Chapter Five
A Cornered Wolf
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Avaldale, Vrethian.
Kyra.
Someone was singing. Or was it crying? It was not in a language Kyra understood, nor was it a particularly pretty sound to listen to.
It was strangely captivating. A raw, unfamiliar song from the mouth of an ethereal being, though she could not see who or what the voice belonged to. On it crooned its melancholy lament, and still she listened intently, for she knew it was meant for her.
The minor scales that climbed and fell like a wave, the pain in the throaty voice… a warning.
It began to pull away, and Kyra wanted to run after it, to demand its meaning, but she had no legs to run on. Nor a body to move.
As the voice became a distant echo in her mind, she heard something else. Tiny claws scratching on a floorboard. Laughing conversation from behind a wall. Hooves on a cobbled street.
The further away the enchanting voice became, the more solid Kyra felt. Heavy and real.
And hurting.
From head to toe, she ached, as though all her bones had been broken and then fused back together none too gently.
Her eyes fractionally opened, and within a second there was a pale face looming over hers. ‘Thank fuck,’ Rosary breathed, letting out a little nervous laugh.
Blinking through the sunlight that beamed through the dirty window, her surroundings finally came into focus.
It might have been as though they’d never left. The damned mouse was still there, eating Goddess-knows-what in the corner of the dusty room; a wine bottle lay on the side with two empty goblets next to it, and Rosary-
Rosary was sat on the end of the rickety bed, her mousy brown hair pulled clumsily back from her face, her amber eyes filled with concern and exhaustion.
But she was unharmed. Untainted. Unbroken.
The memory of Lilion’s threat to Rosary’s life suddenly hit her. She tried to sit bolt upright but the movement sent a sharp pain through her head. Her hand flew up to it as if she might relieve the pressure.
‘Slow down, Ky!’ Rosary slowly guided her shoulders back against the pillows.
‘Why am I alive?’ Kyra whispered, eyes tightly closed as dread coursed through her. ‘Oslan should have killed me, that's what I… where’s my brother? Why am I alive, Rose?’
Rosary grabbed her wrist. ‘Calm down! He’s alive. Lilion called off the fight just before Oslan could…’ She trailed off and looked away, as though the words refused to form on her tongue.
‘Kill me,’ Kyra finished for her.
Never had Rosary looked so disturbed. ‘You gave up, Ky. You just… gave up.’
Kyra said quietly, ‘It was me or him. I chose me.’
Rosary ran a hand through her messy hair, and Kyra had the impression she was trying to remain calm. ‘What did she say to you, Ky? What did Lilion say to make you fight? I saw her talking but couldn’t hear her.’
She wanted to lie. The threat Lilion had made on Rosary’s life was already making her own blood boil with simmering rage, and she knew it would only fuel Rosary’s hatred of Lilion.
But under her friend’s intense and somehow knowing glare, she buckled.
‘When I refused to fight Oslan… she threatened to kill you.’
Rosary’s expression darkened.
‘It was me, him or you,’ Kyra continued unaffectedly. ‘I chose me.’ If she had to make the choice again, and again, and again until the end of all times, it would always be the same.
‘You’re a fucking idiot,’ Rosary said in a thick voice as she shot to standing and paced the small room, floorboards creaking underneath her furious feet. ‘I will not have you forfeiting your life to save mine!’
‘So, I was supposed to just let you die?’ Kyra said angrily.
Rosary gave a sour laugh. ‘I can handle Lilion cunting Perdy.’
‘How? You have no magic, I’ve never even seen you fight-’
‘How many times do I have to tell you? I don’t need protecting.’ Rosary stopped pacing then. ‘Oslan was going to kill you, Kyra. Your brother did not hesitate. He knew it would be you or him to die and he chose you. How is it you were the only one who refused to be that selfish?’
Kyra fiercely shook her head as she recalled Oslan’s eyes sliding out of focus. ‘It wasn’t him.’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘It means it wasn’t him, Rose!’ Kyra cried.
She sat up again, ignoring the pains that shot through her head, her ribs, her stomach.
‘He wasn’t going to fight me. He begged me to kill him.
He said he was done. He said he couldn’t do it anymore.
I don’t know what changed and I don’t know why, but when he attacked me… he wasn’t himself.’
After a moment, Rosary sat back down on the edge of the bed. ‘You’re saying he was being controlled?’
‘I don’t know,’ Kyra said with an exhausted shrug. ‘I didn’t think that sort of magic was even possible.’
‘It shouldn’t be,’ Rosary said, disgusted.
