Chapter 13 Bryony
brYONY
THE DOOR OF the Wolf’s chamber thuds shut behind me.
The room is lavishly appointed, with leather chairs and polished dark wood furniture, complete with bookshelves nearly reaching the vaulted ceiling.
A killer’s lair dressed up as a gentleman’s sanctuary.
At the far end is a four-poster bed with black silk sheets—the perfect place to lie down and die.
But I only manage three steps before my legs give out.
I crumple to the floor and curl onto my side, pulling my knees up to my chest to protect the vulnerable softness of my center. Darkness bleeds into my periphery. Breathing is excruciating.
I anchor myself in my old ritual—the raised scars I carved into my flesh, my fingertips mapping each ridge.
One jagged line. Breathe. Remember how your lungs expand and contract, how air flows in and out.
Two furrows. Feel. The carpet beneath your cheek, the chill of the floor.
Three gashes. Name. Bryony. No one can take it from you.
Four grooves. Present. You’re in Scillari.
Five scars. Agony means this is real.
I don’t know how long I lie there, counting scars and heartbeats. Hours, I think. Eventually, I register the soft snick of the door opening. Careful footfalls stalk closer.
The Wolf has returned to toy with his prey.
The footsteps halt. I sense his stare on me, as crushing and inexorable as his power. Shame scalds through me at the thought of how I must appear—curled up in a pathetic little ball, baring my teeth in a silent snarl even as furious tears burn my eyes.
I brace myself for brutality. For the bruising grip of his hands. For the bite of a blade against my throat, finishing what my uncle started.
It doesn’t come.
Instead, strong arms slip under me, scooping my limp body up and cradling me against a broad chest. His scent envelops me—citrus and evergreen.
“You should have told me how injured you were,” the Wolf says as he sets me on his bed.
I lick my cracked lips and rasp, “Find… another toy. This one’s broken.”
“Devaliant. Look at me.”
I drag my stare up to meet his. The hall light gilds his face and illuminates those amber eyes. Once, I thought the stories of his beauty were exaggerated. The reality is so much worse.
“Listen very carefully,” the Wolf says. “Can you do that for a minute?”
I nod.
“Good.” Warm fingers graze my cheek, and I can’t help but flinch.
He gentles his touch but doesn’t pull away, the pad of his thumb skating over my cheekbone in an absent caress.
“You’ve got two options. Option one: I use my power to knit you together, and we resume negotiating your death.
Option two: I pour myself a drink and watch your demise in a disappointing conclusion. Take a guess which I’d prefer.”
Is he seriously asking me if I’d rather slowly bleed out here or let him murder me in the future? Those are my choices?
“Bastard,” I hiss.
Genuine laughter rumbles through him. “That was lacking in creativity or sting. The woman who called me pathetic can do better. What do you say? Am I healing you or letting you die?”
It’s so easy, isn’t it? To give in and live on whatever borrowed time he deigns to give me. But, on second thought, it would serve him right to be robbed of his shiny new plaything mere hours after acquiring it. I’m spiteful enough to deprive him of the joy of shattering me at his leisure.
“What if I want it to end?” I ask him.
Fury darkens his features. “You’re telling me that’s it? The Devaliant who had the spine to bargain with me for an ending on her terms is just going to quit?” He scoffs, disgusted. “Fuck me, that’s pitiful.”
I flinch as if he’s slapped me. Somehow, disappointing a god is worse than angering him.
But he’s not done. “So, is that your final answer? Please let me know if I should squander my time on shit like this or if you still want me to choke on your wrath.”
My own words flung at me as a challenge. I cut him open and demanded an end worthy of my rage, and now he wants the rest—the whole feast.
I could ask for other things. The chance to deal with Idris personally, for an opportunity to say goodbye to Theo. Things he might be willing to grant if I make it worth his while.
So I set my jaw. “Get on with it, then.”
Satisfaction flares. “There you are. I knew you wouldn’t bore me.” He reaches out and hooks a finger under my chin to tip my face up to his. “You’re the very best sort of nemesis. The kind with teeth.”
His hand drops to Amara’s belt at my waist. One sharp tug and the fabric parts, leaving me bare and exposed. Panic claws up my throat. I’ve never been naked in front of a man.
My hands lift to cover my breasts, but he bats them away with an impatient noise.
“Don’t,” he warns. “I have to assess the damage.”
My eyes slam shut. That’s almost worse, the not seeing. It amplifies everything—the hum through my body, the drag of his stare over every hurt and scar and flaw.
He carefully removes Amara’s bandages. With his other hand, his fingertips graze the puckered slash across my neck.
I feel the weight of the Wolf’s gaze as it moves lower, taking in the stab wounds next—the chronicle of what I’ve endured.
Of men and kings who sought to pour me into the narrow confines of sacred Anchor and oathbreaker and sacrifice, as if the whole of me could ever fit inside those tidy boxes.
“Devla svaust,” he mutters. “Even a butcher knows the value of a sharp knife and a steady hand. Only a hack takes dull steel to his work and abandons a pretty woman to bleed out on a mountain.”
His touch is gentle as he probes the gash on my ribs. I have to force down a pained moan at the fresh burst of agony.
“Red roses,” I gasp out.
He gives me a questioning look. “What?”
“When we’re… finished. The flowers in your atrium remind me of funeral roses… back home. Put them on my pyre. So you’ll remember me.”
His slow, devastating smile steals my breath.
Then he ruins it by opening his mouth.
“Don’t worry, Devaliant. When I end you, it will be a reckoning to echo through eternity. I’ll carve a monument to our mutual ruination from your bones and build you an altar worthy of the ages.”
