45. Cirri
Chapter 45
Cirri
I added another line in my journal, making my letters tiny and neat.
It was more of a way to distract myself than anything else; if I focused only on the lines, on the faintness of the ink I had never refilled and the scratch of the nib on paper, then I could ignore the high cackles and snarls outside my window, the crack of bones broken open for marrow, the nauseating stench of rotting meat and unburied offal.
Tears shed in love,
To water the petals of the Mother.
Hakkon had allowed me to keep my journal and the ritual book—a busy lamb was a content lamb, he’d told me as he brought a plate of breakfast the next day.
I’d looked at the rough bread, the grayish meat floating in an oily slick of gravy, and my stomach turned over.
He assured me it was pork. I didn’t believe him.
My stomach grumbled as I checked my last translation, though it was growing quieter, my gut tight with pain. I’d given in to temptation and eaten a few small bites of the toffee from Miro, but then I thought of him as I chewed, those few flashes I retained from our first night in Foria, and I knew I would never be able to taste it again without thinking of that.
Most of my memories were mercifully blank when I considered his mutation. I thought that perhaps my mind had emptied itself in one agonizing flash—an open, infected wound, purging itself to save the rest of the body.
I wasn’t sure how long I’d been here. Perhaps two days, but my sense of everything was wrong.
Exhaustion made my eyes bleary and sore, my head spinning when I stood up. The whole world seemed to tilt around me at times, and would snap back into place in a blink.
It was impossible to sleep. During the day, some of the wargs became people. They did… well, people things, cooking in vast pots over campfires, crouching around the fires and speaking in low voices. But the smell from the pots and the middens was thick and rank enough to drag me from sleep, and the guards would come in three times a day anyway, bringing me more plates of food doomed to be wasted.
And at night… the wargs came out at night. Their high voices and howls would drift through the window, and just knowing they were out there, creeping around in the shadows, kept me wide awake and staring at the ceiling. The terror was constant, gnawing at my bones.
So I stayed awake day and night, and worked on the translations. Between my aching eyes and dizzy head, it had taken me maybe a solid day to decipher the most recent lines, and I wasn’t remotely sure it was accurate.
I wasn’t even sure I was fully awake. Perhaps I was dreaming it all. But I had half the ritual translated.
In a circle of thorns,
With blood freely given.
Tears shed in love,
To water the petals of the Mother…
I put my pen down, rubbing my sore eyes. The flesh around them was pink and raw from how many times I’d rubbed in the past few days. Tears smarted at the corners, threatening to sting the sore skin.
What was the point of any of this? Whatever this ritual was, it meant nothing now.
And eventually the blood sigil against pregnancy would fade. I had a lifetime of being livestock to look forward to.
A sheep, birthing wolves.
But they could not force me to give myself to Wargyr. I had already vowed myself to a fiend, given my blood freely in a circle of thorns, buried our shared bond to grow the bloodroses of the Mother…
I was his, and I would willingly die before they gave me to their wolf god. I touched the words I’d written, the translation that could mean anything. It was certainly not a way to become a warg or fiend; Miro’s sickening transformation had nothing to do with watering petals. I’d been wrong.
It was becoming more difficult to maintain a single train of thought, my thoughts were jumping from place to place in my exhaustion. Everything was muddled together.
I was so tired. Any day now, Hakkon would come through that door, and he wouldn’t be carrying a plate but a prisoner, another innocent woman, and he would tell me… we are all meat.
We must hunt or be hunted.
When that time came I would face it alone. Bane hadn’t come, my only happiness.
Stay away, I love you too much to see you destroyed. Stay away.
I would be hunted by them on my own, as was right. I’d vowed myself and Wargyr couldn’t break that.
I rubbed my eyes again, the pen just too heavy to pick up, and the lock rattled on the door.
I jumped upright, quivering, adrenaline crashing through my veins. My breath felt hot and raspy in my throat.
