Page 9 of Blood of Wolves

It was an effort not to shudder at the thought. She’d been younger than Tessa during the last war with the Sels, the Great War, they’d called it. And, like Tessa, she’d lost her father and brother to the enemy. But that had happened across the North Sea, in Aquitainia. She’d never thought to see their purple sails in the harbor of her home city.

As if sensing her thoughts, Bjorn stepped in closer, voice going low, and earnest. “They can’t breach our walls. No one ever has. And we’ve got enough supplies to last for weeks. When Erik gets back–”

“IfErik gets back.”

He frowned.

“This isn’t a coincidence. They attacked when Erik was at the festival – which makes me think something terrible’s happened there, too.”

“We can’t know that.”

“We can’tnotknow it.” She didn’t realize her breathing had picked up until Bjorn touched her arm. And then it stopped altogether.

It was an innocent touch, nothing untoward or unacceptable here in view of so many – but it was familiar. It was sure. His hand slid up the fitted wool of her sleeve, slipping beneath the fall of her cloak, large fingers wrapping around her biceps. If she looked down – which she didn’t – she would have been as shocked as she had been the other night to see the sheer size of him against her like this. The evidence that he could–

Stop. She couldn’t think of that now.

He said, “Erik is fine. And we’ll be fine. All of us. I promise you that.”

She could taste the bitter edge to the smile she managed. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Bjorn.”

He held her gaze, steady and open. “I don’t.”

As always seemed to be the case lately, she looked away first.

“My lady!” someone called, and it was back to work.

3

The Duchy of Drakewell

Kingdom of Aquitainia

Mother had never said, but Amelia knew she’d hated having nothing of Father or John to bury. Statues had been commissioned for them, and for Alfred…but with the war on, and winter setting its teeth into the kingdom besides, they hadn’t been built yet. A section of the family cemetery had been cleared and ready for them: bare patches against the dormant stalks of roses and honeysuckle that climbed the wall behind. A place of honor on a gentle rise, between the graves of Drake ancestors, beneath the late afternoon shadow of the manor.

Mother had said Amelia could choose any untaken plot she wanted for Mal. Amelia hadn’t been able to speak, then, throat so tight it choked her; but she’d caught Katherine up in a tight hug – tight enough to wrinkle the duchess’s pristine gown…and Katherine had returned it with equal fervor.

The place she’d chosen was just down the slope from Father and John, in the shade of a gnarled apple tree older than the house itself. It overlooked the goldfish pond, and its lilies and wooden bridges. The tree would bloom in spring, and ripen with small, hard, sweet apples in late summer, and if she looked at it that way, it was a little easier, because she could think of Mal as being a part of the land here, of her home, and therefore always a part of her.

A nice thought, but she kept thinking about the slack skin of his face at the last; of the cold, gray pallor, the lifelessness, before they’d wrapped him in a shroud. At night, when she couldn’t sleep, she thought of worms crawling through the earth, way down in the dark, and she bit the inside of her cheek until it bled to keep from screaming.

A warm, solid weight landed on her shoulder, and warm breath rushed across her neck and face, lifted her hair.

Amelia felt the ghost of a smile threaten, and reached to pat the smooth skin of the dragon snout that had rested against her – that was comforting her. The big alpha male sat on his haunches behind her, wings folded, tail curled around her. His shadow stretched long across the grass, over Malcolm’s small, granite headstone. He made a low, crooning sound in her ear halfway between the purr of a big cat and the lonesome whirring of a dove. It felt like him sensing her sadness, and wanting to help, that new, no longer strange sense of connection in the back of her mind conveying his urge to comfort her.

“I don’t know,” she murmured, stroking the place where scales gave way to smooth skin along his muzzle. “I don’t know if it ever stops hurting.”

The drake’s head lifted a moment before Amelia heard the crunch of winter grass underfoot. A slow, respectful tread. It paused for a beat, before the drake lowered his head again.

Lady Katherine said, “No, it doesn’t,” as she joined them. “But, with time, it gets a little easier to bear.” Amelia glanced over at her mother – wrapped up tight in furs against the cold, diamonds sparkling at ears and throat, as glamorous as always. She smiled, soft and sad. “Or, so I’ve heard. If nothing else, you learn how to manage without showing the cracks too badly.”

For one horrible moment, seeing that bit of softness on her mother’s face, knowing how much they shared, now, to stand over a place in the grass and mourn a love lost, she thought her eyes might fill with tears. They stung, but she blinked, and faced away, and managed to hold herself together.

Katherine crossed the last distance, lifting her skirts to step carefully over the dragon’s tail, and Amelia snorted.

“Honestly,” Katherine said, without malice, “he’s too large by half.”

“Hopefully our enemies will think so, too.”

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