Page 23 of The Wolf

And empty.

Much like your soul.

Scarlet shivered and brushed away the dark thoughts. They wouldn’t help her.

She wasted no time in attending to the hearth, creating a fire second nature to her now. Half an hour later, the fire was merrily crackling inside the hearth, and the heat from the flames was seeping into the room.

No sooner had Scarlet stood up to vacate the rooms than the voice of her stepmother met her ears.

Yelling. Screaming.

Getting closer.

Scarlet braced herself as Arwen stormed into her rooms, the door slamming against the wall. She didn’t flinch at the stony expression on her stepmother’s face as Arwen argued with Bright.

Scarlet could do nothing but watch as the woman slammed the door in Bright’s face, locking it to prevent him following her. Abruptly, Scarlet turned her head down as her stepmother flew across the room, a tigress in billowing black silk. When she threw an expensive vase—a gift from the Giants—against the wall, Scarlet didn’t even twitch. Her stepmother’s violent outbursts were nothing new to her. Plus, emotional outbursts were always punished harshly. Which was somewhat ironic.

Without a word, Scarlet moved over to the broken pieces of the vase and began picking them up. It was better to anticipate her stepmother’s needs before the monster had to ask.

“Ah!” she bit out involuntarily, when one of the smaller pieces cut into her hand. Her palm seeped blood.

“What have you done now?” Arwen demanded, no longer shouting but clearly irritated as she finally acknowledged Scarlet’s presence. She swept over to her and elegantly knelt down beside her. Scarlet obediently gave the women her hand so that she could inspect the wound. For a moment Arwen’s face softened, and Scarlet almost thought her stepmother was going to ask if she was all right.

Then Arwen inhaled deeply near the wound and her face contorted into a look of abject distaste. “You stink. Get out.”

Scarlet pushed herself to her feet and made for the door.

“Wait.”

She froze as her stepmother followed her. Arwen grabbed Scarlet by the cheeks and held her painfully in place. Arwen’s black polished nails dug into Scarlet’s face, threatening to break through the skin and give her a fresh set of wounds. Yet Scarlet remained calm. Showing emotions in the face of her stepmother’s abuse only ever made things worse.

“Human women ruin everything,” Arwen snarled. There was hardly anything Scarlet could do about the fact she smelled like a human, given that she was one, or that the blood pooling in her hand smelled the way it did. But there was something about the scowl in Arwen’s comment that told Scarlet it had nothing to do with Scarlet herself and everything to do with what was causing Arwen’s terrible mood. “If only we could do something about that damn Hood…” she muttered, more to herself than to Scarlet, though it confirmed Scarlet’s suspicions.

Scarlet kept her eyes on her stepmother. She hardly had anything appropriate to say in response. Equally it was obvious the older woman was not finished with her. So she waited, and waited, and waited, until eventually Arwen brushed her hand across Scarlet’s cheek and sighed.

“What makes men go so crazy toward weak little humans?” Arwen mused.

Again Scarlet said nothing, so her stepmother let go of her face and tossed her away.

Believed to have been dismissed, Scarlet moved away toward the door again as quickly as she dared. In truth, all she wanted was to run away. But Scarlet had barely touched the door when Arwen said coolly, “I didn’t say you could leave. I have a job for you to do soon. Sit down so I can tell you the details.”

All at once, Scarlet’s stomach threatened to heave. She knew exactly what a job meant.

A job was code for an assassination.

TEN

BRINE

(Four Weeks Later)

After spending weeks on Chesh’s ship, the last thing Brine wanted was to haul his exhausted body through the slow, dawn-dark streets of Dotae in order to meet Pyre.

“Couldn’t have met at the bloody docks,” Brine grumbled, his eyes and feet heavy as he plodded along the cobblestones toward the fox’s far more inconvenient meeting place: his favorite bakery. Brine was running on barely three hours of sleep, none of those restful given the uneasy sea he’d been sailing on.

He hated sailing.

Something about being on the water made him feel trapped.

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