Chapter Twelve #2
There is no formal schooling in Quayside. No teachers, no books, no classes. But we have stories, and with the right tellers, they are more powerful than any lecture or text. And no matter how long I live, nothing will fade the soft brush of my mother’s words in my mind as she taught them to me.
I frown.
This tapestry, though… it doesn’t make sense.
There are pieces I recognize, fragments that match the broad strokes of the stories she whispered to me as she tucked me in each night.
The Seven Wells are vivid, stitched in threads of shimmering black interwoven with silver, so the effect is close to the starlit-night hue of magic in their depths.
But there are streaks of fog hovering around the edges of the battlefield, twining around yellowed fields.
Armies do battle across the map of the tapestry, embroidery so delicate that my stomach turns at the pain in the faces of the clashing fighters.
And at the far left corner of the tapestry, watching the battle spread across the center from a gray cliff-side tower in the west, a solitary face is barely visible in the shadows of the stone.
A lone woman, a golden circlet around her brow and shadows curling around her hands.
If I weren’t standing this close, I would miss it.
The way the tower is stitched almost looks like one of the Seven Wells, which I can clearly count embroidered across the rest of the tapestry.
And from the far right of the tapestry, the fanged jaws of Cymrea to the east open wide.
Raw revulsion sours in my stomach at the sight of their borders.
Our isle will never be theirs.
The tapestry shifts, and a hand snakes out from behind the heavy hanging.
A scream rises in my throat, but the hand latches on to my wrist, yanking me forward. Every muscle in me braces for the slam of hard stone behind it, but instead, the tapestry gives way.
I slip right through the edge where it meets the wall—into a hidden alcove, and a hard, hot chest. Leather and smoke envelope my senses, but it’s the sweet scent of sage that keeps the panic from devouring me as a rough voice curses.
“By the Martyr, I told you—you won’t find a way out.”
Wolf.
A slice of flickering torchlight manages to bleed through the edge of the tapestry.
Without it, we’d be in pure darkness. It’s just enough to make him out.
The edges of his dark hair, raked back as if in frustration, and the glimmer of gold from the clasp at the collar of his black cloak.
Weapons down his sides catch the sliver of light, and his dark eyes are coals.
“Who says I’m looking for one?” I keep my voice low, but anger clips my words.
“You did.” There’s something hard but wary at the edges of his words.
Right. After he saw my dirt-streaked feet, I let him think I tried to run instead of admitting the truth about the panic. “Maybe I’m a liar.”
Wolf’s eyes flash in the dark.
He steps back, releasing my wrist. “And here I thought you might want to know if your sister’s still breathing. But I don’t help liars, so which is it?”
Embers crackle up my spine. I finger the edge of the knife at my side—the one he gave me. Fuck, I want to ask. I need to ask. But that self-satisfied smirk he wears…
My heart hammers. “I swear by the Old Ones, if you hurt her…”
Wolf leans back against the wall, crossing both arms over the leather jacket fastened beneath his heavy cloak. He’s wearing his sword again, not just the knives down his sides. “Go on.”
Footsteps sound in the distance, and we both freeze.
Soft laughter grows louder, sharpening on each clack of heeled shoes on the stones.
I feel, rather than see, the brutal cunning in Wolf’s eyes slice to me in the dark.
A flash of lethal determination burns in his hard gaze and I know: He would fight whoever is on the other side of this tapestry rather than let anyone find him here, rather than risk being captured.
What would the Lady of Shadows do to someone like him?
To someone like me, if she knew why I’m really here?
Wolf’s eyes ensnare me in place. Neither of us daring to move an inch.
Slowly, the echo of laughter and heels on stone fade. The only sound between us is the hushed rustle of our breathing.
Wolf tuts his tongue behind his teeth, one hand rubbing along the stubbled edge of his scarred jaw. The way he watches me sends a ripple up the length of my spine.
He presses off the wall, taking a single step closer. “You didn’t try to run.”
Pride swells against my ribs. “I said I wouldn’t, and I won’t. I’m my mother’s daughter.”
And she wasn’t a coward either.
Wolf’s head cocks, a sliver of dark curiosity flaring in his eyes.
“So it seems” is all he says.
The darkness feels so heavy, I could slash through it with a single swipe of my knife.
“What are you doing here, Wolf? Other than wasting my time, if you’re not going to tell me how Finn is doing.”
Wolf studies me. His voice drops to a mocking whisper, but he never tears his hard gaze from mine. “Like I said. Making sure you aren’t a liar.”
