Chapter Ten
In the beginning, when the gods were creating the kingdoms, the goddess Chione created the land of wolves.
She fell in love with a man, a mortal man.
The gods became infuriated when she fell pregnant with his child.
The first half-mortal half-god to exist. The gods turned on each other, those that wished to protect Chione and her unborn child, and those that wished her dead.
In the end, the legend says that she was cast into the wolverian lands, made mortal by the angry hands of envious gods.
She became the first wolverian queen. However, Chione’s envious twin took the man she loved and transformed him into a wolf.
The first giant wolf to exist in these lands.
A wolf with the soul of a warrior. Of a mortal man, whose only sin was to love a goddess.
Tabitha Wysteria
Whenever Ylva slept, she dreamt of a place she had never seen, yet it always appeared the same.
She travelled through mist and shadow in the form of a wolf, and more often than not she was accompanied by a woman she did not know: tall, pale, crowned with wyverian horns, her hair wild as storm winds.
But this time, in this dream, the woman was gone.
Now Ylva followed someone else. Someone she recognised from the waking world.
Kage Blackburn.
She had never truly met him, yet she had seen his corpse.
So why was she dreaming of him?
Ylva jolted awake. Arden was crouched beside her, his expression tight with concern. It was difficult not to stare at him. He was too beautiful, and those antlers of his were almost distracting. She wanted to tug them just to make him look directly at her.
‘You were stirring,’ Arden said.
‘I was dreaming.’ Ylva pressed a hand to her brow. ‘I keep having dreams lately.’
Arden frowned. ‘What sort of dreams?’
Ylva shrugged. ‘They’re just dreams.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said. ‘But I’ve learnt that nothing is ever what it appears to be.’
They had stopped to rest for a few hours.
Ylva, Elric, and Nymeria had slept while Arden kept watch.
There had been a rather heated debate between Elric and Arden over whether he could be trusted not to vanish while they slept.
Apparently, Arden had a habit of disappearing.
He had insisted that he would run nowhere now that he had found his wolf.
Ylva still wasn’t entirely sure what he meant by that, but had decided not to dwell on it.
‘I saw him,’ Ylva blurted the moment Arden helped her to her feet. She didn’t need the help, yet she found herself letting him do such trivial things anyway. For some absurd reason, she liked the attention.
‘Who?’
‘The man who died,’ she said quietly. ‘The wyverian prince. Kage Blackburn.’
Arden went still, his back tautening, those green eyes narrowing with sudden interest. ‘In your dreams?’
Ylva nodded.
‘What was he doing?’
She turned away to gather her things, gaze flicking to Elric and Nymeria, who were now waking at the sound of Arden’s voice. ‘It was just a dream,’ she muttered, though her body had grown unexpectedly rigid, as if the words themselves made her uneasy.
‘Are you sure?’
Ylva twisted back sharply. ‘What is that supposed to mean?’
Arden opened his mouth as if to explain, then stopped.
He had been doing that a great deal lately, always on the verge of saying something before pulling away, as though there was a truth lodged in his throat that he refused to let out.
It infuriated her. She wanted to know what he was hiding, why he acted as if she were fragile porcelain, and why—when he thought she wasn’t looking—she would catch him watching her with sorrow hanging heavy in those green eyes.
‘Nothing, little wolf,’ he said at last. And then he reached out and tucked a strand of her white hair behind her ear with the gentlest brush of his fingers. Ylva sucked in a breath, startled by the tenderness of it. Arden smiled, wholly unapologetic for his boldness.
‘Don’t…’
‘Don’t what?’ he asked, tilting his head with playful curiosity.
Ylva looked away, suddenly flustered beneath the bright green stare fixed upon her, as though he believed she carried the answers to the universe.
Which she most certainly did not.
‘Why do you keep looking at me like that?’ she asked instead.
‘You remind me of someone,’ Arden replied. ‘But she was far funnier, and she talked a great deal more.’
