33. Isolde
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
ISOLDE
I solde scrubbed the blood from her hair and her skin with a great deal more vigor than was strictly necessary. The activity at least kept her from thinking about… well, anything.
Not the horrific images of Bastian bleeding all over the place, which were still playing through her head.
Not what Selene had said to her at the table, not the way Bastian had looked at her at any point in the last day, and definitely not any of the confounding, all-consuming things she felt whenever she looked at him.
She was absolutely, resolutely, not thinking about any of that. Not until they got out of Wolf territory alive, at least.
When she’d left the dining room, Bastian had been dozing on the table while Aggie laid a fresh cloth across his back. Isolde hadn’t wanted to look at his wounds again, nor did she feel like speaking to Selene, so she muttered an excuse about needing to change and locked the door behind her.
She lingered in the bathtub as long as she possibly could, marveling at the fact that the water was actually hot , not just tepidly warm like the water she had to heat over the fire to bathe at the cabin.
She hadn’t the faintest clue how it worked, but all she had to do here was turn one of the polished brass handles, and steaming water poured out of a pipe to fill the tub.
She couldn’t help but wonder if they might have something like this in Bloodhaven if the Bleeding War had never happened and the Vampires hadn’t chased the Wolves out two hundred years before. If there were other things that might be better if the two species were at all capable of getting along.
Feeling bitter, shaken, and exhausted, Isolde crept back out of her room to check on Bastian. Aggie and Selene had vanished, and he’d fallen back to sleep, his head pillowed on his folded arms.
Isolde stole the quilt off Bastian’s bed and draped it over his hips. Before going off to her own bed, she brushed the hair gently away from his face, and he shifted, still asleep, to lean into her touch.
Despite her vow not to think about it, she couldn’t stop the vision of Selene’s sharp look at her and Bastian’s joined hands from entering her mind, nor could she keep from hearing those words:
It would seem that you are the last person qualified to offer your opinion on relations between Vampires and Wolves.
“No one mentioned the other attacks earlier,” Bastian said several hours later, punching the pillow his chin was resting on into a new position.
Isolde had emerged after a fitful nap to find him off the table, limping towards his bedroom with his blanket dragging behind him and a pained grimace on his face.
She’d snapped at him to lie the fuck down , to which he’d responded that if he had to lay on a plank of wood for another minute, he was going to perish after all.
So Isolde had helped him into the bedroom, onto the bed, and out of his blood-soaked trousers, too.
That had been an exercise in keeping her gaze out of distracting places, which seemed silly, considering the fact that she’d seen it before and had her hands on much more intimate parts of him than his ass.
At the very least, Wolf healing did seem to be fairly miraculous. Bastian’s back looked markedly better already, and he’d stopped wincing with every little move he made.
“No,” Isolde agreed from her spot beside Bastian, where she sat propped against the headboard. “Selene dismissed it when I brought it up to her a few weeks ago, and I figured it wasn’t the time, since things were already a bit… tense.”
“Probably a good call.”
Isolde opened her mouth, about to say more, when Aggie shuffled in.
She paused, watching the old woman as she came to Bastian’s side with her satchel of medicines.
The old Wolf sent a disgruntled glance around the room, and then at Isolde, clearly unimpressed by the fact that her don’t move him order had been disregarded, but she said nothing.
“It’s alright,” Bastian said, noticing the hesitant look on Isolde’s face. “You can talk in front of Aggie. She’s more interested in her tinctures than whatever we have to say.”
Isolde wasn’t sure she bought that—Aggie’s gaze was just a little too sharp and shrewd—but she opted to take Bastian’s word for it.
“I still think it’s the same Wolf.”
“I know,” Bastian sighed. “But it doesn’t make any sense. I lived here for almost twenty-two years, Isolde, and I’ve never seen a Wolf change on a night where the moon wasn’t full.”
“I’ll admit I didn’t get a good look at it the night with the nightsbane,” Isolde persisted, “but I did see it. It looked too similar to the Wolf I saw on the full moon for it to be any other kind of creature.”
“I’m not saying it’s not a Wolf,” Bastian said.
“I told you before, I’ve seen exactly what it looks like when a Wolf makes a kill, and that farmer, and the goats in Bloodhaven, were the exact same.
But I was thinking about it on the way here, and— ow!
” He broke off, shooting a glare over his shoulder at Aggie as she prodded at one of his wounds.
“You never did have a very gentle hand, did you, Ag?”
