Chapter 9
nine
No sorcerers anywhere around us.
The werewolf took us down the riverbed, and we walked for five minutes before she started to climb up a path that led us up to the trees on the other side of it. It wasn’t steep at all, like the ground had fallen down here some time ago, and I climbed behind her without trouble.
From there, she rushed her steps for a couple more minutes, until we were at this small pool of water that came and went into a narrow river stream on both sides of the forest.
Water.
It was water, and it sounded like heaven. The werewolf went to the very edge, sat on the grass in front of the tiny pool, drank a few mouthfuls, then turned her head to look up at me.
Safe, I imagined her saying. It was safe to drink.
I had never moved faster in my life.
Before the minute was over, I drank enough to feel like I might explode any second. When I fell back and sat on the grass to catch my breath, I felt reborn. A new person altogether. Alive—for real.
As I washed my hands and my face and my hair, questions rushed through my mind.
“They thought I would die within minutes,” I said to the werewolf, who had jumped across the stream—only three feet wide, but still much farther than I’d have guessed she could jump—and was sniffing the trees on the other side calmly.
She stopped to look at me only for a second.
“They said I would die within minutes because I was infected.” I raised my wounded arm, the scratches now clean, still wet. It wasn’t bleeding anymore. In fact, maybe I was seeing things, but the scratches didn’t look as big as they had just minutes ago.
“I was infected because you scratched me.” The werewolf sat on her hind legs near a tree trunk and watched me. “So why didn’t I? They were so sure.” And they were sorcerers—logic said they would know how this stuff worked. They would know if I was infected or if I was going to die. They would know.
A huff—no idea what it meant this time, though.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful,” I told her. “But nothing makes sense, and I’m just so damn tired of nothing making sense.”
My eyes closed. I breathed in deeply and slipped my hand in the water. The pool was maybe two feet deep, and there were definitely fish in there, except they were small, and they did not come close to me at all, from what little I could see.
When I opened my eyes again, the werewolf had jumped on my side of the stream again, sniffing the grass, coming closer slowly, until she was right in front of me, her neck stretched as she tried to sniff the wound on my forearm.
Not going to lie, I was fucking terrified. Even though I was pretty sure by now that she was not going to bite me or kill me, or even leave me alone on a dry riverbed to die, to know what she was and to have her so close to me fired up every single one of my instincts.
Still, I didn’t move. I let her sniff me and watched with that scream stuck in my throat as she slowly licked the wounds a couple of times. Then she blew her nose like she was sneezing—or like the taste disgusted her—and moved back, sat down on her hind legs.
Werewolf. An actual werewolf.
My God, Betty was going to flip the fuck off when I told her.
“Can you…um, you can shift, right? You’re a werewolf.
” She watched me passively. “So why don’t you?
The sorcerers aren’t here, are they?” I looked around—trees, fewer and farther apart from one another, and more light slipped through the canopy.
There was nobody there that I could see. No animals, no sorcerers, just us.
The werewolf didn’t even huff.
“That’s okay,” I said because I had no clue how shifting even worked, if werewolves were the same here as the stories said back home.
I thought Rune said that they shifted, but I could have remembered wrong.
“That’s fine. I’m Nilah, by the way. Thanks for saving me back there. Can I call you Wolfie?”
A growl—though I couldn’t tell you if it was threatening or not. I squinted my eyes at her and waited…
“Okay. I’ll call you Wolfie. How did you know that I wouldn’t die when you pushed me off the cliff?”
Yeah, I was an idiot because I genuinely expected her to speak to me just now. And when I realized it, I closed my eyes, smiled at myself.
The werewolf didn’t make a single sound.
I finally sat up. “Thanks again for saving me, Wolfie. I don’t know where your destination is, but I need to get going.” She raised her head, perked up her ears, didn’t make a sound as I stood up on my feet— strong feet. My knees didn’t shake. My stomach didn’t turn.
Buttoning the jacket again, I took in a deep breath and I started moving, aware that I had no direction, that I had no clue where I was or how to get to Blackwater, but it wasn’t so bad, was it?
I mean, I’d been about to become a sorcerer’s prisoner and finding the right direction right now didn’t seem like the nightmare it had in the beginning.
