Shifting Shadows

I nodded, cleaning my hands a final time. “If I pick her up, Da, can you strip the soiled blankets and help Haida spread new ones?”

In no time, we had the fae woman tucked back in clean, dry bedding, bandaged and treated to the best of my abilities. Being covered with dirt had not particularly bothered me when we’d changed to human in the forest, but here in the clean room, it felt wrong.

When I requested clean water to bathe in, Haida directed us to bedrooms, no less grand than the one in which the wounded fae lady rested. Though I had seen no signs of servants here, there were great copper tubs of hot water and clean clothes waiting for us (I ducked a head into both rooms before we separated).

I scraped away my beard with a knife so sharp that it did not nick my skin, though it had been a very long time since I had shaved. I washed my face again in an astringent that hadn’t been on the table beside the bath when I started shaving.

Clean and dried, I put on the plain-made clothes left on the foot of the bed. The stitching might have been simple, but the fabric was rich and fine. If it felt odd to wear clothes again, it felt odder still to wear boots after so long barefoot.

But when Haida called us to the kitchen to eat, I did not think again about either boots or clothing. The food was plentiful and hot—and tasted fit for gods.

I almost felt human again.

For three days, Da and I took turns watching over the fae woman, Haida’s lady, who did not wake, though several times she stirred. We poured cups of willow-bark tea and clear meat broth down her as often as we could. The second day, fever made her restless and me worried.

On that day, just after midday meal, I felt the witch’s collar tighten around my throat. My da growled and surged to his feet while I dropped to my knees. Haida grunted, and the witch’s call faded.

“It is a strange kind of magic,” she said. “Powerful, and my power is limited. I will try to break it.”

NINE

Ariana

She awoke in her own bed when she didn’t expect to awake at all. She blinked and tried to get up and her body revolted—she felt the beast stir within her. She subsided hastily, breathing through her nose as she tried to remember what happened.

Her father . . . his missing hand—and then the beasts who came to his call. Not his hounds, with their overwhelming aura of terror, but these wolves who needed no magic to invite fear. She remembered teeth and snarls and . . . nothing. She was weak and vulnerable, empty of magic.

Unfamiliar feet scuffed on the floor of the hall outside her door. She forced herself to sit up, expecting something more threatening than the young human who bore a tray of soup in his hands.

“Ah,” he said. “You are awake. Haida said she thought you’d be stirring soon.”

“Who are you?” she asked as he set the tray on top of the leather-bound wooden chest. He was very tall. He had all of his teeth, and he moved well—balanced and more graceful than the humans she’d seen. He wasn’t handsome, but she couldn’t take her eyes from him. The beast inside her tried to tell her he was a threat, but the man’s movements were slow and careful.

He dragged the chest over to the bed with a suspicious lack of effort. Humans, in her experience, were weak and fragile things prone to dying and breeding with about the same frequency. This one was stronger than he looked. The chest was heavy, and she could not have moved it on her own without magic. The beast warned her again that he was dangerous.

“I asked you a question, human,” she said, fear making her cold.

He looked up, and his eyes, some shade between noon sky and moonlit waterfall, met hers. The expression in them held her prisoner. I see your fear, they told her, but no harm will come to you by me.

“I heard you,” he said deliberately. “I was just considering the answer.”

“It was not a difficult question,” she said sharply.

He smiled, and the expression showed her that there was such sorrow inside him it made her heart ache.

“Not for most,” he agreed. “My grandmother calls me Sawyl. Will that do?”

For a moment, a flash of insight caught her and she grabbed his hand where it rested on the handle of the tray while the beast tried to take her mouth and spill the True Names that she had for him: Sawyl. Samuel Deathbringer. Samuel Whitewolf. “Samuel Healer,” she said, then managed to close her lips before more escaped.

He tilted his head, tossed an errant strand of long light brown hair out of his eye, and said, “Sometimes. I do warn you that calling me human is a little optimistic. I have not been simply human for a long time.”

“Wolf,” she said, her throat closing as the Name was born on her tongue. “Killer.” She pulled her hand away from him as if his flesh were hot iron. The beast was riled, and the flash of the memory of fangs closing upon her left her too afraid to control it properly.

“Sometimes,” he agreed again mildly, as if unaware of his danger. Maybe he didn’t know. “But it was your father who tried to have us kill you. Happily, his control slipped, or my grandmother the witch did not give him enough control of us because he fair annoyed her. She does things like that. So we killed him instead of you.”

She held still, all of her. The beast was silenced. The wolf sitting beside her was as nothing compared to what he told her. She felt as if time stopped, as if nothing moved inside her at all, not even her heart. “My father is dead?”

Samuel, who evidently was sometimes a wolf, though she’d never heard of such a thing as a human who could turn into a wolf, said, “Yes. It wasn’t an easy thing, not even for us. He killed the rest of the pack, all but my da and me. But your father is dead and returned to the forest.”

Her heart started beating again, but it hurt, and she clasped her fist to her chest in an effort to stop it. Grief, rage, and relief fought for ascendance. Once, she had loved him, her father whose death changed so much.

Samuel sat on the edge of her bed and held up a carved wooden bowl that steamed and smelled of good things. “Drink this.”

Her beast rose at his nearness, teetering on the brink of taking control. But when he simply did not move, she was able to breathe, and the thing her father had made of her subsided reluctantly. When she started to reach for the bowl, her hands shook, so she put them back down.

His mouth flattened, and the corner of his eyes tightened. “I did that,” he said, as if the words pained him.

“What?”

“To your shoulder,” he said. “It went bad—and the fever kept you sick for a while. Haida tells me that usually you heal faster but that you had used all your magic to thwart the forest lord’s will. In any case, the shoulder will bother you for a while longer—I don’t know how long. My patients were regular folk, not fae. Haida seems to think that you’ve been weakened by your magic working and might heal as slowly as a human. In that case, it will hurt for a few more days.”