Page 114 of Wolf Caged
If that was restrained, I didn’t want to see what he was capable of when he let loose. Gods, it wasn’t healthy for me to find what he had done alluring, or condone it, but he had never been so hot as he towered over me, all darkness and death embodied, and growled.
His words pure possession.
“Her death is a message. No one touches what is mine.”
Chapter 29
SAPHIRA
Acryptic message accompanied my breakfast the next morning.
Wear your most comfortable clothes and meet me at the glade near my brother’s elkyn.
I folded the note and set it down beside the plate on the table before me, tucking it slightly beneath so it didn’t blow away in the warm salty breeze as it swirled around me. As I considered what might be waiting for me in that glade and what Jenavyr might have planned for me, I picked at the mound of bacon, sausages and eggs, and nibbled on buttered toast. I doubted I was about to receive a riding lesson, but I couldn’t come up with another answer.
My shoulder ached as I reached for my tea, a subtle reminder that I wasn’t completely healed yet.
But I was healing faster than expected.
Because of Kaeleron’s magic?
My bruises were already gone. My lip healed. The only injury that remained was my shoulder, and even then it was only tender. I pressed my fingers against my clavicle, probing the bone, marvelling at the lack of pain and how quickly it hadmended. Who needed the medics when you had a powerful fae king at your disposal? I doubted the healers could have fixed me as quickly as he had, not if what he had said about the hierarchy of power in Lucia was true.
I pushed the almost empty plate away from me and stood.
As I turned from the table, movement below snared my attention. I canted my head as I watched Oberon and Kaeleron crossing the garden, heading for the main gate, deep in conversation. Thick as thieves. There was a strong friendship there, one that made me pine for Everlee. Maybe when I next crossed paths with Kaeleron, I would ask him about my pack and whether he had heard from them.
My gaze lifted to the town and the rolling landscape beyond the walls of Falkyr.
“Everlee would lose her mind if she saw this place. A castle. Princesses. Kings. Magic and mayhem.” I sighed. It was right up her street, the sort of thing she would die to see as a deep lover of all things fairy tale.
I strode into my room and glanced at the wardrobe, and shrugged. I didn’t have anything more comfortable than what I was already wearing—leather pants and a blouse. It wasn’t as if I had a nice, loose pair of sweats or some yoga pants at my disposal. Hopefully, my current attire would be suitable for whatever Jenavyr had planned for me.
I plaited my silver-white hair into a long braid as I strode through the castle, heading for the main vestibule and descending the elegant staircase, and let it fall against my back as I crossed the garden, keeping my gaze away from the grisly display of power still hanging in the courtyard.
My wolf side snarled and bared fangs in that direction anyway, glad the bitch was dead even if I hadn’t been the one to make the kill.
Maybe Kaeleron had spared me by taking it out of my hands.
I wasn’t sure I wanted to discover how far I was willing to go to avenge myself. I wasn’t ready to face the harsh truth of it, not yet. I didn’t want to admit that buried within me, deep beneath the layers of love and affection, of care and kindness, lurked a monster as wrathful and dark as any unseelie.
One that craved violence and bloodshed.
My boots chewed up the path, my strides longer now as I picked up the pace, as if I could escape that part of me and leave it in the courtyard with Elanaluvyr’s body.
It didn’t take me long to reach the paddock where the majestic elkyn grazed. He lifted his head as I approached and snorted as he dipped it again, as if in greeting. I nodded back at him and hurried onwards, heading for the glade.
As I neared it, it dawned on me that it was the same glade where the Beltane feast had been held, a broad scorch mark on the grass where the bonfire had been and that dreadful stone altar still standing off to the left side of it.
Jenavyr was sitting on it, her sword belt resting beside her and the sleeves of her navy blouse rolled up as she nimbly wove several blades of grass into a thin rope threaded with small flowers. Her silver gaze lifted as I approached, her hands stopping their work and lowering to her lap. She set the grass braid down beside her sword and hopped off the altar.
“Good, you are here.”
“And why am I here?” I looked around the glade, but Jenavyr and that altar were the only things in it. I had no clue about why she had summoned me to this place.
Her fine eyebrows knitted, a puzzled look in her eyes. “To train, of course.”
“Train?” I spluttered, sure I had misheard her. “As in… learn to fight?”
