Keeper of the Wolves (13 page)

I gave a short nod and Joven’s face lit up
in a pleased smile. “Great. Get your belongings and-” he paused as
if just remembering that I didn’t own anything. “Well, let’s go
then.”

“
I don’t think this is
necessary,” Koya argued again, but her voice was quiet and the edge
of defiance had left it.

“
If it keeps you safe, it’s
worth it,” Joven replied. “We’re inviting a thousand leeches to our
home and Vielkeep will be a dangerous place until they’re
gone.”

“
I wish I could say you’re
going too far with that assessment,” Koya said, regret heavy in her
tone.

“
Me, too,” her brother
replied. He glanced at the bandage that covered the shallow knife
wound on her neck. His jaw clenched and he looked away to hide the
anger that washed through his gaze.

Chapter 8

Rose-colored silk covered the walls in
Koya’s chambers which were made up of four separate rooms, a
sitting room, a sewing room, a guest reception room, and her
bedroom. The carpets and luxury of her grandfather’s quarters where
I had been allowed to stay during my sickness were nothing compared
to her chambers.

My bare feet settled into the deeply woven
woolen carpets and I looked around in uncertainty. I didn’t belong
with the cherry wood furniture that shone and smelled as though
polished daily with citrus scented cleaners. The clothing I wore
due to Joven’s generosity was torn and tattered by the fight and
stood in sharp contrast to the cream and maroon upholstered chairs.
Moonlight drifted through high windows to illuminate rectangles
that warred with the warm glow of the fire in the ivory fireplace.
Candles danced from candelabrum placed tastefully throughout each
room and gave off a faint scent of mint and honeyed wax.

Koya walked through the first chamber, then
paused at the doorway and gave me an anxious smile. “Would you mind
checking the rooms to make sure they’re empty?” Her tone told of
her embarrassment at asking, but her voice trembled slightly to
contradict her unaffected countenance. I remembered then that she
had just faced two near-death experiences. The assassin’s knife had
left a reminder on her elegant throat of how little it would have
taken for him to finish the job, and I doubted any of us
entertained illusions as to what would have happened if Joven, the
wolves, and I hadn’t stopped the Viel.

My nose informed me that no one had entered
the chamber but her handmaiden Tessa and another woman who smelled
of tallow and wood smoke, a keeper of the flames whose scent told
that she came nightly to light the fire and candles. Both were long
since gone, Tessa’s only remnant a small plate of pastries that
looked delicate and smelled of raspberries and cream. I walked
through the chambers anyway to give Koya peace of mind. The thought
made me feel strange, performing a pointless act just to appease
the fears of another, but my reward was her grateful smile when I
came back out into the sitting room and tipped my head toward the
door to indicate that everything was clear.

“
Joven was right,” she said.
At my silence, she smiled. “You do have a lot of wolf
mannerisms.”

A sudden yawn brought her hand to her mouth.
She threw me an apologetic look. “If I’m this tired, you must be
exhausted. I was held captive by a man and cowered in fear from a
monster. You chased a horse and took down the assassin, then
attacked the Viel.” She shook her head and lowered her eyes in an
effort to hide the sudden shine of liquid that filled them. “I wish
I had your courage.”

The pain and regret in her voice grabbed at
my heart with the strength of a bear. I swallowed down a lump that
rose in my throat and took a step forward. Tears spilled down her
cheeks despite her efforts to avoid them. Her hands trembled and
she clenched them in front of her as her eyes lost their focus.
Instead of the fading moonlight and fire-warmed furniture, I knew
she saw the hollows where the Viel’s eyes should have been and felt
the blade of the assassin’s knife across her throat. I had never
seen anyone stand silent in sorrow and fear before. She held it in
with a strength that dwarfed any courage I had shown.

I took another step and closed the space
between us. My hand rose of its own accord to her cheek and she
turned to look at me, surprise in her sad blue eyes. Her skin was
so soft under my fingers, and when she closed her eyes and tipped
her face into my palm, my heart turned sideways in my chest. I
opened my mouth to speak her name, but a tremor ran through my
limbs. I backed away, wishing for the first time in my life to
remain human instead of returning to my wolven body; and for the
first time, I felt my body hesitate.

