Page 84 of The Wolf

“Why, because of your tea?” Arwen pulled out a box of loose-leaf tea from the top drawer of her vanity, shaking its contents in front of Scarlet’s face to show her the proof that her preventative herbs had been swapped for something else. “This stuff?” her stepmother taunted. “I have been replacing it for weeks now.”

Scarlet gagged. She thought for sure she’d be sick, covering her mouth with both hands as if that might be able to hold the nausea back. “Why?”

“Because it suited me, darling.”

The sound of a scuffle, then a full-blown fight, rang in her ears. Scarlet and her stepmother both turned their attention to the closed door.

“Just what is it—?” Arwen began, her query interrupted by the door being thrust open.

Brine barged in, chest heaving, eyes flashing.

“Sorry to interrupt,” he growled, a bloody sword in one hand and a dagger in the other, his wild eyes shining with the promise of death, “but I have some overdue business to attend to.”

“Brine?” Scarlet’s voice was barely audible around the hands she still held to her mouth, but it was enough to stop the man she loved in his tracks. He faltered by the door, his murderous expression broken in an instant to be replaced by confusion.

“Scarlet?”

FORTY-THREE

BRINE

“Are you all right, Scarlet?” Brine demanded, the moment he realized the woman he loved was in a room he planned to paint red with blood. She wasn’t supposed to be here. She was never supposed to be here.

Scarlet didn’t say anything. She merely stared at him, wide, glassy eyes betraying nothing.

“What have you done?” he hissed at his grandmother.

Arwen closed the distance between herself and Scarlet, gently touching a hand to her red-cloaked shoulder.

Brine growled, lifting a sword to point it directly at his grandmother’s throat. “Don’t you dare touch her. Your time of terror is up, Old Mother.”

“Oh ho ho, that’s where you’re wrong.” She laughed, the sound lovely and ugly in equal measure. Arwen ran her hand down Scarlet’s arm, who did nothing to push her away. Brine wished Scarlet would dosomething.Saysomething. “Tell me, grandson, have you never wondered why you saw my precious Red inside the Merjeri manor?”

Brine faltered.

She is telling lies to throw you off.She can’t have known you were there. She can’t—

“You think you’re clever, stupid boy, to try and step out in front of me when in truth I have been hundreds of steps ahead of you. You think I don’t know what you’ve been up to all this time?” Her grip on Scarlet’s arm tightened, so hard that Scarlet winced. “You’re still that scared little boy who betrayed his family.”

“Let her go,” Brine demanded, the sword in his hand shaking. “I won’t ask you a second time.”

Arwen gleefully ignored him, running her long black nails through Scarlet’s golden hair. It was clear she knew that so long as she had a hold of Scarlet, Brine wouldn’t dare lay a scratch on her. “All this time you were just a sad, lonely, desperate boy I could manipulate. Did you really think your feelings for my lovely Red were that easy to hide? I’ve known since you werechildren.Why do you think I kept her alive all these years?”

He steeled his spine even though his legs wanted to collapse beneath him. “You lie. She is a human convenience. She’s not my mate.”

Arwen smiled. “No, no, who is lying now? Your bond is so deep, I picked up on it the moment you set foot in these halls. Even as a pitiful child, you were doomed to fall for her. Of course, I sent Scarlet out to Merjeri manor to lure you back to me. Did you think you were safe in the Dark Court?”

Brine turned his attention to Scarlet. “Did you know?” he demanded, staring her down. “Did you know about this?”

Please deny it.

Scarlet opened her mouth to speak but no sound came out.

He was the biggest fool.

Brine took her silence as an admission of guilt.

None of it was real.

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