Would it be a plate? Or a woman?
Or worse?
But Hakkon came in empty-handed. Broad shoulders pushed back, a self-satisfied little smile tucked into the corners of his mouth. He’d changed into clean clothes, his dark auburn hair brushed.
He frowned at my last full plate, left to congeal. Several flies crawled over the greasy meat, buzzing and twitching their wings.
“I suppose you may starve yourself for now,” he said, brows pulled together. “You must understand that I will force it down your throat when your husband is dead. A starving mother makes for frail pups.”
I’ll be dead by that time , I said listlessly, still examining his empty hands, his tidy appearance. To what purpose? What could be worse than my turn at the hunt?
“Let me give you a reason to rejoice, redling.” He smiled at me, taking a seat on the other side of the small table. The chair looked tiny compared to him, a chair made for a child instead of an adult. “The scouts have spotted the Soulbreaker on Forian soil.”
I stared at him, trying to make sense of a title that sounded only vaguely familiar. What is a Soulbreaker?
Hakkon picked up my pen, twirling it around in the narrow shaft of sun coming through the window so the silver metal sent bright flashes into my eyes. “I believe you have met? Wroth is his name. Your husband is coming for you, with all of his brothers. Such a pleasant gift even I had not expected.” He laughed, dropping my pen carelessly on the table. “We will wash over them as one, an inexorable tide.”
I reached out and picked it up, clutching it tight. This and the journal, the long-wilted bloodrose in my hair… they were all I had, and they would come with me to the grave.
Hakkon examined me thoughtfully, his head tipped to the side. “Does it bring you hope, redling?”
I shook my head. No .
His brown eyes didn’t look away, peeling every thin layer away from my soul. “Ah, so it is true that you love each other. Who would have believed that one day, I would hold the heart of my perfect foe in my hands? That she would become the mother of my children, her lands the birthplace for a new pack? Wargyr has showered blessings upon me.”
I closed my journal, aligning it neatly on the table as Rose would have done. You’re trying to frighten me, but you’ve already gone too far. All my fear is gone .
“Is it, now?” That smug smile was back.
I examined him in turn, seeing the hundreds of tiny scars chiselling his face, illuminated by the sun. How are you able to become a man? I thought you shed your skins.
Hakkon went still, holding my gaze. His eyes were cold but considering. “With age and experience, and much blood. What brings you to ask this?”
Simple curiosity . I gestured to my journal. I want to know things .
“Good. I will be pleased if my children inherit that curiosity. Yes, the warg sheds his human skin in a single night, but with years of effort, you can wear it once more.” Hakkon looked down at his own hands, the squared-off fingers, the thick calluses. “It takes great strength of will to unshackle the mind from the remorse instilled in us by the sheep. Many of the wargs out there will never achieve such a thing, which is why they are there: to die. But I come from a family that has worshipped the Mad God through the ages. At the age of nine, a child of our line is inducted into the ranks. By the time he is twenty, he should have control of his human skin once more. If he does not… then he is rabid, useless, no more than an unthinking beast. He is culled from the pack. Your husband will cull my useless pack for me, and die in the doing.”
He turned his hand over, as though seeing it for the first time.
“It is like the fiends,” he said, and my heart leaped—it was the information I wanted. “When they go fiend, they become beasts. But with great effort, they are almost as men again, civilized in mind, if not in form. They could do as I do, if only they released the shackles of their guilt and made peace with their supremacy. To become a man, one needs only to let go. To feel nothing but righteous pride in the service of Wargyr. A wolf does not need to feel guilt when he eats a lamb. It is his right.”
How far back does your family go? I asked.
Hakkon turned that smile on me, a genuine one, with wrinkles fanning out at the corners of his eyes. “Oh, you’re truly curious, red one? You see it now—better to bear the young of the strong, and let your blood rule the land. We go back centuries, back to when the Fae tried their hand at creation. From father to son, our lineage has been passed through the ages.”