There was no fighting the change. When I did
fight, it brought only futile pain; but I felt the hesitation, a
brief pause as though my body debated whether to comply with the
will of the moon or my own wishes. My breath caught, then my limbs
pulled and I shrugged out of the shirt in time to be brought to the
floor as my joints shifted and body changed from the long lithe
form of a human to the compact strength of the wolf.

Brown, gray, and black fur ran up my legs
and down my back to fight away the chill of the change. My vision
strengthened and the colors faded so that the blacks and grays
stood out in sharper contrast against the candlelit room. My ears
picked up the sounds of servants starting preparations for
breakfast even though the sun had not yet begun to rise. My nose
told of a tiny cricket living between the cracks in the wall and of
the valley where the raspberries grew that filled the pastries on
the table. My brain took all of these notes in an instant, filing
them away in case I needed them in the future. The wolven side of
me relished the strength that filled my limbs while the human side
yearned after something I was on the verge of forgetting.

I looked back at Koya. She watched me from
the doorway to her room with something I didn’t recognize in her
eyes. I thought for a moment I saw want in them as though she
wished she could change into an animal and hide from her human
problems if only for a little while. I wished I could tell her it
didn’t work that way. The human problems stayed even though I was
unable to confront them.

“
You can sleep where you
would like,” she said. A slight touch of pink brushed her cheeks at
the thought of me sleeping in her rooms even in my wolf form. She
hesitated, then turned away and stepped into the
bedchamber.

I knew from my brief surveillance that a
massive oak four-poster bed took up the middle of the room and was
hung with rose red silk and cream colored drapes. Dried flowers and
fresh roses gave her room the soft fragrance of spring and new
growth rich with sunshine. Her windows were open as though she
enjoyed the breeze that toyed through the curtains. It would have
been a potential entrance for assassins, but we were on the third
floor and the second contained a parapet occupied by Ramus’ double
guard. They walked below and though the sound might be troublesome
to sleep to, it no doubt brought peace of mind to Koya and her
brother.

I couldn’t get comfortable despite the
luxurious carpets and banked fire. Whenever I settled down,
thoughts of the assassin and the way my blood thundered through my
veins as I chased him brought me back to my feet. I paced the
floor, my paws soundless and steady. Exhaustion warred through my
limbs, but my mind refused to succumb to the peace of sleep. The
howls of the pack echoed in my mind and I debated whether I had
made the right choice in returning to the castle. I was a wolf
trapped in the body of a human long enough to cause trouble but not
long enough that I could get settled into the customs and speech. I
wondered if I would always be on the edge, not quite in one world
or the other, an outcast in my mind as well as body.

A soft mutter came from Koya’s room. I
paused and glanced over my shoulder at the partially-open door,
wondering if I should check on her, then a shriek sounded that set
my heart racing. I tore across the room and paused at the door only
long enough to see Koya sitting up in the middle of her bed, tears
trailing down her cheeks and sobs shaking her shoulders despite her
efforts to keep them in.

My heart turned over at the look of fear on
her face. I wanted to help her; the wolf side of me shied at being
so close and personal with a human while the human side grating
against the limitations of my wolf form. She met my eyes, her own
the color of the sky after a fierce rain, deep and heavy with
torment and promise. I leaped silently onto the bed. She buried her
face in my fur without a word. Her hands tangled in my coat and her
breaths came ragged and quick as she fought to control her
emotions.

“
Why are nightmares worse
than the real thing?” she asked, her words muffled and thick. “He
killed me this time, and I watched my body fall to the ground. It
didn’t hurt, but I knew it should.” She pressed her face harder
against my side and let herself cry for a few minutes.

When her shoulders stopped shaking and the
trembling in her hands stilled, she sat back and wiped her face
with the long sleeve of her light blue sleeping gown. “You must
think I’m ridiculous,” she said quietly. Her eyes were lowered and
she twisted a loose string from her sleeping gown around her
finger.

