Chapter Twenty-Six
Aidan might not have heard the sparrow inside her head, but he caught her reaction straightaway.
He was stalking beside her before she said a word, toward the arched doors leading into the nave and the apse.
She felt rather than saw wolves moving around them, the flicker of a candle here, a shadow at the window there.
They hurried to the apse at the end, closed off with carved wooden screens. Simon waited behind, clearly agitated. There was broken glass at his feet, blood on his hands.
“Simon!” Sorcha said. “Did you see him? Is he here?” She glanced around wildly, not sure what she expected to find. Simon did not seem injured—he was not even favoring his bad ankle overmuch.
“Sorcha,” Aidan said softly, “step away.”
Something was very wrong. Had the Collector escaped? Had he done something to Simon?
But no. No, that wasn’t it. The bait had worked. The trap had been sprung.
And it had caught Simon.
And not by accident.
Sorcha gaped at him even as Aidan moved to shield her, his chest rumbling with a warning growl.
Simon straightened and turned. Expressions crossed his delicate features: surprise, concern, fury, as if he could not choose. His eyes landed on Sorcha. Something like regret flashed there, but not enough. Not nearly enough. He snarled, teeth lengthening.
But when he went to move, light shimmered from the ground, like green glass underwater. It tightened into a circle, smelling of seaweed and salt. He snarled again, confused. In pain.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Aidan said. “There’s kelpie hair under the floor there, at your feet. You’re caught.”
Sorcha was still trying to understand what she was seeing.
Simon paced backward, the Ossory tooth in his hand, bleeding from punching through the cabinet glass. He definitely wasn’t limping. “You were never really injured, were you?” Sorcha asked.
“I was,” he said. “You’d never have taken me with you if I wasn’t.” He shrugged. “But I heal quickly.”
He had allowed himself to be captured.
By her.
By the Red Cloak.
Sorcha shook her head. “I don’t understand.” But she did understand, and betrayal and sorrow and anger were warring inside her. He had slept in her house. She had yelled at his father. Did Lord Winterwell know who his son truly was? The way Simon had known who she was?
“You pushed the chimney stacks. You set that fire. And the fucking Nightmare,” Aidan seethed.
Simon did not look particularly proud about it, but nor did he look particularly remorseful.
“Just warnings. Believe me, it could have been much worse. You should have heeded them, Sorcha,” he added, annoyed.
Annoyed that she had not heeded him? Or that she was not more grateful he had not actually murdered her? “I was trying to help you.”
She thought back to Hecuba saying he paced the hall outside her bedroom, remembered the ice on her doorknob. The iron nails scattered in random places to confuse Granny. How many close calls had there actually been?
“But why?” Sorcha asked.
Simon looked away.
“Why, Simon?”
“You’ve met my parents. Always on about strength and courage. And my brother. But now I’m the one people will talk about.”
“I don’t give a shit about your motives. You tried to hurt her,” Aidan said evenly, infinitely more frightening than any growl or snarl. “You tried to kill her.”
He seemed to grow taller, wider, stronger.
And that was before he shifted into a giant gray wolf with golden eyes.
Simon followed suit, and the lively orchestra music was drowned out by bones re-forming, teeth snapping, growling.
There was not enough space for two wolves and a witch in the apse.
Aidan nudged Sorcha back toward the archway. “Aidan!” she cried as Simon lunged at his back.
Muscles rippled under his fur as Adian twisted to block the attack, snarling. A bust of a Roman flower nymph fell off a pedestal and cracked down the middle. Aidan’s snarling grew more vicious.
Two wolves fighting each other was harrowing enough to be near, never mind in such cramped quarters. Sorcha’s skin prickled and some primal instinct had her knees burning to run, run, run. The sparrow flew at the windowpane, trying to escape.
Simon hit the cabinet and something else shattered.
He was taller than Sorcha would have thought, and stockier.
There was no hint of injury or a limp to his russet wolf, no hesitation as he tried to tear out Aidan’s throat.
His teeth scraped through fur, hitting his shoulder.
Blood welled. Aidan turned his head and snapped, also connecting.
Simon’s paws scrabbled on the floor as he tried to find purchase, whining.
The shifting mass of violent muscle and fur was disorienting to watch.
The kelpie magic seared Simon when he got too close to a doorway or window.
Sorcha did not know how to help. There was no spell she could work that would not also hit Aidan. And no ingredients anyway, not even breadcrumbs in the hidden pockets of her ball gown.
