Chapter 3
The corridors in Gwyllion Castle are a maze of shadows and stone.
Cold drafts whisper between ancient tapestries that have long since faded into shades of muted gray.
My boots echo each footstep as I storm away from the throne room.
I don’t know where I’m going, but I hardly care.
It’s one thing to trick me into traveling to Annwyn, it’s another entirely to trap me here for the winter months.
Behind me, I hear measured, familiar steps. I don’t bother looking back. After weeks spent traveling together, I’d recognize the cadence of Tristan’s footsteps anywhere. He’s wise to keep a safe distance behind me.
“Stop following me.”
“We need to talk.”
If I had any access to my power right now, I’d toss him head over heels down the corridor.
Throw him out the tall, murky windows and into the swirling snowstorm.
Make him sorry he’d ever stepped foot in Caerwen and tricked me into following him to this gods-forsaken wasteland.
But this thought only infuriates me further, seeing as I haven’t been able to use my power since it saved us from the wraith-infested borderlands.
I used to be able to use it to heal the wounded and summon light in the darkness, but now … nothing.
I whirl around. “Talk? Now you want to talk? After all your lies and deception?” My voice rises, catching in my chest. “You brought me here. To Annwyn. To her. You knew exactly who she was to me.”
He doesn’t even flinch. “Need I remind you that you wanted to find her?” He raises a dark eyebrow.
I shove a hand against his chest, but he doesn’t budge.
He narrows his eyes. “You were practically begging me to bring you to her.”
Blood boils in my veins. “No. You don’t get to twist it around like that.” I point one finger inches in front of his face. “I wanted you to tell me what happened to her.”
“To bring you the answers.”
My voice rises in fury, and I don’t care who can hear me. “Which you could’ve told me without tricking me into crossing the entire country! Instead, you used me to get to the border.”
Tristan stands his ground, but there's something telling in the way his fingers twitch, as if they want to reach for me. He just shakes his head. “No, not lies. I never lied to you, Red.”
“You weren’t honest with me either.” The words come out like a blade, sharp and cutting.
“It was for your own good.”
I take a step closer, close enough that the heat of him prickles against my skin. “Do you really expect me to thank you for ruining my life?”
“It was to save you from your father.”
I laugh, but it sounds more like a sob. “Save me?! Look around, Tristan. I’m a Fox in a den of Wolves. This isn’t a rescue. It’s entrapment.”
“I won’t let them hurt you. I need you to trust me on that.”
“Trust you?” My laugh cuts sharp as broken glass. “You’re the last person I should trust.”
I stare at him, wide-eyed. Does he take me for a fool?
As if I could ever trust him again after what he’s done.
My head begins to throb. The anger is still burning inside me, but it’s being slowly buried in an onslaught of painful betrayal.
I don’t want to admit how much I did trust him. And what it’s cost me.
A vision of Hunter, begging me not to follow the Wolf, flickers through my mind. I shove it aside, unwilling to dwell on the colossal mistake I’ve made. I can’t face that guilt. Not yet.
“For once, be honest with me,” I say, exhausted. “Were you looking for me that day in my father’s chamber? Did you think I was the mystical Heir to the North? That if you brought me here, I’d fix everything and save Annwyn?”
There is a moment of absolute silence. I can’t read him, this Wolf with gray eyes. We’ve been traveling together for weeks and still, I don’t understand him.
When Tristan speaks, his voice is steady. “No, Red. You’re not the Heir to the North. That was never a lie.”
“So, what? You brought me here as a political prisoner?”
“You’re not listening.” He growls. He levels his stormy eyes on mine. “Your father is a dangerous man. You know that as well as I do. I was trying to get you away from him. Away from the poisonous Fox Throne, because I knew you …” He pauses, his eyes shifting away.
“Knew what?” I cross my arms. “What could you possibly know about me that I don’t already know?” Frustration builds in my chest. I want to scream. Instead, tears prick at the corners of my eyes.
When Tristan looks at me, his eyes are defiant. “I know that you’re better than he is.” He lifts his chin, like he isn’t sorry about any of it. “That you’re a threat to his power, and he would do anything to get rid of you.”
Something twists in my chest at those words, though I fight to cover it with a scoff. “Better than him? That’s a low bar to clear.” I take a half-step back, but he takes a step forward, refusing to let the distance grow.
My heart rate speeds up at the memory of the pitch-black dungeon my father threw me in.
The place of forgetting. Of dying a cold, miserable death in a rat-infested pit no one would find me in.
And no one would have, if it hadn’t been for Hunter.
A lump forms in my throat, and I turn toward a snow-covered window to hide how utterly destroyed I feel.
How helpless and alone I am. It takes me several deep breaths to control the rising tide inside of me.
Tristan doesn’t press me further. He just stands there silently, waiting. When he speaks again, his voice is soft. “I understand what you’re feeling.”
“How could you possibly know how I feel?” My voice cracks.
“I know what it’s like to hurt someone you love.”
It’s the first time he’s acknowledged what I did—leaving Hunter on a fiery battlefield surrounded by corpse beasts. The admission makes me pause.
He steps closer to me, his voice low. “The guilt. The fear that you’re a monster for what you’ve done.
” Another step. He’s barely a whisper away now.
His words brush against the fallen curls at the nape of my neck.
“And I know what it’s like to lose someone you love.
That bone-shattering heartache that never fully goes away. ”
My heart stumbles in my chest. There’s something in those words, a depth of understanding that goes beyond mere sympathy. For a moment, the space between us fills with the impossible weight of half-spoken secrets.
I turn to face him again, my breath ragged. “You don’t get to stand there and act like you understand anything I’m feeling.”
Something in me wavers when I see the look on his face.
