swirl of brown that nearly made him disappear into his surroundings. He waited for his mother to return, Ember knew. But she wouldn't come back, and he would wander for days calling out until falling dead from starvation, if some predator didn't get him first.
He didn't move as she approached, and he remained silent until her teeth clamped on his neck.
She cut off his desperate bleat with a quick, twisting yank.
His skin was soft against her teeth, would easily tear to expose the succulent meat beneath—
Spinning, tilting, whirling.
Ember gasped back into human form, stomach roiling, mind a foggy blur. She clutched the ground, brambles stabbing her fingers. Her sense of smell seemed almost gone. A cool edge to the air, dirt, the faint scent of animal.
The fawn's fur ran like silk beneath her palms.
She dug her hands beneath his body and pulled him against her chest. Light, like a child. Fragile. Soft. Warm.
She carried him back to the others while his warmth faded away. Laid him, still and silent, at Jinni's paws.
Ember whirled back to wolf form.
Jinni gave a low growl followed by a sharp bark.
A sort of gathering call, Ember realized as the others swarmed around them. They had neatly set aside the meatiest parts of the deer—the legs and rump—presumably for trading, and had been gnawing on organs and bones. They seemed content and relaxed, tails wagging as they nudged against one another. Jinni stood, received a few licks to the face, and grabbed a hefty deer leg. The rest of the pack followed suit.
By the time they neared the small village sitting at the Lachian border, the fawn had grown stiff in Ember's mouth. They trotted down through the last of the mountains and into the wooded hills of Lach. A cluster of mud and daub homes sat near a river, quiet in the lull of night. Smells of human activity cooled in the air—sweet burning maple, ox dung, baked bread, and smoked meat. Ember made out the scents of cows, pigs, and chickens, smells strange to her after so long away from Silverglen, or any civilization.
Jinni guided them to the house on the outermost edge, dark but for a nub of candle burning in front of the wooden door. The meager light fluttered over two honey-pots, a metal canister, and a small cloth sack placed on the stone step at the foot of the door.
The pack edged close, hovering just beyond the touch of the candlelight, and sniffed the air. Jinni lay the first leg of meat beside the offering, carefully nudging it into a secure place against the door, her breath causing the flame's shadows to dance against the wall of the house. She turned, meeting Ember's gaze.
Nudging past the darkness, Ember took the stiffened fawn and laid it gently against the stone step. She licked her lips so her mouth wouldn't feel so empty, and sniffed the contents of the offering. Honey, as before, cream, and chicken eggs. No cheese this time.
She moved away as another wolf came bearing a second leg of meat. With the fawn gone, her mind began to clear, and in the clarity emerged a prick of cold.
Cold and metal. A spell.
She muttered a low growl and sank back, cloaking herself in darkness as she shifted to a crow. The others noticed her unease and stepped deeper into shadows, ears and noses working to make out a scent.
Ember flew up over the roof of the house and glided over one after another, tracing the feel of the spell as she would trace a scent.
She landed on the edge of a roof, where the road turned and twisted alongside the river, water churning to one side and mud houses squeezed together on the other. Ember looked down, hopping along the edge until she stood just above the spell. She cocked her head to see below and peered into the darkness.
Peeking around the side of a house, in dirt—stained trousers and a homespun canvas shirt, stood a leggy boy with a mop of black
hair. Ember couldn't see the spell but sensed its cold vapor reaching out to her like the fingers of winter. She sensed the spell near his hip.
A spy with a dagger? He watched the wolves, or what he could see of them, but beyond that he did nothing suspicious. He looked too young to be a wizard, but how then did he come by the spelled dagger? Perhaps a wizard had stopped by the village. Perhaps the wizard still stayed, and was here now... The wizard could have been Fletch, and the dagger might be the knife she had used on him.
Ember shivered.
She didn't sense any other spells nearby, and hadn't caught the metallic, proud scent of a wizard since arriving at the village. Either way, it wasn't safe for them to stay. The boy made her uneasy.
Ember flew back to the pack, who had retreated with the goods and made quick progress through the forest. She glided over Jinni, wary that the wolf might think it amusing to snatch her out of the air like a plaything, and landed several feet ahead. She snapped back to her human form, ignoring the customary biliousness and the cool touch of night.
"A boy," Ember said. The pack slowed in their walk, ears flipping back in irritation. Jinni exposed a canine. "He had a spelled dagger. There may have been wizards there..."
Jinni brushed past her.
"The food might be poisoned," Ember insisted. Why not? Ember had heard of much worse ways of wizards killing shifters. If wizards knew about the trading, poisoning would be an efficient way to finish off any shifter factions hiding in the Orion Mountains.
"If we smelled wizards," Jinni said, and Ember turned to see her standing straight as an arrow in human form, "we would have found and killed them." The black gem below her bottom lip shone iridescent as she spoke.
"They could've come and gone. Do you never test the food before you bring it back?"
With a smirk, Jinni waved at the wolves who carried the food. "Test it yourself."
Warily, the wolves set down their food. Ember approached and lifted a lid of the honey-pot. She lifted one and sniffed. Not that her human senses were of much use, and if the food carried a smell of poison she would have caught it with her wolf's senses.
Silverglen: A Young Adult Epic Fantasy Novel Page 18