“About half a league from the gate, on the Old Road.”
“How is the Old Road any better than the forest?” she sputtered.
Wolfsbane clamped a firm hand on her wrist to steady her. Was their proximity to the gate why she felt weaker, why her light had dimmed? She wanted to believe this was simply the case. That it had nothing to do with the marks on her arms, with the burning on her chest telling her just how far they had grown.
Wolfsbane tucked her into his furs more firmly, fussing in a way that made her eyes sting. Her own father had never been so kind. Wolfsbane offered her a slice of meat from his pack. “Eat.”
Vynasha gnawed at the dried meat without question, no matter that she craved fresher fare of late.
Wolfsbane reached to stoke new life into the fire. “Those drakkor, nasty wretches snuck through the mirror before there was a city or a gate keeper. They are old as Bitterhelm, so I was told.”
Vynasha shook her head. “This one called herself the Changeling, like she was alone in the world. But I saw her name in my mind. She wasn’t always what you say. She was wrong, just like everything in this forest is wrong.”
“Best leave the forgotten wylderlings alone, girl. No Changelings left this side of the mirror save that one, it seems, and that’s a mercy. True, not all were bad. Many creatures were created with good intentions only to fall into the darkness that plagues our worlds. The changelings turned against their maker and paid the price.” Wolfsbane’s tone was firm and unforgiving, just as it had been during their first meeting as he described the Lost City. But there was a hesitance and fear at the edge of his voice and a tightening in his thick arms, as though he expected her to crumble away.
What did he see in the darkness? What false memories did she give him?
“No majik from this world will undo their curse now,” Wolfsbane said, “and no misguided sacrifice on your part will satisfy it. Pray you wounded it enough it has long left us behind. Think no more on it tonight.”
Vynasha flexed her fingers and felt the prickling sting travel up her arms. “So,” she cleared her throat and began, “I suppose you weren’t ever going to tell me we might run across a soul-sucking demon. All your lessons and you didn’t think to warn me. What else is out here in this forest?” She smiled at his chuckle and lighter tone. Maybe he needed to forget too.
Wolfsbane chuckled. “Should I tell you, then, of every foul ghoul and wight that haunts this land?” He flipped a dagger free of its hidden sheath and angled it to reflect the firelight.
“If it helps us stay alive, then yes,” she said. But her breath still seized at the memory of the darkness swallowing him whole. Vynasha had been certain she would never see him again.
You’re all I have left, old man.
“There is darkness in the air we breathe,” he muttered.
Vynasha froze at his words. He couldn’t know what was in her mind. He was only human, after all, she reminded herself.
“Soraya did not infect this land with evil. It was here already, in our hearts and the monsters we create from ourselves.” The hunter sighed, but the weight of years and madness weakened his words. “Pray you never know such evil as I have, Vynasha.”
The sound of her name passing his lips shocked her into remembering Wolfsbane was not wholly mad. There were quiet moments when the air fell still and the glint in his eye gave in to a sanity hung by a taut thread of vengeance and memory. She could almost see the man he used to be in her mind’s eye, and a sliver of cold fear licked her spine.
What did she show you in the darkness?
Vynasha licked her cracked lips and attempted a smile. “I think you should get some sleep, old man, before you add new lines to your face.”
Wolfsbane chuckled. “I must do as the curse breaker commands, mustn’t I? What use would I be to her should I let her fall to shadow too? What would our world become should she forsake her light?”
Her smile turned genuine as he wrapped his arms about her, cocooning her in his warmth as he attempted to settle enough to rest. She had no such plans, not tonight, nor any night as long as she could help it. The darkness was too near. She glanced at the fire and waited until the hunter’s breathing evened into a faint snore. Then she pulled free enough to poke life into the fire and add kindling.
Unseen beasts moved through the Silverblud Forest at night. So near the road to the Lost City, she listened carefully with her ears and cursed senses. But soon the comfort of warmth and Wolfsbane’s embrace lulled her to complacency.
So she drifted on the edge of sleeping and waking, listening to the forest and the stars and the sounds of her beasts searching, ever searching for their savior.