The Fae? I frowned, dragging my leadened thoughts through the mud to piece it together.
Then tell me this. Do your kinds share a root? I hesitated, forming my words carefully. Are fiends and wargs born of the same… ritual?
He tipped his head. “In a manner of speaking. Two races, born to Mother Blood and Father Wolf, doomed to hate each other as only squabbling brothers can.”
Brothers?
“So many questions.” Hakkon shook his head, still amused. “Yes, brothers, redling. But Mother Blood loathed us, and conspired to destroy Father Wolf and his sons, creating bindings against our kind. The Mad God fled to the depths of Foria, preserving my family line and the traditions of our blood. It was through his teachings that we learned to wear the skins of men again, how to break the charms of the Mother’s blood-drinking children and walk the earth freely. To shed blood and tears, spread agony and hatred… those are Wargyr’s gifts, his purifying baptism.”
Blood and tears again… the charms of the Mother’s children.
And the Mother and Father were Fae, truly?
“Of course. It was with their tinkering that we were created. My kind, the firstborn blessed with the Father’s gifts… and the Mother’s children, those infected with her own blood. Both of us were born deep in the cradle of the Rift, the land that is our birthright and our home, and that is why we must have it. The pups deserve to live in the lands where they were made, not to starve in this blighted hell.”
I studied him, looking for a lie in his story, but I didn’t think he would know if he was lying. It was all folklore, tales passed down through the ages, twisted over time to suit the teller’s fancy and presented as truth.
I had a vague memory of Bane telling me that some believed Wargyr was Fae, and that he didn’t believe it.
How interesting that the Rift-kin might be right on that score, but my mind kept returning to the thought of the Mother’s charms, the blood and tears, the willingness and love that seemed diametrically opposed to the creation of wargs…
Did I have a potential weapon in my hands?
Then why murder my family? I asked, guiding the questions away from my dangerous line of thought. Why take land so far to the south?
“Because their land is rich and will feed my people.” Hakkon shrugged. “It has taken many long years to gain a foothold in Veladar. Your land will feed our strength until we’re ready to bring down the walls of the keeps, and then we will take it all.”
He laughed when I stared at him a little too long. “The war taught me something, little red one. Never rely on one plan, for it will surely fail. I will destroy the fiends here, and create nests for my pack all over your country. Even if others choose to rise and replace the Lifegiver, the Soulbreaker, the Nightstalker, the Heartpiercer, none of them will matter. Those four were gods among men, titans on the earth, mortal enemies of great value. My people will overrun the pretenders as one.”
A quavering howl rose from outside, filling the twilight sky. I started, almost tipping my chair back, but Hakkon’s eyes lit up, almost turning him into another man.
“A warning cry. They’re on the move again.”
I felt sick, my empty stomach churning. I’d hoped Bane would let me go.
I should’ve known better.
Bane will kill you . I held Hakkon’s fever-bright gaze as I spoke. You’ll cease to exist before you even know what happened.
“It’s heartwarming, redling. Your love for your husband. Your absolute faith in him.” His lips stretched in a smile. “Come. Look.”
He lifted me from the chair and dragged me to the window, forcing me to look over the side, down the steep, sheer drop.
I had spent several days doing my best to not look outside that window, not wanting to see the barren fields hosting a parasitic brood beneath its skin, not wanting to see if they had brought prisoners.
But Hakkon kept his grip around my neck, forcing me to look with implacable firmness.
I gritted my teeth as several wargs rose from the grass, too-long mouths split open all the way to their ears, panting as they watched in the distance.
There were stands of scraggly trees out there, stunted and bare, the same dull color as the grass. Above it all, the sky was a formless, maddening gray.
But from the top of the tower, I could see that the grass had been torn away all around us, radiating a thousand yards in every direction. The base was nothing but churned soil, and under that lay the endless pack, waiting for prey to step into their domain.
