65. Choice
Wilder sat on the ground, out of reach of the swaying flaps of Lyra’s tent. She had been asleep for a while now. Her rhythmic breathing had placed him in a trance as he listened.
She was prone to nightmares, and he listened for them now.
“I see no ambush this night,” Otto murmured from his left. He poked at the burning branch with a long twig.
“So you’ve said,” Wilder replied.
“Ridge couldn’t scent out Cyrus because he was never a traitor. He stayed true to his cause—the wulvers.”
Wilder nodded, having puzzled that much out already. Cyrus wasn’t technically a bad seed in the general sense of the word.
“But that’s not why you are still awake, is it?” Otto asked.
Wilder rolled his eyes, but did not reply. Oak and Dust twitched in their sleep on their bedrolls beside the fire. The tent that Ridge and Maelys had pitched for themselves had eventually fallen silent. Wilder envied them. Envied their freedom in each other and finding their releases.
“I know you do not like to know—” Otto began, his brow scrunched and worry dimming his eyes.
“Then do not tell me,” Wilder snapped.
“It does not end well,” Otto whispered, ignoring Wilder’s order.
Otto never disregarded an order like that. Wilder stared long and hard at the man he’d known his entire life. From the tightening white skin around his eyes to the gray irises themselves.
“Who is fate to tell me how to live my life?” Wilder huffed. “It is my choices that dictate its very weaving.”
Otto shook his head, his white hair sliding over his shoulder as he did. “We are but threads in Her world, moving as she instructs.”
Wilder spat into the fire and glared.
There were some things he chose to believe about life and the meaning of it all, and there were some things he chose to ignore. This was one of those things. That nothing was by choice, that everything was predetermined to happen a certain way, no matter what you chose or believed.
It was disheartening to know you had no free will over your own life.
Otto’s eyes turned glassy again, and Wilder froze.
“There is a way …”
“No,” Wilder ordered. “We will not speak of it.”
Otto closed his eyes and then scrubbed a hand down his face. The beads in his hair glimmered in the light as he shook his head. It must be exhausting seeing things as they are decided and played out. A constant barrage of images and pathways.
Maelys slipped out of the tent and plopped down on the other side of Otto. Her eyes were bright, and a small smile graced her face.
“What’re we talking about?”
“Nothing,” Wilder snapped, as Otto opened his mouth.
Maelys pressed her lips together to hide her budding smile.
“Ahh, Fate’s plan?”
Otto shook his head and mimed locking up his lips.
Maelys sighed and looked over at the corpse of Cyrus. It grew quiet—cold, even.
“How did she do it?” Maelys whispered, looking out of the clearing where they had faced off with the wulvers.
“I’m still trying to figure that out,” Wilder replied.
“Anger,” Otto replied after a moment. “She finally wielded that anger. It was a kindling to the fire already growing within her.”
“She hadn’t shown an ounce of that during training,” Maelys murmured.
Otto chuckled. “Sure, she had. When Wilder was pissing her off.”
The realization clicked for Maelys, and she nodded. “Anger can be a powerful tool. So can protecting those you care about.”
Otto smiled, big and broad. His eyes sparkled like the stars overhead. “Just you wait …”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Ridge chimed in.
Maelys grinned, and it was predatory. “A woman scorned is as savage as the sea in a hurricane.”
Wilder nodded. He had seen a glimpse of that monster beneath her skin.
It lay in wait for the catalyst that would launch her into a bloodthirsty frenzy.
He would weather that storm, though. He had no doubt in his mind that whatever she threw at him, he could take.
But that was the point of her not touching her powers, wasn’t it?
She didn’t want to slip into the unrestrained.
That explained her thirst for knowledge.
If you know a thing, you cannot be afraid of a thing. He should do that with her magic, too.
Maybe if she learned about it, she would no longer fear it.