Chapter Twenty-Two #3
“You said you wanted to help, right?” I turn to Cashel, and Wolf’s shoulders tense.
The prince lets out a heavy breath. “I did.”
“Will you let us walk out of here?”
His hands clench into fists, but the resignation in his eyes leaves no doubt. Relief floods through me, and he nods toward the door. “But you can’t go that way.”
“How else—?”
Cashel risks a wary look at Wolf. “You remember the way?”
Wolf’s jaw pulls taut in a grimace, and he stalks over to the curtains where I found him waiting. “How do you think I got here?” He pulls them back and presses on the carved wooden ledge trimming the windowsill. There’s a faint click, and the wall indents.
My jaw drops.
Wolf pushes the marble—fake marble, I realize, following him through—and leads me into a shadowed tunnel behind the walls.
Before he presses it shut behind us, he turns back over his shoulder to his cousin.
His entire body tenses, like it takes everything he has left to keep his voice level. “Why are you letting us go?”
A faint laugh sounds. “You rebels want my father dead, right? And let me guess—me on his throne?” The knowing look Cashel aims at Wolf is cold, determined.
Wolf doesn’t answer, but the prince nods as he inches the false door shut behind us, and murmurs, “Good. So do I.”
Inside the dark tunnel, there’s no break in the tension.
It haunts the mere inches between us as Wolf leads me deeper inside, carving off in dark paths that he navigates as if he’s been here a hundred times before.
Raw hurt clings to him like smoke.
Every step echoes in the quiet.
Without the rush of conflict, the battling between him and Cashel, it doesn’t take my body long to remember there’s still poison lingering in my veins.
My limbs burn, pain biting like thorns over my hands and wrists. My skin feels too tight, as if it’s been stretched to the point of snapping across my charred bones.
I bite down on the inside of my cheek, fighting the sudden rush of dizziness.
Nerve damage, Cash said.
Old Ones, I need it to fade. I can’t fight like this, can’t wield a sword or a blade when just breathing hurts this badly. Any dulling relief that the antidote might’ve been offering seems to be fading.
Wolf slows his pace, shooting glances at me back over his shoulder but never reaching out for me.
Hurt wedges between my ribs, uncomfortably close to my heart.
An even darker ripple of pain and raw grief pulses off him too.
All the words that I could use to try to bridge the gap between us wither and die in my throat. This is why getting information out of Wolf about their plan for me has felt like trying to extract blood from a stone.
He put his trust in someone once before.
And Old Ones, it cost him everything.
Losing my mother… my throat clenches so hard, it draws a sting from my eyes. Losing her was the worst thing I’ve ever gone through. Nothing, I was sure, could ever be worse.
But losing my entire family and knowing I was the reason for their execution?
I don’t know how I could’ve kept on breathing each day.
Wolf, though…
I find the faint outline of his form in the dark, and feel the vise grip around my chest ease slightly. It’s just enough for me to draw in a tight, painful breath as my head spins, exhaustion and pain weighing me down like an anchor.
I should rip into him. I could shout, tell him he’s an absolute asshole for hiding the truth about magic from me, and from everyone else, too.
What Cashel said leaves no room for doubt in my mind.
If Wolf is the son of the noble family that led the uprising—the uprising that fought the ban on magic, that fought to replace the High King—then he knows.
There’s no way he doesn’t know.
But fuck, I’m exhausted. Emotionally, physically, all of it.
Gray stone presses in all around me, rough and ancient. I breathe deep, fighting to keep the pain at bay as we finally reach what looks like the end of the tunnel.
Wolf leans one shoulder into the spot where the back of a smooth wooden frame covers a hole in the stone and presses it lightly.
A sliver of candlelight slices through, falling across my boots.
Guarded green eyes linger over me. “Your room’s across the hall.” He glances out past the frame. “Come on. There’s no one out there. Blankets. Tonics. Tea,” he adds gruffly, and I can see the effort it takes for him to pull that mask back into place. “They’re waiting in your room.”
“You missed your calling.” My words are soft, only because I can’t muster the fight to snap at him. Everything hurts. “Quite the bedside manner.”
Wolf starts to turn, an unreadable expression in the dark shadows of his eyes. “And here I thought I’m the last person you want anywhere near your bedside.”
A wave of dizziness chooses that moment to press in over me, black and pulsing at the edges of my sight. Hot, intense pain prickles across my palms.
I reach out a hand for balance and lean my forehead against the cool tunnel wall as everything tilts and darkness pitches around me.
Breathe.
This can’t be what it’s going to be like. I hate feeling weak. I hate needing time to recover. It only makes me vulnerable, and that’s the one thing I absolutely can’t afford to be here. We don’t even know when the next—I swallow back a wave of nausea—the last test of the Assay will be.
I have to be able to fight.
A warm hand brushes the small of my back, steadying and strong—flexing, just enough so I feel the faint stretch of his fingers right where the tips rest at the curve of my hip.
The urge to let myself lean into the inexplicable comfort of his warmth is instinct, and a small, quick breath catches in the back of his throat.
An unreadable look tears across his face.
“Why did you put yourself between us?” He says the words as if he had to fight his better instincts to let them out.
And I don’t have to ask what he means.
I don’t have any good answers either.
My racing heart slows, just enough for me to look up at him.
Old Ones, he’s tall. In the darkness, there’s only a faint glow, as if someone lit a candle somewhere just around the bend.
The flickering light bathes him in shadows.
But I see enough—he’s darkly, almost regally beautiful.
The kind of beauty no scars can dull, and the kind that only seems more roughly breathtaking with the stubble and tired weight in his eyes.
Stepping out of his grasp should be easy. It should be so damn simple. But I can’t make myself pull away… even if this is all just some trick so I’ll do what he wants. What they want. Is there any line between the two? A point where the Whisperer ends, and he’s just… Wolf?
“You don’t have to pretend, you know,” I say softly, and squeeze my eyes shut just enough for the world to stop spinning as another flare of pain slams into me. I feel his grip tighten at my waist, accidentally drawing me another inch closer as he steadies me. “I know what I am to you.”
I’m a weapon. A pawn. A knife in the dark, just like he is for the Whisperers.
Bait.
When I open my eyes, Wolf’s are fixed on me.
The furrow between his dark brows is gone in the time it takes for his mouth to twist into what’s becoming an infuriatingly familiar grimace—as if something I can’t see pains him, too.
Wolf drops his hand from my back.
“You don’t know a damn thing, Maeve.” My name is ragged and rough in his mouth. “Now go.” He pushes the frame back, glancing out first before he holds it open for me to follow him through, then rapping at my chamber door. “It’s not safe for you out here alone.”
“I’m not al—”
Talon rushes through the frame, weapons clanging as they sweep me up into a bear hug. “I thought you were dead!”
I wince, needles all along my nerves. “Not yet.”
The air beside me rustles, and Wolf retreats.
He pulls back the portrait we came through and disappears into the darkness beyond.