Aidan barked at her, just before the wolves crashed into the wall and slid dangerously close to where she was frozen.
He had his jaws clamped around Simon’s neck, forcing him to the ground, forcing him to submit.
The combination of growls and whines made her shiver.
Simon’s eyes flared. He fought but could not free himself, not from an Alpha and not from the kelpie’s magical bindings.
Sorcha staggered back out of the way, into Tavish, who was wearing not only pants, but a proper frock coat. He yanked her out of the way, swearing. “Agnes is coming around the other side to block the window,” he said. “Just in case.”
“Simon…”
“Aye, I can smell the traitor.” Tavish paused. “He smells like roses.”
Sorcha frowned. “Roses?”
“Aye. Too strong and gone a bit off.”
She felt the pieces come together, like a sparrow suddenly free of the thicket. “The bread at the camp, the bread at Nettlestone. It smelled strangely of rosewater as well.” She grabbed Tavish’s arm. “That’s part of his spell. Orla smelled of roses, remember?”
“Rosewater is overpowering. Too strong for us to smell much else. He was hiding again.” Tavish kissed her head. “You are brilliant.” Aidan barked in their direction. Tavish snorted. “Just fight your battle, Alpha.”
“Aren’t you going to help him?”
“Alpha has him,” he said. “Nothing else for us to do but wait. But Sorcha, in the meantime?”
“Yes?”
“There’s an ogre on the front lawn.”
The ogre did not stand a chance.
Not only were there several wolves ready and eager to take him down—even with the majority dragging Simon out through a side door in order to take him back to the Wolf Wood and the judgment of the Packs—but there were also antiquarians, and librarians.
There were priceless and ancient artifacts in the chapel, after all. And worse, several rare books that could not be replaced.
The ogre had come to Simon’s aid, one of the few willing fighters of the Cauldron.
He had not been captured or forced—he enjoyed the pits.
He enjoyed fighting wolves. But he soon found himself so tangled in witchcraft that he could only tumble like a felled tree, bellowing as he collapsed.
He had the superior strength and was as tall as the chapel—but the librarians had the rage.
He was fortunate not to be dismembered.
As it was, he was chained with iron while the Order of the Iron Nail was summoned.
Lycan business might not be under their jurisdiction, but an ogre threatening a building full of witches most definitely was.
Someone crowned him with roses—one of an ogre’s few weaknesses.
Sorcha was certain Pippa had read that in a book somewhere.
That the roses were mostly thorns was down to Briar.
Aidan eventually came out of the chapel, wrapped in a plaid, bloody scratches already healing on his chest and face. Sorcha caught her breath. When he smiled down at her, his teeth were a little too sharp. “I’m fine.”
She knew wolves healed quickly, but she still itched to dab at him with comfrey ointment or a honey poultice. To feed him bread.
“Tavish and Lorcan have taken Simon away. I stayed to clean up the artifacts.”
Fondness swelled inside her. “Of course you did.”
“The bust was seven hundred years old!”
“I’m sure it’s very important.”
He narrowed his eyes with mock severity. “Aye. ’Tis.”
“You’ve got blood in your beard,” she said with that same inconvenient fondness that harassed her every time she saw him. She reached up to dab at it with a cloth from the refreshment table. It was embroidered with doves. Aidan looked horrified, gripping her wrist before she could touch him.
“I’ve got it,” he said grimly.
She tilted her head at his reaction. “I’m not afraid of a little blood,” she pointed out. “I once fought that ogre, remember?”
He only shook his head, pulling the cloth from her and wiping his face. His jaw twitched. His shoulders suddenly resembled stone. Was he embarrassed? Sorcha did not understand. Why wasn’t he more pleased?
“We found the Collector,” she reminded him. “We should be dancing and drinking champagne.”
“I have to go back to the Wolf Wood. There are a lot of questions Simon needs to answer.”
“Good. I’m coming with you.”
“You don’t have to. Wouldn’t you rather get some rest in a comfortable—”
“I’m coming with you.” She didn’t know what was going through his head, but there was no chance she was letting him go off alone.
His smile was brief and crooked and too complicated. “Aye.”
The Wolf Wood was silver in the light of the nearly full moon.
Even without having a wolf to respond to the moon, Sorcha could feel it.
There was the celebration and satisfaction of finding the Collector, of soon finding the missing wolves.
Already, several Lycan were searching, even though Sorcha’s paper birds had not yet returned.
There was much ale, roasted meats and apples and cake, and more ale.