They would drag Bane down. They would feast on his flesh in the darkness below the earth.
“Do you think he can survive that?” Hakkon’s voice was strange; from the great distance of my emotions, I thought he sounded almost sad. “He will step onto ground hallowed to Wargyr, and he will die. Your faith is misplaced.”
He shook me once, hard, and finally released me. I closed my eyes, sinking back against the wall by my table.
My people had no idea of what lay under the field. How many lives Hakkon had sacrificed to ensure an endless swarm of death. They had told me he was making new wargs, and I didn’t believe our enemy was stupid, not in the slightest.
I thought I had likely seen a mere fraction of his pack, that Hakkon had examined every facet of Bane’s character, his strategy, and had accounted for it.
This was my moment. The brief calm before the storm, before my loved ones walked right into hell. I could send the pack into disarray and leave them rudderless, easy pickings, and my family would never need to step foot near this killing field.
The pen was cool against my sweaty hand as I surreptitiously palmed it from the table. Cool and reassuring.
Not entirely solid, but it was only one blow that counted; after that, I would be dead.
Hakkon exhaled slowly, turning back to the window; I remained slumped against the wall, the portrait of defeat, my clenched hand hidden in the folds of my skirt. I didn’t have to fake the single tear that rolled down my cheek. I hadn’t wanted Bane to come, and yet he’d come anyway, because he loved me.
“You were a better gift than I could’ve anticipated. He is hunting you. He will finally find the tide that turns him back, and drowns him. I will howl in memory of him when he is gone.”
I forced myself upright, wiping the tear away with my free hand. Hakkon stood at the window, feet braced, his hands clasped behind his back as he gazed out at the trap.
His neck was open, naked, unguarded. I tensed, accepting that I would have to kill a man, and put all my strength into the blow.
The nib skated over his shoulder, opening a line of dark blood, and Hakkon’s hand snapped up before it plunged into his throat. He gripped my wrist, squeezing, the bones grinding together. The pen dropped to the floor; I opened my mouth, and no sound came out, though I screamed on the inside as he grinned.
“ There it is. I was wondering when you’d find it in your heart to kill me.”
Hakkon drove me backwards until my back slammed into the wall, the stones driving the breath from my lungs. He had both of my wrists, nails digging between the tendons, splitting skin. Blood seeped between his fingers, and still I couldn’t scream, only kick and thrash wildly.
His bulk trapped me there, making my struggles useless. A terrible smell emanated from him, the reek of hot metal and blood, and his body heat was burning.
Hakkon’s panting breath touched my ear, raising goosebumps on my neck. “I smelled it on you.” He took a deep breath, his nose buried in my hair, and I squirmed away. “I saw it in your eyes. No part of you is a mystery to me.”
I turned my head away, gagging silently at the carrion stench of his breath, unable to look into his mad eyes: his pupils had eaten the brown iris, merging into the sclera, and the white pinpricks in their centers were growing brighter.
“I am an honorable man, despite what you may think. If you had not struck first, I would never have touched you, but you have let anger overcome your better sense.”
His face was warped, pushing outwards under his human skin.
“Our pups will be ferocious wolves,” he said with no small amount of pleasure, his brogue thickening. “But, little one, you forgot a terrible and very important detail.”
I bared my teeth, wishing I had Bane’s fangs, that I could rip his throat out myself.
Hakkon chuckled, and whispered in my ear. “You don’t need your hands to bear my children, redling.”
Icy terror emanated outwards from my spine.
Breath frozen, knees shaking, he tore me from the wall and slammed me into the table. Pain radiated through my ribs and my chin, my mouth filling with hot blood as I bit down on my tongue.
And oh, it would become so much worse.
“Daniil!” he called cheerfully, and I felt his hardness press against my hip, the bastard getting excited over what was to come.
The door opened, and the tattooed warg in a man’s skin gazed at us with dead eyes. No surprise, no shock, only expectation.
“Bring me a hammer.”