A wolf’s howl pierced the crisp night air in the distant gloom. She shivered awake to find the prince’s dagger in her hand and clasped to her chest, Wolfsbane’s arms loose about her waist.
Vynasha looked from her dagger to the shadows and shook off the weariness in her bones. Her grip tensed on the hilt of her dagger, and the muscles in her forearm spasmed. With a low hiss, she held up her bared arms. Dully gleaming violet blood was seeping from the tattoos.
Cursing beneath her breath, Vynasha took one last survey of the forest before setting her dagger in her lap and carefully peeling back her tattered sleeves. For a long moment, she stared at what moon and firelight revealed.
Unmistakable as they were unnatural, the jagged, swirling markings covered her forearm and reached further up the sleeve of her dress. Her encounter with the Changeling had been so sudden and violent that sleep had already obscured the lesser details. Like the patterns slowly changing shape over her damaged skin, evidence of the darkness she had pulled from the creature.
Baalor cannot see this, she thought as she lightly ran a finger along the pattern. She bit her lip as a dark corner of her mind flared with delight at the touch.
Phurie, it crooned to her with a hiss.
Vynasha squeezed her eyes shut and picked up her dagger again, comforted by its familiar weight and the press of rubies against her skin.
Vynasha barked a cry when a large hand covered hers. She opened her eyes and found Wolfsbane clutching her tighter.
“Easy, beasty. It’s all right. Let it go.” He squeezed her hand, and she released her dagger upon reflex. Vynasha watched numbly as he turned her trembling palm to reveal fresh blood. A sob escaped her lips, and without warning, without hesitation, he was there. She twisted in his embrace and snaked her arms about his neck.
Burly arms encased her slight frame. She had been nearly emaciated when he first found her and Wyll lost in the forest. She had opened her eyes to him then, to his strange words and kind but manic blue eyes. His beard tickled her cheek as she buried her face in his chest.
“I’m sorry!”
“Hush, lass. No harm done.” His hand came to press gently against the back of her head in a gesture he must have once used on his daughter. It was the way she had comforted Wyll once, before she had listened to a beggar’s lies and brought them to this cursed land.
“It’s all my fault.” She had said the words so often to herself but never realized how bitter they sounded aloud.
Wolfsbane hummed low in his chest. “None of that, now. Sleep, little witch, and in the morning, we’ll take you home.”
SHE WOKE TO the sound of roars. Her eyes flew open the same moment she pulled her dagger and twisted into a crouch. Curls fell into her face as she tried to grasp her bearings. The sky was yet dim, still darker with the oncoming spring. An eerie fog coated the forest floor, obscuring the source of the beastly growls.
Vynasha forced her breathing to slow so she could hear over her racing heart. Another roar sounded from the other side of the extinguished fire.
Not fog. Smoke.
She inhaled, and suddenly it was all she could do not to release what little remained in her stomach. Her eyes stung as she blinked back tears and crept closer to the sounds of battle.
Wolfsbane shouldered into view, near enough she could reach out
and touch his cloak. His bear-like arms rose in time to catch curling black claws with his blades. His arms shook against the beast’s weight.
Vynasha shook her head and kept low to the ground until she saw flashes of ivory fur. This beast was quick, too quick. She clutched the amulet about her neck and sank to her knee in the sludge.
Though his leathers and furs offered some protection, not even Wolfsbane’s blades could stand against the speed of his attacker.
The man’s knives were as legendary as his name, subject to cautionary tales by pack mothers to their pups. “Beware the Wolfsbane and his White Fang and Biter. Beware the kiss of Nephthys,” they had whispered in the village.
But no matter how quickly the human moved, the beast was faster. In fact, if Vynasha didn’t know better, she’d think this beast was out for Wolfsbane’s blood specifically.
But why? Who are you?
Pushing her thought out to the beast was like pushing through packed ice rather than snow. Instead of falling into the beast’s mind as she normally would have, Vynasha’s thought bounced off.
Vynasha bit her lip and tried again.
Stop.
