CHAPTER FOURTEEN THE POISON THAT KNOWS THEIR NAMES
T he smoke did not choke Marion first.
It reached for the bond.
That was what made her panic.
She could have understood pain in her lungs. She had expected burning, coughing, perhaps the horrible bite of silver working into her blood. She had survived worse. Her body knew worse. It had broken under the moon and put itself back together with fur and teeth.
But this smoke slipped past skin and breath.
It found the place where Euan lived inside her now and scratched.
Marion went down on one knee in the snow before she knew she had moved. Her hand flew to her chest. The bond, which had been warm and fierce between them only moments ago, tightened like a wire pulled too hard.
Euan staggered several feet away.
That frightened her more than falling herself.
He caught himself against one of the black trees, fingers digging into bark. His eyes had gone bright gold, but not in the way they had after she claimed him. This was older. Wilder. Full of pain that had no present cause.
“Euan,” she gasped.
His head turned toward her, but his gaze did not seem to find her properly.
For one terrible second she knew he was not seeing the Grove.
He was seeing the altar.
She knew because she saw it too.
Moonstone beneath her back. Cold through her skin. Morna’s hands pressing to her throat. Georgie screaming somewhere far away. Euan’s face above hers, white with horror, his mouth moving around her name while she lay too still to answer.
No.
Marion pressed both palms into the snow.
No.
The smoke curled around her wrists, thin as black ribbon. Red sparks pulsed inside it like little hearts. Every pulse scraped the bond again, and another image struck her.
Euan on his knees in Aldrich’s laboratory, wrists chained above him, silver hooks sunk into flesh. The alchemist’s voice soft and patient.
Again, Chief McFarland. Let us observe how much of the man remains after the wolf has failed.
Marion cried out.
Not from her own pain.
From his.
Euan made a sound across the clearing. Low, broken, and furious. He shoved himself away from the tree, but his legs nearly failed him. A Crown soldier rushed in with a silver spear, thinking him weakened enough.
The mistake was brief.
Euan caught the spear before it reached his chest, snarled, and tore it from the man’s hands. The silver burned his palm. He did not seem to feel it. He swung the weapon back and struck the soldier across the jaw with the wooden shaft hard enough to drop him.
Then he swayed again.
Marion tried to stand.
The smoke pulsed.
Her vision changed.
She was in her cottage. No, the Grove. No, the cottage. Duncan stood in the doorway smiling that clean, respectable smile of his while his eyes moved past her to Georgie. His voice came smooth and patient.
A widow alone invites decisions to be made for her.
Marion’s nails sank into snow.
Not real.
It felt real.
She smelled her old hearth ash. Felt the rough wood under her knees from scrubbing floors. Heard villagers outside whispering witch like they hoped the word might grow legs and walk to the sheriff itself.
Then the cottage dissolved and Aldrich’s fortress rose around her. Stone. Glass. Silver collars. Wolves chained in rows. His cane tapping gently as he told her she could save some pain if she learned obedience quickly.
The smoke was not showing fear randomly.
It knew where to cut.
Her stomach turned.
“Aldrich,” she breathed.
His voice floated through the dark vapor, pleased and faintly breathless with interest.
“The strongest bonds make the most efficient pathways. I suspected as much, but suspicion is a poor substitute for demonstration.”
Marion lifted her head.
He stood beyond the smoke with a cloth mask hanging loose around his neck, apparently unconcerned with the poison creeping through the Grove. Of course he was unconcerned. He had built it. Or thought he had.
His eyes did not move from her and Euan.
Not the fallen wolves.
Not the battle.
Them.
He was watching the bond.
Euan heard him. His head turned slowly. “I will tear your spine out through your throat.”
Aldrich did not blink. “Aggression remains intact. Good.”
Euan lunged.
The bond-pain struck again.
He dropped to one knee.
Marion felt it inside her own chest and nearly folded forward.
For a moment it was not only pain. It was guilt.
Heavy, crushing guilt that had Euan’s scent and Euan’s memories tangled through it.
His belief that his bite had killed her.
His conviction that every person near him became a body waiting for burial.
The smoke fed it back to him.
And because she had claimed him, it fed it to her too.
Marion gritted her teeth. “You clever little monster.”
Aldrich tilted his head. “I prefer thorough.”
“Of course you do.”
Morna’s voice cut in from somewhere to Marion’s right. “Do not let it make you remember alone!”
Marion could not see her through the smoke, but she heard the old healer dragging someone across the snow.
“What?”
“It twists memory through the blood. Answer it with what is true now.”
That sounded helpful in the way Morna’s advice often sounded helpful, which meant Marion had no idea how to do it and apparently had seconds to learn.
Another wolf screamed nearby.
Silver fire cracked to her left. Fergus bellowed orders. Aodh cursed like a much younger man while swinging the old axe at anything foolish enough to step too close.
Marion tried again to stand.
This time she reached through the bond first.
Euan.
He did not answer.
