Wolfbreed (18 page)

The guard nodded and started walking to the door. Lilly held her breath, because she knew her master’s expression, and
posture, and the smell of his anger. He would not leave until someone was corrected.

Severely corrected.

At first, Lilly thought it would be her or her siblings who would suffer. But then the guard said, “Does your master know how you correct the blond one? Or do animals fall outside your vows of chastity?”

Lilly’s master stood mute as the guard laughed and turned to go.

She saw her master grab an iron rod from a rack on the wall, a rod he used many times to discipline his charges. He turned and struck the guard across the back. Lilly could hear Rose gasp in the cage next to her.

Her master brought the bar down on the guard five times.

Lilly had quickly healed from receiving twice as many blows. But she wasn’t human.

The guard was.

ose cried herself to sleep that night, and wouldn’t stop, no matter how many times Lilly sang to her.

wo days later, they took Rose away in the night, and she didn’t come back. The following morning, her master had a fresh scar on his face, and beat all of them more severely than Lilly could ever remember. His heaviest blows were reserved for Lilly and her sisters.

Rose never returned, and a week later, the guards came and took Lilly away to see her master in the middle of the night. In a dark room, he bound her with silver chains and showed her what he did to make Rose cry.

illy kept herself from crying, mostly by pretending to be someone else when she needed to be. It was easier to sing to comfort someone else than it was to comfort herself. Though the other person Lilly made for herself was stronger, and colder, and didn’t need to be comforted.

It was after being with her master one night, when she was talking to her other self in her head, that she understood how she could leave this place.

You know your master has his own master. If you work to please him, above all others, then maybe he will take you for himself
.

t took nearly a year before Erhard finally chose one of Semyon’s wolfbreed to use in battle. He had followed the brother’s path of disciplining the creatures, teaching them to view him as much their master as Semyon. At times—especially when Semyon had Rose destroyed for attacking him—Erhard had thought his duties here would come to naught. That despite Semyon’s assertions, the creatures were untrainable.

However, over time, he decided that one of the five remaining wolfbreed
was
trainable. Lilly seemed more intelligent, easier to instruct, than the others. It had been several months since he had taken over her discipline completely from Brother Semyon, and now, if anything, she showed him more deference than she had to her original master.

Her keepers had washed her, dressed her in a simple peasant smock, and placed a silver shackle on her left ankle. They led her outside and she blinked in the daylight.

“You will come with me now,” Erhard told her.

She looked down so he couldn’t see her face under her hair.

“Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Look at me.”

Lilly looked up into his face. He searched for something in those burning green eyes, but he saw nothing, no emotion at all. “You will obey me.”

“Yes.”

“I will tell you to wait, and you will wait. When you wait, you shall do nothing. Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“I will tell you the time at which you will stop waiting. You will kill only then
—only
then. Understand?”

“I understand.”

He looked for understanding in her face, and saw only blankness. He wondered if this creature understood death. What was he speaking to, the child or the animal?

Did it matter?

“Master?”

“Yes?”

“Will it make you happy if many die?”

“At the place I will take you? Yes, it will.”

“Then I will kill everyone I find there.” She smiled at him, and even under the beating sun, he could feel the depths of his gut turn icy.