Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
The journey back to Aelfheim takes three days.
But it fucking feels like three years. Time stretches and compresses in strange ways when you can’t speak or use your hands. I try to count the hours but lose track.
My gait is terrible at first. I keep trying to walk like a human, which results in a lot of stumbling and falling. By the second day I’m moving more smoothly.
The truth is, that terrifies me more than the clumsiness did. It means I’m adapting and slowly accepting this.
The hunters make camp at night and I’m forced to lie at their feet like a common dog. They don’t even bother tying me up. The servitor band makes physical restraints unnecessary.
I lie in the dirt beside their fire, close enough to feel its warmth but not close enough to be comfortable. They talk and laugh above me, eating their cooked meals while I watch, my stomach growling.
Sometimes Quinnlan will absently reach down and scratch behind my ears like I’m a pet.
“It’s disgusting, Quinn. That’s a fucking elf,” Stark mutters, staring at me with disgust.
Fuck him.
Quinnlan waves him off. “But I’ve always wanted a puppy.”
Fuck them both.
The band’s compulsion keeps me from running no matter how much I want to. I test it constantly. When I try to move away, invisible chains jerk me back. I try to howl my rage but my throat produces only whimpers. The collar anticipates every act of rebellion before I can even attempt it.
“You know what’s funny?” Quinnlan says on the second afternoon, watching me struggle over a fallen log. “If you’d just accepted your wolf lineage and learned to shift properly, you might have escaped us. Real wolves are harder to track.”
If only I had embraced what I was. Instead I spent seventeen years running from the Sylverin clan. Now I’m trapped in a twisted mockery of it.
A rabbit bolts across our path. My head snaps toward the movement. Every muscle in me goes taut.
Prey. Hunt. Kill. Eat.
The instincts scream at me to catch and tear into warm flesh.
The rabbit’s scent is rich and alive and utterly tempting. I see the white flash of its tail. Saliva floods my mouth. The urge is overwhelming as my haunches gather beneath me. I’m instinctively preparing for the chase.
The collar jerks me backward so hard I nearly fall. My hunting instinct cuts off, replaced by confusion and frustration.
Stark aims an arrow that takes the prey clean through the skull.
Perfect shot. This shithead is a show-off.
He walks over to retrieve it, holding it up by the ears to examine his kill. “This one’s yours for dinner,” he taunts with a cruel smile.
They feed me once a day with raw meat from whatever the archer kills.
Tonight it’s rabbit, skinned and thrown at my feet still warm.
The carcass lands in front of me with a wet slap.
It’s fresh enough that blood still seeps from the wounds.
I recoil from it, stomach churning at the sight of bloody flesh.
But I’m starving.
The curse drained massive amounts of energy from my body. Reshaping bone and muscle and tissue requires fuel, and I have nothing left.
I force myself to lean down, to take the meat between my teeth. The first bite makes me gag. The second is easier and by the third, instincts take over and I’m tearing into the meat like a true beast.
Suddenly the meat isn’t disgusting.
It’s food for survival.
My teeth rip through flesh with ease.
“Look at him go,” Stark says with amusement. I hear his harsh bark of laughter and Quinnlan’s quieter chuckle as blood coats my muzzle.
They’re watching me debase myself, reduced to an animal feeding in the dirt. The sound of their amusement should shame me into stopping.
But it doesn’t. I keep eating.
The meat is gone in minutes and I lick blood from my paws afterward without even thinking about it.
This is what I am now. A fucking wolf.
On the second night, they discuss my fate.
“The guild would probably want him displayed,” Stark says, poking at their campfire. He uses a stick to shift the burning logs, sending sparks spiraling up into the dark. The fire casts dancing shadows across his face. “A warning to others considering desertion.”
They debate my future like I’m not there.
I lie with my head on my paws and try not to think about Garrett. The collar pulses, sensing my distress. It goes warm against my neck, responding to the spike in my emotional state. Every strong emotion triggers a response. It’s monitoring me constantly, reading through my emotions.
Fuck it. Not even my thoughts are private.
I can’t even grieve or rage or despair privately. My last refuge has been stripped away.
The next morning, Aelfheim’s walls rise into view through the trees.