She felt him though. Felt him drowning in the memory of her death. It pulled him downward with both hands. In his mind, he knelt on the cavern floor with her cold body in his arms. He was calling her name. Calling and calling, and she did not answer.
Marion’s throat tightened.
Oh, Euan.
She pushed through the smoke with her hands, crawling first because her legs were not cooperating. Very dignified for a newly recognized silver wolf, she thought wildly, but dignity could go hang itself for all she cared.
“Euan,” she called.
His head jerked.
His eyes found her this time, but they were full of horror.
“You were dead,” he said.
“No.”
“I held you.”
“Yes.”
“You were cold.”
“I am not cold now.”
He shook his head as if he could not hear her. The smoke thickened between them. A red spark pulsed near his shoulder and black veins rose faintly under the skin at his neck, not poison exactly, but memory given claws.
Marion forced herself upright and stumbled to him.
A soldier came from the smoke at her side.
She did not even look. Her hand lifted, light flashed, and he went backward with a shout, dropping his blade in the snow.
That was useful.
She would be impressed later.
She reached Euan and caught his face between both hands.
His skin was burning. His jaw was clenched so tight she felt it under her palms.
“Look at me.”
His eyes dragged to hers.
“There,” she said, though her own voice shook. “There you are.”
“I killed you.”
“No.”
“The bite.”
“Woke me.”
“The ritual.”
“Changed me.”
“Your heart stopped.”
“And started again.” She took one of his hands and pressed it against her chest, right over the frantic beat of her heart. “Feel it.”
His fingers curled against her.
For a second nothing happened.
Then the bond gave a hard pulse.
Euan inhaled sharply.
Marion pressed his hand harder to her chest. “There. That is now. Not the altar. Not your nightmare. Now.”
His eyes searched her face, desperate and still half lost.
The smoke slithered around their legs, trying to climb higher. Marion felt it testing the bond again, looking for some other wound. It reached toward her fear of Duncan. Her shame at wanting Euan. Her terror that Georgie might one day look at her and see beast instead of mother.
No.
She shoved her own memories back at it.
Not as wounds.
As truths.
Georgie whispering Mama to the silver wolf.
Morna telling her the wolf was not broken.
Euan kneeling and asking to be claimed awake.
The bond flooding silver gold through both of them.
His hand on hers. His pulse under her mouth. His life joining hers without taking a single piece of her away.
The smoke recoiled.
Just a little.
But enough.
Euan’s eyes cleared.
He took one ragged breath. Then another.
“Marion.”
“Yes. Good. Keep up.”
His hand slid from her chest to the back of her neck, and for a second his forehead came down against hers. It was a brief touch. Too brief. He was still half poisoned, they were still in battle, and Aldrich was still breathing somewhere nearby which was becoming more offensive by the minute.
But Euan was there.
Not on the altar. Not walking to the axe.
There.
With her.
His voice was rough. “You dragged me out.”
“You are heavy. Do not make a habit of it.”
A harsh laugh broke from him, more breath than sound.
Then his eyes lifted over her shoulder.
“Down.”
He spun them both. A silver bolt cut through the place Marion’s head had been and buried itself in a tree.
Euan released her and charged the archer.
This time he did not stagger.
Marion turned toward the smoke, panting.
Aldrich’s gaze had sharpened. “Emotional anchoring. Fascinating. The poison loses efficacy when contradicted by active bond verification.”
“I have no idea what that means,” Marion shouted back, “but you sound disappointed.”
“For the moment.”
That was not comforting.
He lifted two fingers, and another soldier moved toward one of the black canisters.
Morna reached Marion then, one arm around a young wolf woman who was bleeding from the mouth. “Do not let him release another one.”
“I was not planning to invite it.”
Morna shoved the injured woman toward Fergus, who caught her with one arm while driving a blade into a soldier with the other.
Then Morna crouched near the cracked canister that had spilled the strange bond smoke. She covered her mouth with a cloth, leaned close, then jerked back with such violence she nearly fell.
Marion caught her elbow. “What?”
Morna’s face had gone ashen.
“What?” Marion demanded again.
The old healer did not answer at first. Her eyes fixed on the black glass fragments scattered over the snow. One shard pulsed faintly red, like a dying coal.
Morna reached down, wrapped her fingers in her skirt, and picked up the shard.
Her hand shook.
Marion had never seen Morna’s hand shake.
“That is not only silver ash,” Morna said.
Euan returned to Marion’s side, breathing hard, blood on his jaw that did not seem to be his. “What is it?”
Morna stared at the shard as if it had spoken an old curse.
“Wolf’s bane,” she said. “Refined silver. And blood.”
Marion’s stomach turned. “Whose blood?”
Morna looked up slowly.
Across the Grove, Elder Niall stood among the smoke, his face unreadable. Too still. Too watchful.
Morna’s gaze moved from him to Euan.
Then to Marion.
“This poison carries clan memory.”
For a moment even the battle seemed to dull around the edges.
Euan went utterly still beside Marion.
Morna’s voice dropped to something almost worse than a whisper.
“Someone gave Aldrich wolf blood.”