The beast did not listen, only moved faster. Wolfsbane’s laughter was replaced with berserker rage. But Wolfsbane could not battle the beast alone much longer. Not that she could have convinced him of this. Clearly, Wolfsbane was enjoying the fight, for all he smelled of fear.
No. My fear.
Fear for the stubborn hunter drove Vynasha to hide her dagger behind her cloak as she stood and walked into the fight. She ignored the scattered coals beneath her leather boots, locking her focus on the ivory blur dancing in and around Wolfsbane’s defense.
Stop, she tried again, brushing the thought against the beast’s to no avail. Her mind had felt off since the Changeling had attempted to possess her, but now she began to feel true terror. She clutched the amulet tighter with her free hand.
“Please!” she begged whatever power was listening.
The beast caught Wolfsbane’s leg just before he could jump back. He cried out, and the scent of blood thickened the air. Though he sliced Biter in a vengeful arc over the beast’s head, it only used the momentum to snap its open jaws at his side.
“No!” Vynasha cried, tripping over her feet as she fell. Her hand touched the beast’s rear flank and caught a handful of ivory fur.
Wolfsbane stumbled backward, missing the bite that would have ended his life.
The beast shuddered against Vynasha’s hold but went completely still, frozen by her will.
Touch alone had worked.
The beast’s sage-green eye met hers, and for a moment Vynasha saw the Wolvs.
Baalor.
Vynasha took in the rest of the massive creature’s visage: tail of a wolf with the girth of a bear and the head of a wyldcat. Were it not for the obvious, she would have thought Baalor had come to punish Wolfsbane for her injuries. Instead she stared into the creature’s eye and saw both intelligence and fear behind it.
What is your name? She pushed the thought to the beast with ease, like falling through water rather than snow.
A pause, and then the beast’s soft voice entered Vynasha’s mind in reply. Luanor. I have been watching you for some time now, curse breaker, as you have hunted my kind.
Vynasha gaped at the name, at the clothes on her back, belonging to a long-dead Wolv sister, daughter and aunt. Luanor Iceveins? Careful to keep the last thought to herself, Vynasha flexed her fingers against surprisingly soft fur and thought back, I have tried to be—kind to them.
Luanor dipped her head in acknowledgment. Yes. But it is not enough. Not all are like me. Others are coming, worse than you have faced before. You cannot run from the curse any longer. You must return and finish it.
The amulet against her chest glowed. Vynasha sucked in a breath as the beast’s eye narrowed and focused on the light beneath her hand. I don’t know if I can.
They will never stop hunting you, Luanor insisted, a whine at the back of her throat. I cannot keep my brethren at bay. If you do not return, their madness will consume them.
“Send the beast on and be done with it!” Wolfsbane urged from behind Vynasha.
Vynasha’s legs were shaking, and her grip on the beast was faltering.
Luanor’s voice in her head softened. I was one of the hopeful once, like you. I failed him because I was not strong enough. But you were born for this purpose.
Vynasha blinked, and in her mind’s eye, she could see the beauty of Luanor’s human form, and she felt the love the Wolv had given to Grendall. She saw all this and blinked back tears, because Luanor had known what she was walking into from the beginning and had accepted it. She had wanted to end the suffering of her people and had taken the place of another, younger girl.
Vynasha blinked back violet tears and pressed her free hand to Luanor’s beastly flank. You deserved more than this, she thought to the beast. Vynasha whispered, “Be free, sister. Return to the form you once knew.”
A thunderclap and burst of indigo light filled the clearing. Vynasha saw her reflection in Luanor’s iris, watched the shadows dance over her bare skin in shifting patterns beneath the light. Pain flared up Vynasha’s arms as fresh wounds split anew.
“Let go, lass!” Wolfsbane shifted as if to grab her, then hesitated. “One more beasty cannot change the course of this war! Please, Nymwe, do not force me to do this again!”
Luanor snarled as her bones snapped and the shift began, the leeching of the curse dragged forcibly from her monstrous bones and back into the curse breaker.
“Return to the form you once knew,” Vynasha ground out against the pain. “Return to the…”
Return…return…
A woman’s scream could now be heard beneath the beast’s growls.