I gave a soft snort and a smile twitched at
the corners of her mouth. She glanced up at me, then looked away.
Her eyes roamed the room as if she was searching the shadows for
assassins or Viel. I wanted to reassure her that nothing could
creep into her quarters without my knowledge, but her face was
still pale and she continued to wind and unwind the thread around
her fingers as if she needed to do something to keep her mind
occupied. The skin beneath her eyes was dark and if anything she
looked even wearier for her brief sleep.

“
It is ridiculous,” she
concluded quietly to herself. She looked at me again. A small laugh
escaped her lips. “I can’t begin to tell you how far across the
line of propriety it is to have a man I don’t know sitting on my
bed in the middle of the night, even if you are in your wolf form
right now. Mother would have a conniption if she knew.” She stifled
a yawn, then glanced at her pillows. A lost look swept across her
face. Her voice softened and she spoke with her gaze still
downcast. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sleep
again.”

I thought of the whirlwind of memories from
the past few days that kept me up and knew exactly how she felt. I
looked around the room in search of an answer; the flickering
candlelight made the bunched drapes around the bed look as though
they danced. The faint hint of rising sunlight showed through the
windows as the briefest touch of gray amid the dark sky.

“
Would you stay here for a
little while?” Koya asked in a voice so small I barely heard it. I
turned back and found her watching me with pleading eyes. “Just
until I’m asleep? I don’t want to be a bother.”

I had heard Joven scoff before, a faint
laughing sound with a hint of derision. I imagined that was the
sound he would have given at his sister calling herself a bother.
To me, though, the pain in her voice was too real. She wasn’t just
worried about this night, but a lifetime of uncertainties brought
by their inability to maintain their kingdom. Joven’s words about
her being wed played in the back of my mind. Wolves chose a mate
for life. I couldn’t imagine being assigned to a stranger for the
same lifetime. I wondered if the assassin’s attack or the thought
of marriage weighed more heavily in her mind.

I settled on the bed near the edge, keeping
plenty of room for Koya while at the same time ready to jump off if
I needed to defend her. I watched her out of the corner of my eye
as she hesitated, then laid down next to me. Her hand hovered above
my fur for several heartbeats. She let out a small breath and set
it on my back. A tingle ran down my spine at her touch.

It was several minutes before she closed her
eyes, and longer still until her steady breathing announced that
she was asleep. During that time, I barely dared breathe lest I
disturb her. I felt her fingertips move in sleep and every movement
sent another tingle through my skin. I wondered that her touch
could awaken every bit of me; where I had been exhausted before,
now with her hand on my back and her quiet breaths near my ear I
felt alive and aware as I had never been.

Every part of me burned with a desire to
keep her safe and protected from a world that seemed destined to
hurt her. I saw her eyes again, wide with fear as the knife cut
into her skin. The assassin’s gaze was narrow with anger and his
hand gripped the knife hilt so tight his knuckles turned white. He
didn’t care if he hurt her; in fact, he seemed pleased by his
ability to do so.

His similarities to the Cruel One sent a
surge of rage through my body. That was what drove me to tackle him
from the horse; a man who could hurt a woman so easily didn’t
deserve to live. Wolves didn’t take pleasure in harming each other.
A wolf’s life was spent protecting and caring for loved ones. I
couldn’t understand someone who could hurt so readily and take joy
in it.

I felt my paws hit the cobblestones as I
chased him. The wind tangled through my fur and filled my nose with
the scent of horse sweat and the man’s twisted glee at causing pain
and an uproar. There was no doubt why he was chosen for the job; I
only hoped Rasmus saw to it that such a person was put where he
couldn’t harm anyone ever again.

I closed my eyes and my shoulders twitched
as I jumped the last bush again and barreled into the man. The
horse fell with us and we hit the stones hard enough to knock the
wind from my lungs. I grabbed the man in my teeth and bit down. I
wanted to end his life for the fear he created in Koya. I tasted
his blood. He deserved to die as no animal I had chased deserved
death. I bit down harder.