It hints at grief, tended for years. I’d never noticed it before, but it’s there in the grim line of his mouth and his quiet stoicism.
Before, I’d mistaken him for cool and calculating.
But now, I wonder if that’s not the whole truth.
If this Wolf has suffered and bears his scars openly.
The absolute certainty of my anger begins to crack, revealing something more complicated beneath.
Tristan nods once, then turns and walks past me. The brush of his hand against mine as he turns feels deliberate, like one last defiance. As if he knows he’s leaving me with nothing but my misery and the howling wind beyond the castle walls.
The castle’s corridors twist like the discarded skin of a serpent.
Passages branch out in multiple directions and lead down darkened halls lined with tapestries.
Their faded threads tell old stories that I can’t fully understand.
Knights in silver armor battle beasts and wolves.
Fae creatures with black eyes watch from the shadows.
Ladies dance naked in forests illuminated by moonlight.
Each frozen image is but a glimpse of a story long forgotten.
Annwyn heroes and monsters watch me as I wind through the unfamiliar corridors, like a fool stepping through a nest of vipers.
Before long, I’m lost. Completely, utterly lost. Pride keeps me from turning back and retracing my steps to the throne room to ask for help.
My stomach growls. I haven't eaten since yesterday.
Even then, it was just raw nuts and mushy apples.
Very little still clung to the trees this late in the season.
Now, all I can think of is warm bread and hearty stews. It’s the sort of meal you’d expect from a castle kitchen on a freezing winter day, but nothing in Annwyn has been what I’d call “expected.” For all I know, these cold people with their grim frowns and sharp words eat nothing but snow and ice.
I’m hit with a sudden pang of homesickness, not for the palace in Caerwen, but for the kingdom in general.
Llwyn, the southern lands where flowers bloom and heat caresses your skin on summer days.
My eyes skitter over the endless snow-covered windows, most of them cracked.
Wood planks block the light from coming in where the glass is broken entirely.
My footsteps echo down the empty hallways, each one swallowed by silence. Somewhere in the distance, something creaks. It could be a door or a floorboard. I can’t tell. I don’t see anyone, but the feeling clings to me like eyes watching from the shadows and from behind cracked doors.
I hear the kitchen before I see it. Pots clatter, knives cleave, and someone shouts orders in the distance. Then, the smell hits me: meat, herbs, and the warm sweetness of freshly baked bread. I follow my nose down a flight of stairs.
The kitchens, when I find them, are alive.
Black cast-iron pots hang from thick hooks along the ceiling.
A hearth large enough to roast an entire stag dominates one wall.
Finally, here’s the mess and noise of a great palace.
Kitchen staff chop and shout, stir and wash.
Voices rise over the din as chefs give orders and chastise slow kitchen maids.
I stand in the doorway, watching the chaos.
Heat from the ovens radiates clear across the room.
It’s the first time I’ve felt truly warm in weeks.
No one notices me until a young woman in a damp apron freezes mid-step. Her eyes grow round and her mouth drops open in a silent “O.” The spoons in her hand clatter to the ground. The entire kitchen grows silent and still as every pair of eyes finds me.
I hold up my hands in what I hope is a universal sign of peace. “I apologize for interrupting. I … um … was looking for …”
They all stare.
Apologizing again, I turn and run back out into the corridor.
Around the corner, I slump against the stone wall and slide to the ground in defeat.
Eventually, the noise of the kitchens returns, muted this time and laced with whispers.
I wrap my arms around my knees and rest my head, staring at the worn flagstones.
Footsteps echo down the hall, but I don’t look up until a pair of brown leather boots stop in front of me. The toes are scuffed and worn, but they’re not Tristan’s. I raise my head and squint up at the intruder.
Nalina stands like a warrior, her feet apart and shoulders back. She’s watching me with narrowed emerald eyes. “You’re lost.”
I lift my chin, defiance rising despite my hunger and exhaustion. “I know exactly where I am.”
Nalina’s laugh is quick and unexpected, more of a bark. I get to my feet, wincing as my bones creak. We stare at each other for a long time.
Up close, I can see that Nalina is objectively beautiful, scar notwithstanding.
She’s a large woman whose broad stature belies immense strength.
She’s clearly not the type to care about primping or dressing to impress.
Her clothes are worn and practical, allowing for easy movement.
Her leather vest and breeches are scuffed.
Her only adornment is a silver wolf brooch pinned to her chest, a reminder that Nalina isn’t any ordinary guard.
She’s a Wolf, like Tristan, and just as deadly.
“Come,” she says. “The guest rooms are this way.”
Too worn down to protest, I rise from the cold stone floor and follow her.
The hallway she leads me through is colder than the rest of the castle, if that’s even possible.
Drafts slip through cracks in the mortar, stirring the thin tapestries that hang limp along the walls.
A sense of unease tightens in my chest, and I start to wonder if I’m walking straight into a trap.
But then Nalina pushes open a heavy wooden door and my breath catches.
The room opens to a wall of tall, arched windows, their glass blurred with frost. Even through the drifting snow, I can see the Spires in the distance and the mountain path home to Llwyn.
“It’s beautiful,” I whisper, before I can stop myself.
Nalina watches me with an unreadable expression.
The room itself is utilitarian. There’s a single chair, an empty hearth that whistles with wind, and a massive bed covered with thick furs. But with that view, who needs gilded sconces or elaborate portraits?
I clear my throat, remembering myself. “Thank you.”
Nalina’s lips pinch, as if she’s trying to decide whether she should speak her mind or not. She nods. “I’ll ask someone to bring up firewood and a meal.”
My stomach growls in response.
Her eyes flicker over my soiled red cloak and mud-caked boots. She turns to leave before pausing. “And warm water to bathe.”
I’m far too grateful to care whether that’s a veiled insult or not.