Page 43 of Hunted By Wolves and Shadow
Somehow he’d known.
Right about me. Right about Grandma Ruby.
Oh no.
Holding on to my anger had been harder and harder the more I learned, and now the desire for revenge was slipping like water through my fingers. I clenched my fist to hold on to the dregs.
“Are you really all right?” I asked Locke disbelievingly.
He nodded that he was fine. I wasn’t, though. Or maybe I was? I felt different.
I sat with a thud on Juliet’s ruined, blood-stained furniture.
It was as though all the pieces of me had been shaken apart, rearranged, and put back together in a whole new way. I couldn’t decide yet if it was for better or worse.
Did I really have magic? Was that what the buzz beneath my skin was?
Locke’s smile was sympathetic. “I’m fine, Emi, thanks to you. A little weak from the blood loss, but I’ll be ready to travel soon if you want to go back to Anterra. I need to get back to my world. There's someone there who… “ He gave his head a small shake. “Doesn’t matter, but taking you home is the least I can do after you saved my life."
“Actually, I think we’re even. But yes, if you're willing to take me back, I think I want that. I need to face it.” I didn’t need to say whatitwas. Locke knew I’d been running from the wolf when hesaved me, and Juliet knew I'd been training this whole time with one thing on my mind. I was supposed to go back to kill him.
Knowing he was right about me being a witch didn’t absolve him of killing my grandmother. She might not have been the innocent woman I thought, but did that make him any less of a monster?
It took another day before Locke was strong enough to travel. I, on the other hand, felt more energized than I ever had. He offered to bring me through a different gate that was half a day’s walk from Baines and safely out of Aglonbriar Forest, but I declined. I needed to see the curse through my new eyes.
Juliet sent me off with the most precious gift anyone had ever given me. “For whatever you decide to do.” She pressed the oilcloth wrapped package into my hands. “Now I’d better get to the chateau. Those cinders won’t sweep themselves!”
I smiled at her sarcastic singsong tone, wondering what would happen to my new friend, and then wrapped her in a tight hug.
Locke led me up the hillside to the gate that was invisible to me, but apparently not to him, where he gave me a small pouch and some words of his own in parting. We stepped through, back to Anterra, to the very spot he’d rescued me. I asked him no questions about how he knew this gate existed or how often he’d used it before, and he gave me no lies or excuses. We each knew what the other was, and any reservations I might have about befriending a smuggler were a shadow against all the other ways I’d changed since leaving this spot. He and Juliet both accepted me as I was, without judgement or hostility, with more kindness than I could see fit to grant myself.
Mist grasped at our ankles the moment the world re-formed around us, closing even thicker across the path than before. All this time, I’d thought people were exaggerating the effects of the Mist, but it turned out I was simply immune. Locke wasn’t, though, so I thanked him again and he retreated quickly to Zocere. Then I was alone in the face of the ghastly gloom and all my new knowledge and doubts.
Small creatures scurried through the branches above, and a slither of leaves alerted me to a snake fleeing my sudden appearance. Nothing roared or growled or even huffed nearby as I hurried the short distance to the clearing to see what answers I could find at Grandma Ruby’s cottage. I expected to find it empty, filled only with lingering memories and buried secrets—ones I was now determined to uncover. I wanted the truth.
It was a relief to find the clearing still free from Mist, though it looked smaller than I remembered. Or maybe I took up more space now.
But the relief was short lived as the cottage came into view and I discovered the front door hanging open. My back went rigid. Wolf wouldn’t still be here, would he? I might be ready for the truth but I wasn’t ready to face him. I hadn’t decided how I felt now that I knew why he’d done what he’d done. Juliet might be trying to forgive Locke, and I might be able to see how that one act didn’t make Locke a bad person, just someone who’d done a horrible thing. But Wolf was different. It was personal.
I wasn’t ready yet.
Not when I could still picture his face when I’d discovered Grandma’s grave, the haughty defiance in those stormy grey eyes as he owned what he’d done. The twist in his lips whenever he dared me to kill him and then stopped me like a bothersome fly. The gleam of teeth as he’d faced me on the path in the body of a wolf.
I needed more time. But Wolf wasn’t stupid. He’d had plenty of time to escape.
So then who, or what, was insidemycottage?
I strode past the rock wall around the front garden and approached the door from an angle. Blood smeared the handle. The new feeling of power inside me didn’t prevent me from being wary when I didn’t know what I’d find inside.
It was pure chaos.
The cottage had been torn to shreds. I gasped at the missing panels of wall, the upended coat rack, and blankets and pillows strewn across the floor. The fire grate was pulled from its place and charcoal littered the floor. I was about to wonder who’d done this when the answer snatched my held breath from my lips.
Blood soaked the form on the couch. He looked smaller than I’d ever seen him, pale and buried under a blanket with another pressed to his neck and shoulder, both dark with blood.
“Wolf!”
It was like Locke all over again. But this time, it was Wolf bleeding onmycouch.