“What were you thinking?” Isolde nudged, when Aggie ignored Bastian’s comment.
He turned back to her. “It just seems odd, the way it attacked on the full moon, don’t you think? After all those attacks where it ate people and animals whole, suddenly it shows up and starts dragging villagers out of bed by their legs? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe there weren’t any humans out of their beds that night, and it couldn’t find anyone to attack,” Isolde suggested. “Lord knows the villagers are afraid, and they’ve already been keeping to their houses on the full moon for centuries.”
“Why not eat a flock of sheep, then?” Bastian argued. “It’s had no problem feeding on livestock before.”
Well, shit . Isolde didn’t know how she hadn’t considered that before, but he did have a point.
“Could it have something to do with the moon being full?” she wondered. “If the Wolf is somehow turning on other nights, maybe its behaviors are different then. Maybe it’s not in control.”
“But then why attack on the full moon, when it is in control?” Bastian shook his head. “Why give itself away like that?”
Isolde’s mind was beginning to spin. She dropped her head back against the headboard with a groan.
“None of it makes sense,” she complained.
“We’re not any closer to figuring out what or who it is, or if it’s even possible for a Wolf to turn when the moon isn’t full, and while we’re here, the beast could be killing more?—”
“It’s the blood.”
Isolde sat up straight, peering at Aggie. “What?” she asked.
“I’m well-aware that I’m covered in blood, Aggie,” Bastian said, shooting another glare over his shoulder at the old woman. “There’s not much I can do about it at the moment, seeing as how I can barely?—”
“No, Bastian,” Isolde interrupted, her hand shooting out to land on his arm. She leaned toward Aggie, peering into those clear gray eyes. “Aggie, do you know if it’s possible for a Wolf to change when the moon isn’t full?”
Aggie stared back at Isolde for a moment, one side of her wrinkled mouth twisting downward.
And then she nodded .
“ What ?” Bastian turned halfway onto his side, gaping at Aggie. “How?”
Aggie poked him in the shoulder, shoving him down to the mattress. She turned back to her satchel and fished out a jar of salve. “It’s the blood,” she repeated.
“The blood?” Isolde asked, more gently than Bastian. “What blood do you mean, Aggie?”
Aggie didn’t answer right away, focused on rifling through her satchel until she came up with a jar of some greenish paste, which she uncorked and began to spread onto Bastian’s back.
Bastian, impatient, opened his mouth to prod her further, but Isolde pinched his arm.
Miraculously, he obeyed her silent command to let Aggie take her time.
After a few moments of Aggie spreading her salve onto Bastian’s wounds, Isolde’s patience paid off. “The blood of lovers,” she said. “Changes them.”
“The blood of lovers?” Bastian repeated. “I don’t understand.”
“The blood of lovers,” Aggie said again, her tone growing a little irritated now, like she was annoyed that Bastian and Isolde didn’t understand what she was saying. “It’s not allowed. Not anymore.”
Isolde didn’t have the faintest clue what any of that meant. “Do you mean the blood somehow makes it possible for Wolves to change when the moon isn’t full?” Isolde guessed. “The… blood of lovers?”
Aggie looked up at Isolde, nodding, an excited gleam in her eye. “It’s wrong,” she said. “The blood is wrong. They didn’t know.”
Isolde shot Bastian a look, more confused than ever. “Can you explain what that means, Aggie?”
“Blood moon.” Aggie shook her head, agitated. “Bloodline. Done right.”
“Okay,” Isolde said slowly. “So the blood of lovers can make it possible for Wolves to change whenever they want. But it was… done wrong?”
“Blood moon,” Aggie said again. “Bloodline. Done right.”
“But what does that mean , Aggie?” Bastian pleaded. “Who did it wrong?”
Aggie turned back to her work, spreading the salve over Bastian’s back with new fervor. “The blood of lovers. Blood moon. Bloodline. Done right.”
Isolde stared at Aggie, her mind churning through those ten words over and over again. “Whoever did it wrong... that’s who’s turning when the moon isn’t full?”
Aggie nodded frantically, still hunched over Bastian. “Blood moon. Bloodline. Done right.”
“Who is it, Aggie?” Isolde begged. “Who did it wrong? And what happens if they do it right?”
But Aggie wouldn’t say anything more. She wouldn’t answer any more of Isolde or Bastian’s questions—only grew increasingly agitated the more they asked.
Over and over again, she kept repeating those words: “The blood of lovers. Blood moon. Bloodline. Done right.”