Page 79 of The Wolf

Tears burned in her eyes.

She couldn’t diminish the choices they had made of their own volition by failing them now. So Scarlet dipped her hand into the powder beneath the cloak, grabbed hold of a hefty pinch, then slapped first Pru and then Jaq in the face. Small smiles curled their lips when they realized what Scarlet had done, knowing that she wouldn’t let them suffer.

“I love you both,” she mouthed, feeling like she was breaking apart on the inside.

Scarlet forced herself to walk backward off the plinth to take her place beside her stepmother to watch her friends die. In her mind, she retreated into a secret box, finding herself back in the memories she shared with her mother. Pitifully few, and it turned out not enough, to hide from the sight of her friends being ripped asunder by a pack of wolves. Dris wailed somewhere in the crowd.

Scarlet did not know how she found herself back in her little cottage scrubbing at her hands as if they were covered in blood and washing them might rid herself of her guilt, but that was how Brine found her.

A vase crashed against the wall to her right, pulling her back to the present.

She slowly turned around to face her husband who looked like he wanted to tear the world asunder.

“Just what,” Brine growled, expression murderous, “the hell was that?”

THIRTY-NINE

BRINE

“What have you done, Scarlet?” Brine asked, so angry that his voice didn’t have the energy to be loaded. It was cold and quiet and still, despite the vase he had only just thrown across the room. Slowly Scarlet turned from where she had been washing her hands. Her skin was ghostly white when she faced him.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said, that same hateful calm on her face that had been present when she watched her friends die.

Die for her. He could see it so clearly now.

“How long have you been plotting?” he demanded. “I saw you with your friends before this, Scarlet. You were working with them, weren’t you?” He ran a hand over his mouth. “I can’t believe you were so coldhearted as to kill your friends just so they wouldn’t reveal your plan!” Just what kind of a creature had he married?

One your grandmother created.

Scarlet looked like he’d slapped her. “Excuse me?”

“You killed them to keep your secrets.”

Some color returned to her face as her eyes narrowed. “I’d never do such a thing.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Then clearly it won’t matter what I say in my defense!” she exclaimed, taking a step toward the door. “I will not explain myself to the likes ofyou.”

“Me?Me?!You’ve drugged me, you’ve done everything my grandmother has bid of you, and you blackmailed me into marrying you.”

She laughed but it was humorless. “And you’re the saint? I am your servant. Not your mate. You are doing Arwen’s bidding as much as I am. But what makes you worse is that you escaped her and yetyoucame back.”

“I can’t trust you,” he growled. “I can’t believe a single word out of your mouth. You’re a liar. Just like her.”

Scarlet recoiled, disgusted. “We’re done here,” she muttered, making to leave. But “done” was exactly the opposite of what Brine was. He grabbed her arm and slammed her against the wall. “Brine, what the devil are you—?”

“What exactly is this?” he asked, procuring a pouch of white powder from the inside of Scarlet’s cloak despite the reproach in her eyes. He held the powder before her so she could be in no uncertainty about what he was talking about. To his satisfaction, a small frown colored her brow.

He’d caught his little poison mistress in her lies.

“Put that away,” she uttered. “It’s dangerous. One breath and—”

“You admit that you killed them,” he said, nonetheless carefully pocketing the poison. “Before they could admit that they were working with you.” Revulsion spread through his veins. Scarlet was just like everyone else around him. A villain through and through, only out for herself.

The moment the poison was safely out of reach, Scarlet bodily pushed Brine away from her, surprising him enough that he took a step back. Her eyes were a brilliant, blazing blue. “You don’t know anything,” she spat. “You don’t know anything. You don’t get to judge me. All you can do is leave mealone.”

Scarlet made it halfway across the house toward the door, taking advantage of Brine’s stunned silence, before he recovered quickly enough to leap over a low chair near the fireplace just in time to slam the door shut again.

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