A strange frustration tightened in Ylva’s chest. She could not understand why it bothered her.
She had no reason to care what he felt, or whom he spoke of.
Yet the thought of this unknown woman tugged unpleasantly at her.
‘Well, you should have married her then!’ She huffed and strode over to check the horse and the wolf, preparing for their continued journey, but paused when she heard Arden chuckle softly.
‘One day.’
Ylva looked back at him, catching the shadowed sorrow lining his dark features. ‘So where is this beloved of yours?’
Something flashed through his eyes, something she instinctively wished not to decipher. ‘She’s elsewhere for now. But she’ll come back to me one day.’
Ylva frowned. ‘How can you be so certain?’
‘Because she promised.’
…
After travelling for most of the day, they finally stopped at dusk to build a fire. Once they had settled, Ylva leaned back against the giant wolf that refused to leave her side. Her fingers absently stroked its enormous paw.
‘What do you think we’ll find when we arrive?’ she asked, glancing towards the trio of Fae gathered around the flames.
Elric was skewering the bird they had hunted for supper, his broad shoulders tightening with reluctance. His expression said enough: he expected nothing good at the end of the road they were walking. Ylva exhaled softly.
‘What’s it like being a Black Lotus?’ she asked instead. She noticed how the three of them stiffened before exchanging wary looks, as if no one had ever dared ask such a thing aloud.
‘What’s it like being a valkyrian?’ Arden countered, tugging off his leather boots.
Ylva shrugged. ‘I’ve known nothing else.’
Arden’s green eyes darkened. ‘Neither have we.’
‘I’ve heard terrible stories about what your king has made you do.’
‘Then they are likely gentler than the truth,’ Elric replied. He loomed over the flames. He was too large, too formidable to sit comfortably in any quiet moment.
Ylva’s gaze drifted to Nymeria, crouched to one side, calmly sharpening her throwing knives, metal whispering against stone. They were terrifying—the three of them—yet somehow, in their presence, Ylva did not feel threatened at all.
‘Do not be deceived,’ Elric said, clearly reading the trail of thoughts playing across her face. ‘We are far worse than the tales.’
‘I believe there is good in you,’ Ylva replied.
‘We never claimed there wasn’t,’ Elric answered, a faint smile tugging at his thick lips. ‘But people assume that because of what we do, we are incapable of being… good.’
‘It is questionable, though,’ she argued. ‘You kill whomever your king commands. And in terrifying ways.’
‘Do the other kingdoms not do the same?’ Elric shrugged.
‘Do Dunayans not kill for coin? It is their greatest trade. Do wyverians not pride themselves on being the fiercest warriors? To what end, if not bloodshed? We have become the monsters of bedtime stories, but we are no different from the rest.’
Ylva murmured her thanks when Arden handed her a portion of the roasted bird. He had cut away the leg and placed it gently upon a broad leaf to serve as a plate. She couldn’t help but smile at the gesture. How could she believe they were nothing but merciless killers when they did such kind things?
She stopped chewing when she noticed Elric watching the exchange, jaw clenched tight. Arden must have seen it too, for he coughed lightly and shifted back to his place on Ylva’s right, leaving a deliberate space between them.
‘I cannot question my past,’ Ylva said suddenly. All three Fae looked up at her, surprise flashing in their eyes. ‘These runes don’t allow me to ask…’ She looked down at her hands, at the faint shimmering of magic that lay beneath pale skin.
‘Do you want to know?’ Elric asked.
Ylva dared a glance at Arden. His face had hardened, those green eyes fixed upon Elric with quiet warning, as though he did not want the conversation to continue.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said at last. ‘Because the truth is… even if you told me, it wouldn’t change anything, would it?’
She looked to the Fae at her side, those bright green eyes fixed wholly on her, full of words left unsaid. Words snatched away by the evening breeze.
Words that, as she had already recognised, would mean nothing in the end.