I meet the burn of his eyes. “Do you have a death wish?”
This castle is crawling with gardai, especially with the First Look tonight.
And I still have no idea when the noble daughters will try to kill me, what I should wear, or how many weapons I can fit on me—if I can bring any at all.
Wolf shifts against the wall, just enough so a slash of light from past the edge of the tapestry bleeds across his face. The flicker reveals under-eye circles so dark they could be deep bruises, and the sliver of old pain in his green eyes makes my gut twist.
I shove the feeling away.
The hard lines of his features smooth into a practiced, and infuriating, calm.
“You’re all…” His slow, guarded gaze roams up my neck, over my face. His tooth briefly catches at the edge of his lip as he bites at it, thinking, and for a second, he seems almost… taken aback. “Flushed.”
I lift my chin at him. “Heat and steam have that effect.”
“You were in the baths?” He takes half a step forward, then stops himself. “You shouldn’t be there alone, Maeve.”
The way my name sounds from his mouth is dangerous.
Not because I hate it. Because I should… but I don’t.
I force myself to hold his unyielding gaze. “I wasn’t alone.”
Not that I owe him any answers.
Wolf’s jaw ticks. “There are half a dozen women walking around these halls who would dance in your blood as soon as they spill it. Not just in the three tests for the Assay—cunning, wisdom, and strength.” He emphasizes the words.
“But in every hall, every ballroom you walk into,” he says, voice tight.
“That’s not even counting the hundred high and lower nobles betting more money than half of them are worth on the outcome of this. And you just go around with strangers?”
“What, because you’re so much safer?” I laugh softly.
He’s already put my life at risk. “And it’s seven women who want to kill me.
” If he’s going to hammer on about the risks, he might as well get the number right.
There are seven women, all from the families with the emptied Seven Wells, who want me dead.
Or should it be eight? All the banners that were flying from the town houses in the merchant quarter blur in my mind, along with what Aoife said about the houses disinherited in the uprising. Or were they wiped out? Heat blurs the memories.
The glare Wolf levels at me could skewer.
“Six,” he repeats, hard and low. Conflict pulls at the corners of his eyes. “Past Assays have had seven. This one won’t, after the uprising. You’ll get a better look at them soon.”
There are so many things I should use this chance to ask him. What will happen tonight? Which of the noble daughters might try to kill me first? I traded my life for the magic to save Finn’s, yes. But why do the Whisperers want that debt repaid now?
But none of them are what I ask.
“Is Finn…?” Her name comes out desperate, and for once, I don’t care if he hears the fear in my voice. He’s the one who came here, who pulled me into this alcove and brought her up. The need to know she’s okay is a physical ache, right down to my bones.
Heavy silence fills the alcove.
She’s okay. She has to be okay.
There’s no world where my sister isn’t…
Some part of the hardness in his expression relents. Wolf lets out a tight breath, eyes flickering over my face, as if he’s studying me anew.
“She’s alive.” Wolf says the words softly, and there’s a faint gleam in his eyes as if he’s mulling over an amusing memory. “She sends her… regards.”
If anything less than half of those regards aren’t curses she yelled while aiming her fists directly at his head, then I don’t know my sister.
“You’ve seen her?” I let out a breath, and a wild surge of relief swells in my chest. “She’s helping you, isn’t she? Fighting for whatever you’re planning.”
Wolf tilts his head, studying me. There’s a flare of something dark and secretive in his assessing gaze, but he doesn’t answer.
I step forward, across the mere feet between us on either side of the little alcove, and let my forehead rest against the cool wall of stone on his other side. “You could be a poet.” I glance sideways at him. “Truly. What a talent you’ve got with words.”
Sarcasm drenches every one of mine.
The tight slash of Wolf’s mouth quirks up, just slightly.
He leans his head back on the stone wall, and the subtle shift is enough to make his face feel entirely too close to mine now that I’ve crossed the alcove to lean against the stone at his side.
He trails a blade I hadn’t seen him unsheathe against the stone.
The tip hisses a haunting scratch. “I could have been a lot of things, if the uprising hadn’t happened. ”
I let my eyes find his in the shadows. “Yet here we are.”
“Here we are.”
From somewhere in the distance, a bell tolls six times. They ring for the hour, and to signal for everyone attending tonight there are—two hours left to prepare for the first night of the Assay.
Wolf’s eyes flicker over my face again. “You ready?”
My stomach clenches.