Something else was still bothering Kyra. ‘Why did Lilion stop the fight?’
‘If you’d died, there would have been a lot of angry gamblers. She doesn’t care about you, just the loss of revenue it would cost her,’ Rosary said bluntly.
Kyra was surprised to find herself stung at those words, no matter how true she knew them to be. Lilion had made it abundantly clear that she was not a friend. She viewed Kyra like… like she owned her.
But she would be a slave no longer. The wolf had fought its last fight. ‘Maybe it’s high time Lilion did lose.’
Rosary’s head snapped toward her, a daring smile playing on her lips. ‘Does that mean what I think it means?’
Kyra couldn’t help but grin; Rosary’s building excitement was contagious. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of Avaldale.’
She had never seen Rosary Talbot so jubilant.
Before she could get ahead of herself, Kyra said quickly, ‘But not without Oslan. I know where he is now, I know he’s alive. I can’t leave him in Lilion’s whorehouse.’
‘Kyra… if he’s been branded, as all of her whores are, he won’t be able to just leave.
Lilion has to be the one to release him.
And I doubt she’d do so without a really fucking good reason.
’ Kyra bit the inside of her cheek to keep tears from filling her eyes.
Rosary cautiously continued, as though she noticed Kyra was on the verge of a breakdown, ‘You’re not bound to Lilion.
She’ll follow you, of course she will, but you’re free to leave without any real repercussions.
I say we leave this afternoon, way before she comes to check in on you.
And we’ll come back for Oslan once we’ve figured out how to release him from her without getting ourselves or him killed in the process. I promise, Ky.’
Leaving Oslan behind felt like a betrayal, for she’d just found him again, the brother that had been lost for so long. And she’d found him fractured beyond her comprehension, a broken shell of the male she’d loved and grown up with.
The choice was to either leave him behind, or remain stuck as Lilion’s pawn. Lilion, who had shattered her trust and used her like some wild, fighting animal all for her own gain.
Perhaps Rosary was right. Perhaps now was the time to be selfish.
She finally nodded her agreement. Rosary tentatively wrapped her arms around her, and Kyra, despite the pain lancing through her slowly healing body, returned the tight embrace.
She couldn’t help the tears that spilt over then, but Rosary did not comment, or even acknowledge them, much to Kyra’s gratitude.
‘Will you tell your family?’ Rosary asked moments later as she pulled away.
‘No,’ Kyra said darkly, swiftly wiping her face with the back of her hand. ‘I owe them nothing.’
Rosary hesitated. ‘Don’t you think-’
‘No,’ Kyra repeated. ‘I won’t see them, Rose.
I doubt Win would give a flying fuck knowing that Oslan and I are even alive.
Dovella will be just as insufferable as she always was, and Aeliah…
’ Kyra sighed then as her youngest sister appeared in her mind, four years old and the spitting image of their soft-faced mother.
Aeliah had the kindest heart of them all, even at such a young age.
Though she would not be the little fae girl that Kyra remembered so fondly anymore; she would be nearing adolescence.
‘I don’t know if Aeliah would even remember me.
I’m sure she’s just a miniature version of Dovella now. ’
‘I think they’d want to know, Kyra,’ Rosary said quietly. ‘You still have a family… that’s more than I ever had. If it were me, I’d want them to know I was leaving.’
Kyra replied fiercely, ‘You’re my family, Rose. You have been from the second you found me at the Arc. I don’t need them because I have you. You’re more of a sister to me than Dove ever was.’
Rosary smiled slightly. It didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘And you’re sure that’s enough?’
‘It’s enough,’ Kyra promised.
Rosary blew out another long breath and Kyra felt every bit of the emotional turmoil she was attempting to release. ‘So, we’re doing this then. We’re getting out.’
Despite the unknown, despite the guilt that wrapped itself around her stomach at the thought of leaving Oslan behind, a hopeful smirk pulled on Kyra’s lips.
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With a heavy hooded cloak covering her ears, and a small satchel flung over her shoulder with only the essentials, Kyra was ready.
It physically pained her to leave behind all the lovely clothes she’d amassed over the years from Lilion’s payments, but it was necessary to abandon them.
Trekking to Taru with a whole case of expensive gowns, armour and garments was not quite the inconspicuous and slick exit she and Rosary had planned.
Kyra leant against the outside wall of a closed down florist and waited for Rosary, puffing her breath against the cool air and watching the tiny clouds that formed and quickly disappeared before her.
She grimaced as she felt a few drops of rain land on her head.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ she told the raincloud above and pulled the cloak tighter around herself.