As she drew on the endless majikal source within her, Vynasha felt her physical strength leave until she barely noticed the way her bloody hands sought to tether to bare skin rather than fur. Vynasha blinked through the haze and caught glimpses of pale skin, waist-length silver hair, and fangs growing from a woman’s mouth…muzzle?
Wolfsbane gasped. “You.” A bear-like arm snagged Vynasha from behind, pulling her back against a familiar chest while keeping a dagger pointed at the shifting female growling before them.
“Wolfsbane, you bloody traitor!” Luanor growled. “You’ll pay for what you did to my brother.” Her words turned into screams as she shifted once more.
Howls pierced Vynasha’s ears as her vision darkened. The pitched cry was all around them and then echoed farther away in the distance.
“Damned Wolvs!” Wolfsbane hauled Vynasha over his shoulder before she fell. “Hang on to me, Nymwe!”
Vynasha shuddered at the name but obeyed. She clung to Wolfsbane’s furs and wished she had the strength to open her eyes. She shouldn’t have weakened so quickly. What was wrong with her?
Howls pursued them.
Pack. Baalor.
In her delirium, Vynasha lost track of time and place. She bounced against Wolfsbane’s back, but the older male somehow managed to keep her close. She longed to sleep, to fade away in that darkness the Changeling had gifted her with.
Instead, the howls brought her back to a world awash with a new sun, flashes of white snow and gray stone. The terrain was unfamiliar and familiar at once, like a place from her nightmares.
She was held against the hunter’s heaving chest. How was he still running? Sometimes Vynasha was convinced Wolfsbane was not simply human.
How he would love to hear you say this, she thought with a smile.
Then came the creak of a heavy gate.
Vynasha tightened her grip about Wolfsbane’s neck. “Where are we going?”
“Not long now and I shall see you safely home,” Wolfsbane huffed above her.
Vynasha blinked as a bout of weariness stole her senses. She needed to stay awake, to ask him—ask where they were…
Instead she fell into dreams and memory.
One of the first hunts she took with Wolfsbane had been after her first fight with Baalor. Well, it wasn’t exactly their first fight but rather the first since things had changed. Since he took her last vestige of innocence.
Wolfsbane laughed when she met him at the agreed-upon place outside the village boundaries. “I know a lovers’ quarrel when I see one!” He teased her as much as he goaded her into telling him the rest.
“He is still angry with me for speaking to the Council without him. I needed to do this myself, to prove to them I’m capable. I’m not—I never was good with people, before—but now…”
Wolfsbane sobered so quickly it shocked her into meeting his knowing blue gaze. “Now you are more.” He said it so simply but so sincerely. It was the first time she realized he didn’t hate her the way he should.
Vynasha woke to the sound of Wolfsbane muttering beneath her. She could no longer hear the Wolvs, and memories of the night before flooded her consciousness. Shame heated her cheeks that he had been forced to carry her.
She opened her mouth to ask him to set her down.
“Didn’t mean to deceive you, beasty…couldn’t risk before.” Wolfsbane’s words stilled her tongue.
“Damned Grolthox had you too close, and now you brought her back. We could not risk it, not now as you are so close.”
Vynasha opened her eyes to rows of silver birch trees lining a winding uphill path and inhaled the cloying sweetness of majik.
Not just majik…the curse.
“Wolfsbane?” Vynasha struggled against him, only to find her hands and feet were tied. “Put me down,” she said as calmly as she possibly could. She bit back her fear and the growing sense of betrayal fraying at her patience.
He shuddered against her. Sweat rolled down his cheeks… or were those tears?
“What have you done?”
Madness was rife in his blue eyes. “Taking you home, curse breaker…to return our true prince to power.”
“No… You—you’re all I have left! You can’t…”
You can’t give me to him! Don’t you dare leave me.
Vynasha couldn’t breathe and struggled anew. “Let me go…let me go!” She would have screamed if the sudden blow to her head hadn’t stopped her. Pain and numbness sent her back to that dizzying darkness where the Changeling’s shadow waited.
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