Chapter 38
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sylvi
The hearth’s glow painted the walls in shades of molten gold and shadows, each crackle of pine and birch echoing through the small cabin. I sat curled in the chair nearest the fire, letting the heat soak into my frozen limbs, though I couldn’t seem to shake the shivers.
The tang of iron hit my nose, and I stared down at my hands and my tattered gown. Everything was still caked in Jack’s blood. My blood. The blood of the dissenters I’d killed.
A tear rolled down my face and my lips trembled as I held back a sob, a hand clamping over my mouth.
From the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a ceramic cup floating toward me, steam curling from its rim in delicate ribbons. It drifted with the poise of invisible hands and settled onto the small table beside my chair without so much as a clink.
“Thank—” I paused, not knowing who I should be thanking.
Helka eased herself into the seat beside mine, her shawl spilling over the armrest, eyes glimmering with amusement. “It’s okay. You can thank her. She appreciates gratitude.”
I wiped the tear and raised a brow. “Thank who, exactly?”
The witch drank from her own steaming cup, a smile carving across her lips as she sipped. “Huldskjól. That’s her name.”
I blinked and looked around the cozy seating area. “Whose name?”
“The house, deary. She’s older than I am, and far more particular about her company.
A bit temperamental at times, but for the most part, she’s amenable.
” Helka’s chair jolted beneath her. She glanced up toward the rafters as if that was where the house’s face might be.
“I said you were amenable, you old hag.”
I looked up, but all I saw were beams draped in dangling charms, bundles of dried herbs, and trinkets that clinked softly as if there was an invisible draft I couldn’t feel. “So…the house is alive?”
“Born from the root of the Yew-Mother and the bones of a frost giant left to perish beneath these woods…or so the tale goes. Her walls remember every voice that’s ever passed through them, every breath taken under her roof.”
I stared at the cup, the surface of the tea rippling faintly. Looking up at the rafters again, I smiled. “Thank you, Huldskjól.”
“Oh, you can call her Skjolli,” Helka added with a smirk. “I do. At least when she’s in a good mood.”
Helka’s chair moved back an inch of its own accord. The witch just kept sipping her tea.
I tilted my head. “And if she’s not?”
The crone’s gaze flicked toward the shadowed hallway, where the darkness seemed to thicken like the mouth of a cave. “Best you don’t give her reason to sour. She’s shelter to those she favors…and a snare to those she doesn’t.”
My fingers tightened around the cup, the steam curling up into my nose in fragrant tendrils of chamomile and meadowsweet. I wasn’t sure if it was the tea warming my hands or the house itself, but either way, I felt comforted.
“You have questions,” Helka said at last.
“How many hours do you have?” I asked, a soft chuckle escaping me.
“We have until morning.”
“You need us out by dawn?”
“I need to be out by dawn. You and the prince can remain here until he’s healed.”
“I don’t think we can stay long,” I said, setting the cup back on the table.
“We need to return to Skadgard. The kingdom must be in an uproar. The Frost Queen will demand answers. And the Unseelie Princess…” My voice faltered.
“Gods, I don’t even know what happened after the dissenters took me. Who survived…”
The fire’s warmth still refused to reach me despite my closeness to the crackling flames. “This is my fault. If I hadn’t—”
“You cannot carry the blame for what lies beyond your control, dear. Some things unfold as they must, whether we wish it or not.”
“What reason could there possibly be for any of this?”
“You’re not just talking about the attack, are you?”
My gaze slid to hers, wary. “How is it you know so much?”
She shrugged and sipped her tea as though my question was inconsequential. “You seek the wrong answers, child. Tell me, when did your magic first manifest?”
“My…magic?”
“This is a safe space. You’ve nothing to fear here. Look around. Does this strike you as a home that shrinks from magic?”
“I don’t have ma—”
“I saw the claws, Sylvanna.”
Her words churned my stomach. I wanted to deny her, to say I hadn’t the faintest idea what she spoke of.
My chin lowered, eyes catching on the blood caked beneath my nails, but there was no escaping the truth any longer.
“A week after the queen’s failed campaign against Yulreth, I was ambushed in an alley.
My injuries should have killed me. Yet the next morning, I was whole.
I thought Jack—the prince,” I corrected softly, “had healed me, but he swore he had no such gift.”
“He wasn’t wrong.”