He is an absolute lunatic.
I’m struck by the sudden, visceral certainty that this creature could swallow me whole. That he wants to. That when he’s wrung all the entertainment value he can from me, he’ll sink his teeth in and devour me.
“Anyone ever tell you that you’re deranged?” I ask.
“Endlessly. I’d be concerned if they didn’t.”
The Wolf splays his hands over my abdomen, his touch intimate. Strangely reverent. There’s an unnatural heat to his skin, his power a current humming between us, suddenly sinking hooks into me like claws.
I suck in a sharp, pained hiss.
He gentles, power easing until it’s barely there. “I know it hurts. But I need contact with your body to set you to rights. As it stands, this will take multiple sessions. It won’t be pleasant, so hold your breath and think of something else. Can you manage that for me?”
I squeeze my eyes shut as I fight for composure. Then I nod curtly.
“Brave girl,” he says, so softly I almost don’t catch it.
His power unfurls again. It laps at the ragged edges of the deepest wound, building and building until my nerve endings sing, and then it plunges in, in, in, coaxing torn flesh to knit, stitching perforated organs and severed vessels.
Heat suffuses my veins as the pain ebbs.
I sigh as the burn of agony eases, and the warmth of his power turns strangely comforting.
His hands continue their explorations, touch sure and firm. Certain.
“You have the hands of an artist,” I murmur. “All that power in those clever fingers, and you use them to unmake instead of create.”
He hums. “Butchers and artists aren’t so different. We both understand the beauty in rearranging pieces.”
“But you’re an executioner with a healer’s power. Funny, that.”
“Life has a sense of humor. Trust me, I’ve ripped apart more bodies than I’ve put back together.” His fingers press against my ribs, checking something. “The internal bleeding’s stopped. Any more tonight, and your body will shut down. I haven’t used this power in a long time.”
“How long?”
The silence stretches between us. Then: “Since the war.”
Three simple words, and in the negative space between them, the truth he doesn’t voice—centuries of disuse. Of letting this magic wither until he had to excavate it from some dark, disused corner of himself, dredged up and dusted off for the likes of me.
Realizing he’s revealed too much, the Wolf blinks, and his jaw clenches. “You look like something I might have found broken and bleeding on a battlefield,” he continues with deliberate cruelty. “You would have fit right in with all the hopeless humans I tore into.”
My equilibrium is unraveling. Everything I’ve survived suddenly crashes over me, and it’s too much.
All at once, I’m viscerally aware of my nakedness, his hands, my vulnerability, all this blood everywhere.
Everything is too much and too close and too raw.
The room is shrinking, black eating at the edges of my vision as my lungs constrict.
I need to not have blood on my skin. I need—
“I need to be clean,” I gasp. “I need—”
“Breathe.” His voice is crisp and commanding. “We’re going to breathe first, yeah? Nice and slow, in and out. Focus on me.”
I struggle to obey, to suck air past the pressure crushing my ribs. Gradually, the roaring static recedes to a low hum. The bands constricting my chest loosen.
“Good.” The Wolf pulls back to study my face.
“I’m going to dress what’s still unhealed.
Then we’ll get you in a bath.” He retrieves a box from a nearby table and draws out a length of soft fabric.
“This will hold up in water,” he says as he winds it around my midsection.
“I’ll remove it tomorrow when I heal the rest. Think you can manage if I help you to the tub? ”
“Yes.”
He scoops me into his arms. I brace for the swell of revulsion, the animal panic. But it doesn’t come. There’s only the solid heat of him as he carries me into the bathing chamber.
Extravagant is my first impression—all cool marble and gilt fixtures. A large sunken tub dominates the space, able to accommodate his wings. Plush towels and an array of colored glass bottles line the counter.
He sets me down in a chair at the tub’s edge and spins a few taps.
To my astonishment, a panel opens, and a small waterfall fills the basin.
Not like the pipes back in Hellevig—a real, natural waterfall.
The room quickly saturates with a lovely, citrusy scent.
After a few minutes, he twists the knob to close the panel, and the flow cuts off.
I hold my breath as he helps me into the bath, and a moan catches behind my teeth as I sink in.
He moves away, collecting bottles and unfolding towels. And then, to my shock, he kneels beside the tub. Subservient, almost. He flicks a sponge into the water and reaches for me slowly enough that I could stop him if I wanted. I don’t.
“What are you doing?” I ask as he draws it across the knobs of my spine.
“You can barely sit upright. I’m helping.” His ministrations don’t falter, each swipe of the sponge hypnotic. “I’ve never met anyone who inspired this stupid impulse before. The verdict’s still out on whether I like it.”
I rest my temple against the cool lip of the tub. “Do you have a lot of impulses?”
“Can’t say I’ve ever been accused of being rational.”
Exhaustion is settling into my limbs, dragging me into the warm dark. I fight it, clinging to consciousness. There’s one thing I need to know.
“Tell me your name. Your real one,” I say, barely loud enough to be heard over the drip and plink of the water.
He goes still. Then, as if the admission is being dragged out of him: “Evander.”
“Evander,” I whisper, letting my eyes drift closed. I turn the shape of it over. Tasting the sounds. “Pretty name for a monster.”
Pretty name. For such an ugly thing.
“Monsters aren’t born.” He smooths the sponge over my neck. “We’re made. Some of us in pointless, brutal wars. Now go to sleep. I’ll dry you off and put you in bed.”
I’m weightless, drifting, surrendering to the dark. “You won’t hurt me, will you?”
“Not tonight.”