The white stone of the Atlas glows against the dark forest behind us. It is at least fifty feet high, built to withstand sieges and armies. Guard towers punctuate the perimeter at regular intervals. Banners flutter from the battlements, the Queen’s colors visible even from this distance.
This is where everything fell apart.
Quinnlan signals a halt before we reach the walls.
He raises one hand, signalling for us to stop.
We’re maybe a hundred yards from the main gates.
Both hunters remove their masks, revealing the faces beneath.
They tuck the masks into their packs, transforming instantly from guild hunters into ordinary travelers.
Without the masks, they lose their menace and otherness.
They could be young merchants or scholars.
The city guards barely glance at us as we approach the gates. They seem bored as they wave through most travelers without any thorough inspections. Two travelers returning with a hunting dog isn’t unusual enough to warrant attention, just another day’s work in a city that sees everything.
One guard glances at me and takes in the wolf form. He sees the collar and dismisses me as irrelevant. We’re waved through without even stopping. I’ve entered and exited this city countless times as Wolf the assassin.
Today I entered as a real wolf and a failure.
The smells of the city assault me the moment we’re inside the walls.
Thousands of people packed into streets and buildings, their scents blending into one overwhelming chaos.
I can distinguish individuals in the crowd by scent alone.
I even know their stories. That lady had eggs for breakfast, that gardener is dying of lung disease, that child hasn’t bathed in days.
The undercurrent beneath all the human smells is waste and decay. Sewage runs beneath the cobblestones mixing with smoke from chimneys. My stomach growls at the scent of roasting meat from food vendors despite everything.
Somewhere to my left, someone is cooking sausages. The smell is rich, fatty, delicious. My mouth waters involuntarily. It doesn’t matter that I’m being marched to my doom. I’m hungry and I want to eat. The simplicity of the response is almost comforting in its animal purity.
Then I catch something that makes me freeze.
I stop dead in the middle of the street, every muscle going rigid. My head swings toward the scent before I can stop myself. The hunters notice immediately. Quinnlan’s hand goes to the collar controls, ready to compel me forward if I try to bolt.
Garrett’s scent.
Sandalwood and smoke and him. The recognition is instant and devastating. My wolf senses can track it through all the chaos. It’s unmistakable even buried under a thousand other smells.
I can see it in my mind’s eye. The trail is maybe a day old, leading from the palace district toward Elvarstyne Keep.
“Finally,” Quinnlan exhales slowly as we reach our destination.
The guild house looms ahead at the end of a narrow street. I’ve never been to the Aelfheim chapter before but it looks like every guild house I’ve ever known.
They’re all built to the same specifications, the same dark aesthetic whether in Tiamat or Vennhold or here in Aelfheim.
Three stories of black stone with reinforced doors and no windows on the ground floor.
This structure is built to keep things in rather than keep things out.
The door is solid metal banded with steel, secured with locks that would take a battering ram to break.
There are no handles on the outside and it only opens from within. They convey a clear meaning.
Entry is by invitation only, and exit is at the guild’s discretion.
This is a place where people disappear.
“Delivery for the quartermaster,” Quinnlan announces at the entrance. He is suddenly formal, clipped, and professional. So is Stark.
We’re led inside by a silent guard. He is easily six and a half feet tall, shoulders broad enough to fill the doorway. The guard gestures for us to follow and turns to lead us deeper into the building. His face is scarred and expressionless.
The corridors make my enhanced hearing ache with overlapping heartbeats and whispered conversations.
We finally reach a large chamber deep in the building’s belly.
The room is windowless, the ceiling is vaulted, the walls are lined with filing cabinets and locked chests. This is the administrative heart of the operation where contracts are recorded, where payments are distributed, where fates are decided.
A lady waits there, standing beside a desk covered in ledgers and sealed documents.
Dark robes embroidered with silver thread mark her as the Quartermaster.
She wears a golden mask that covers her entire face.
It’s actual gold, hammered thin and shaped to fit perfectly.
Her mask marks her importance and authority within the guild hierarchy.
The Quartermaster controls resources, money, equipment, information. She’s the one who keeps the guild’s books and decides who gets paid and who gets buried. In many ways, she’s more dangerous than any assassin.
The scratch of quill on paper is the only sound for several long seconds. She finishes whatever she’s writing and only then looks up.