But the werewolf was on her feet again, and she basically stepped in front of me as if she wanted to stop me. Looked up at me with those wide almond eyes that seemed more yellow by the minute.
“What?” I asked, pretending my heart didn’t jump at her sudden movement. Pretending she didn’t still scare me shitless, especially when she moved like that—like Rune, like she was fucking fluid.
She stood still and watched me, so I took another step forward.
She took one back.
“I can’t stay, Wolfie. I have to get to Blackwater. I can’t stay—there are sorcerers here.”
She didn’t look like she planned to attack me. She just let out a growl that could have meant anything from you’re not going anywhere to are you out of your fucking mind?! This is Mysthaven!
I went with the second option.
“Yes, I know where we are, but I have to get to Blackwater and find Raja. People are after me and the sooner I get there, the better. Do you understand?”
Another growl, this one different. Softer.
“Bye, Wolfie. I really have to go now.” I stepped to the side, trying to move around her.
She jumped in front of me the next second.
“Stop it!” I said, falling back, already pissed off. “Just stop it. I have to get to Blackwater. I have to?—”
The wolf moved, around me and to the other side, then howled.
She actually howled like I’d heard wolves do in movies and videos back home, ending it with a growl.
I watched her with unblinking eyes, stunned, but not quite afraid as I thought I would be, unsure what the hell to make of it.
She went ahead three steps, then turned around and looked at me again—like she wanted me to follow her again.
Like she was telling me that it was this way .
“Is that…” I licked my dry lips, the anger already faded away. “Are you telling me that Blackwater is that way? Or am I just making things up now?”
Another howl, a spin, and another few feet forward.
That was definitely a yes.
“Fuck me,” I whispered to myself, rubbing my face raw.
This was just absurd . How was I to know which way was the right way or if this werewolf even knew what she was doing?
I didn’t. I didn’t have the slightest clue.
But what I did know was that she was a werewolf, and I was a mortal who did not belong in this place at all.
With that thought in mind, I followed her lead without a word.
I had no idea whether she actually knew the way, Wolfie, if she was taking me to Blackwater, or at least to a safe place from where I could continue on my own.
Even so I kept on following, and I told myself it was because she knew better, but the truth was that I didn’t want to be alone.
Just the thought of being in these woods all by myself made my skin crawl and I would rather take longer to get where I was going in the company of someone who didn’t want to eat me or kill me or use me in any way, than try to find my way all by myself. Not here. Not in Mysthaven.
Especially not when the werewolf slowed her pace, and a few minutes later, I felt the magic just before we spotted the altars.
They were the same as the ones I’d seen before on the other side of the dry riverbed.
Made of rock and wood and glass—one a pile of broken mirrors with a flame at the top that didn’t actually burn anything—the altars had no rhyme or reason, no specific distance between them, and not a single thing in common.
Other than the fact that they were all strange as hell and leaked magic in the air like a fucking gas, that is.
They were definitely scary as hell, but the werewolf didn’t look spooked. She continued ahead, never stopping for a second, so I didn’t, either. I would rather keep going anyway.
The sky was dark, the day done, but I didn’t mind the night that much.
My limbs were strong, my feet didn’t hurt.
The food and the water had really brought me back to life.
And I must have slept on that riverbed far longer than I realized, maybe even a full day, because my muscles were so well rested, nothing else made sense.
That fact scared me, too. It had been this long since I ran away from the queen’s palace and the Seelie Court, and Rune hadn’t found me. I was glad the royal guard hadn’t, but Rune…
Raja, I told myself. He’ll find me when I make it to Raja. And I prayed that the werewolf planned to keep walking all night long because the sooner I got the hell out of this never-ending forest, the better.
And just as I was thinking that, the entire energy around me shifted.
Both Wolfie and I stopped in our tracks at the same time, though she was walking a couple feet ahead of me.
I couldn’t really put my finger on it, but there was something about the air here. Something…heavier.
The werewolf looked back at me once before we continued ahead, much slower than before.
The trees began to get thinner and thinner as we went. Even the darkness seemed darker somehow, veiled by something more than just shadows.
Possibly less than two minutes later, we saw it.