Page 56 of Wolf Caged
No matter how many times I told myself that, it wouldn’t stick, and my imagination was running wild, conjuring terrible things, shadowy monsters that dogged my every step as we began walking again.
“My brother’s motivations are his alone to know. It is not my place to speak of them, but I do not condone what he did.” Jenavyr’s gaze drilled into the side of my face as I looked at the first buildings of the main town, trying to banish those monsters in my mind. “He has been… How is Kael treating you?”
The concern in her voice, and in her eyes as I looked at her, touched me deeply, soothing some of my fears away and helping me chase the monsters out of my head. She had the look of a female who wanted to protect something, who was ready to fight her own flesh and blood if she heard Kaeleron had been mistreating me. That she would face his wrath by arguing with him over my wellbeing reaffirmed that feeling that I had found an ally in her, and maybe one in Neve too.
It bolstered my courage.
“Well.” It was the only answer that came to me as I thought about how Kaeleron had been treating me so far. “I’ve only seen him twice. Once for dinner and once for a swim in the lake.”
My cheeks began to heat so I turned my face away from her, pretending to study the buildings that were closest to the gate. The one to my right was a beautiful combination of grey stone for the ground floor and a half-timber upper floor under a black clay tile roof.
“That was a few days ago,” I added, wanting to feel her out about why Kaeleron hadn’t summoned me since that moment he had held me in his arms and tried to make light of how foolish I had been and how it might have gotten me killed. “I hadn’t seen him at all until just now.”
“My brother has been busy with court and preparations for Beltane. I have not seen him much beyond our scheduled meetings where I file reports about the regiments.”
So he hadn’t been avoiding me then?
Some part of me whispered that he had. That moment had shaken him too, and he had retreated, throwing himself into his work to avoid me. And perhaps punish me a little.
“Let us not talk of Kael. He can be so very tiresome.” Jenavyr smiled, her whole face lighting up with it, and it was hard to believe she was related to him when she looked like that, as if she was all light and warmth, no trace of darkness and shadow in her. Maybe the two of them were a fractured whole, and he had received all the darkness while she had been graced with all the light. “Come. Let us explore. I might even treat us to a sticky bun at the finest bakery in Falkyr.”
“Falkyr?”
“By the Great Mother, has my brother told you nothing?” She swept her arm out as she turned with me. “Welcome to Falkyr Castle, daughter of wolves.”
This female was definitely the light to Kaeleron’s darkness.
I took it all in—the bustling terraced town of half-timbered buildings around me, the great black wall that rose beyond them, and the onyx castle perched above them, its backdrop the jagged mountains and that twilight-kissed aurora.
Falkyr Castle.
“It’s so… strange compared with my home. I feel like I’ve gone back in time hundreds of years.” I drank in the castle, with its towers and turrets, and many arched windows, a small part of me wondering where Kaeleron held court within that monstrous building, the other trying to spy my balcony.
“I do not know much of your world. My brother forbids me from visiting it, but whenever Oberon visits, he tells me tales of that realm. I suspect they are somewhat embellished.”
Apparently I wasn’t the only female out there who had a controlling family member who didn’t let them do things they wanted to do. Jenavyr looked as if she longed to see my world, just as I had longed to see it.
“You must tell me of it.” She patted my arm again, her look almost conspiratorial. “I will ferret out whether Oberon has been lying about it.”
I swallowed.
She frowned.
“You do not wish to tell me of your world?”
I shook my head. “It isn’t that. I just… I haven’t seen much of it myself. I… um… I wasn’t allowed.”
Her frown deepened, her lips compressing as she studied me, and then she huffed. “I feel it is time females took more power and autonomy in both of our worlds.”
“Amen, sister,” I murmured with a smile. “But I’ll tell you what I can.”
We turned back towards the town and followed the main street that wound downwards through it as I spoke of my worldand all the things I could think of that might be of interest to an unseelie fae. But as we ventured further from the imposing castle, I found myself more absorbed in this world, falling silent as I studied it. I forgot all about home and my family, and Kaeleron as I lost myself in taking it all in. The street was growing busier, with many people coming and going, and we had to dodge several carts as they rumbled up the hill towards the castle.
The town had been broken up into more levels, land flattened out in places to allow room for colourful gardens and even animal pens, each level edged with a thick dark stone retaining wall. The houses were set back from that wall, forming roads in front of them where people walked or stopped to talk. There were pathways down from the levels, steep steps that hugged the walls, and the roads sliced into the levels, keeping a steady angle upwards towards the castle.
Several of the great stag-like creatures and two horses grazed in one pen beside a larger building with broad wooden doors that had been opened to reveal the workshop inside. I peeked inside to find a farrier at work, lit by the golden blaze of the furnace as he worked to shape glowing iron into a shoe for a waiting stag.
“What creature is that?” I pointed to the glossy black beast.