“It wasn’t just the healing,” I whispered. “My senses sharpened. Beyond what is natural for common fae. My hair…” I twined a finger through the silver-gray streak, now thicker than before. “It keeps changing.”
“And the shifting? When did that surface?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Shifting?”
Her gaze flicked to my hands. “The claws, Sylvanna. You’re a shifter,” she said, gesturing toward the corner where Bjarnalf was snoring on a rocking chair. “Like him.”
I jumped to my feet, my foot knocking into the side table and causing the tea to spill over the floorboards. “I’m a bear?”
Helka chuckled softly. “No, deary. Not a bear, a wolf. And not just any wolf. You are the úlfhrein—the sacred wolf foretold in Selvarg’s prophecy.”
“The moon goddess? What prophecy?”
“She foretold of the warrior destined to unite the Wargfell pack. The one poised to lead them back to their rightful power.”
I stood frozen, staring, forgetting to breathe.
Helka leaned back, unhurried, lifting her cup once more. “You’ve heard the term before, haven’t you?”
I tried to swallow, but my mouth had gone completely dry. “The archer in the woods—the dark-haired one who struck Jack with that poisoned arrow—called me úlfhrein.”
“Ahh.” Her fingers drummed against the cup as though a riddle had revealed itself. “Fenrik Mánabarn. Blood heir of the Wargfell pack. So, he’s the one who led that wolf pack into these woods. If he’s found you already, he lives up to his name.”
I shook my head in confusion. “I’m sorry, who? And why is this person looking for me?”
“Because Fenrik is the alpha’s son. And you, Sylvanna, are the wolf their prophecy promised. The wolf he believes he is fated to mate.”
I sank back into the chair, legs trembling, breath shallow, sweat gathering at my temples. My head spun, trying to piece all this together. “I’m… I’m…” I lifted my gaze to Helka’s. “I’m just a soldier from Skadgard. A common fae. I’m not… I’m not a wolf of any sort.”
Helka leaned forward, her voice lowering to a whisper. “Child, my body may be brittle and my hair gray, but my foresight is not clouded. The roots of the Sacred Mother do not lie.”
She reached into her skirts and drew forth a small green pouch, cradling it in her hand. “These roots have shown me your past, your present…and the futures that await you. You cannot outrun the magic that flows in your blood.”
I buried my face in my hands. “None of this makes sense. Magic belongs to the royals, not people like me. It was decreed—”
“Bah.” She waved her hand sharply, cutting through my words. “Blah-blah-blah. That is the lie they taught you. I know the true history of this land. And now you will learn it, too.”
“Learn what?”
“What your prince has long suspected, but you haven’t been willing to hear. The real truth about the magic of the northern kingdoms. Not just his own, but the one that lives inside you as well.”
“How could you possibly know that? He’s only ever confessed those things to me.”
Helka’s eyes softened. “I know this is hard for you to comprehend, Sylvanna, but what I speak are not falsehoods. The threads that bind your fate and his were woven long before either of you were born. Some of us are just better at reading the signs.”
My throat tightened. “Reading the signs or reading our minds without invitation?”
Her shoulders pulled back. “The methods matter naught, child. You’re at a crossroads, Captain. What you need to focus on is the truth.”
“And what truth is that?”
“The truth of your lineage, deary. Long ago, magic thrived in all the northern kingdoms. Back then, it was not only royals who were blessed. Shifters were the true dominant race among the fae. They could take the form of beast or fae at will, and some—the Chosen—even wielded elemental magic as well.”
“So, Jack was right…” I whispered, my mind trailing back to the conversation we’d recently had, to his suspicions. “About the shifters… They weren’t just tales meant to frighten children away from the forests?”
“Oh, they were very real. But I think you’ve known that truth yourself. Deep down, you’ve always known you were other. That something outside of yourself called to you.”
Her words summoned the memories of the giant wolf I’d seen in the woods as a child. Of that sense of knowing, of feeling connected to it somehow. I didn’t confirm her words, but I didn’t need to. After all, this witch seemed to know more about me than I knew myself.
“After the War of Four Kings bled the north dry,” she went on, “the rulers of the fae courts turned their fear upon the shifters. The Shadow Court had come dangerously close to victory, and had it not been for the shifters who fought alongside the dreki riders, our world would have fallen. But it was their unity, their strength, their power that became their undoing.”
“The shifters are never spoken of in our history lessons. We are only taught of the dreki riders.”
“It was all by design, dear.”
“But why did the kings fear them if they helped win the war?”