Shifting Shadows

I had only once heard my da’s voice so clearly in my head, when he had held me alive when Dafydd’s fangs had changed me into what I now was. The shock of it froze me where I stood.

Move.

I dodged aside, and she missed her grab.

I backed away from her a half dozen steps until I stood on the edge of the hollow. If she needed hair or skin to replace the shackles she’d held me with—as from what I knew of witchcraft seemed likely—I would give her no chance. If she took me prisoner, it would not matter if I could stand up to her or not, Ariana would come for me.

The witch surveyed me with cold eyes. “Fine. On your head be it.” She looked down at my father, raised her knife, glanced at me, and I saw her change her mind.

Run.

“By blood bound you are to me, Bran son of Bran,” she said. “Kill that wolf your son for me.”

I was already sprinting away as quickly as I could. Driven, not only by my da’s voice in my head but by the understanding of what it would do to my da if he was forced to kill me. He would resist her, I knew, and it would give me a chance to flee.

He had not left my mind, though there were no more words. Anger rose up from him, rage such as I had never felt before—not my rage, but his. Inflaming my blood so much that I was forced to quit running, held motionless in a murderous unthinking flood of fury. I do not know how long I stood there, heart pounding, growling and ready to rend everything around me into bloody pieces.

I felt him die.

We were bound together, not only by the witch’s powers, but by that same thing that had bound us to Dafydd and the rest of the pack. It snapped, and his rage was gone as if it had never been. He was gone. I was alone. Utterly, remorselessly alone.

I howled, my cry breaking the silence that had fallen in the snow-covered woods. But no one answered me.

I ran, then, ran to Ariana. Retaining just enough of myself to change back to human as soon as I felt I was near enough to her to grip the chain I wore and chant her name.

TWELVE

Ariana

Three months after he left, just as spring was strewing her flowers over the forest, Ariana discovered Samuel na**d upon the ground before the door to her home. His hands and feet were raw and muddied—he lay so still. She dropped to her knees beside him as he drew in a breath.

In that moment, when she knew that he lived, she understood what she had only worried over before. Human or not, she loved this man who had saved her from her father and washed away the despair of her home with his music.

When he wouldn’t waken to touch or voice, she summoned Haida. Between the two of them, they got him in and laid him on her bed since it was closest to the door. Haida helped her clean him and cover him.

“Exhaustion,” said Haida, her hands on his unshaven face. “And despair. Something terrible has happened.”

He awoke in the middle of the night, when Ariana was sitting beside him. He didn’t say a word, just looked at her with such sorrow that she crawled into bed beside him. When he turned to her, she gave him gladly what comfort he could take from her.

“He’s gone,” Samuel said afterward, his face buried in her hair where she could not see his pain. “My fault. The witch tried to get him to kill me, and when he rebelled, she killed him.”

His pain was so different from hers when her father died that she didn’t know what to say at first. She had never seen his father, though Haida had told her he’d had kind eyes and gentle hands.

“No guilt, surely,” she said finally. “The witch killed him, and his blood is on her. If not for you, he would have lived in thrall to the witch for even longer.”

“She will die now,” he told her, and his body that had been clenched hard around her softened. “He would be satisfied with that, I think.” And then, in the safe darkness of her room and bed, he told her the full tale, of which she knew only bits and pieces, of how he and his father came to be enslaved to a dark witch.

“Stay safe here,” Ariana said when he was done. “She cannot come here without invitation. She will die, and your father’s death will not be without meaning.”

She held him through the night. Over the next week, she and Haida between them saw that he was seldom alone and never without something to keep his hands or head busy. His hurt was deep, but the wound of his father’s murder did not fester nor mar the sweetness of his temperament. Gradually, as days passed, more laughter and music filled her house, and the nights were passion and fire, and her wounds of the spirit mended in his care.

One day, he set the drum he played aside and pulled her away from her loom and into the forest. Swinging her by the hand and singing at full voice, he pulled her into an impromptu dance of great silliness and more energy than grace. He stopped her and took her by the shoulders.

“You,” he said, his blue eyes bright with heady joy.

“Yes?” She felt unaccountably shy, but he made her that way sometimes.

“You I love,” he said, his voice a sweet rush that caused her heart to stumble.

Tears rose to her eyes, she who never cried. This was not a man who would forget that he loved someone in a fit of jealous envy or fear. Still, she couldn’t help but whisper a question just to be certain. “Forever?”

His hands slid up to cup her jaw. “And always,” he agreed hoarsely. He kissed her openmouthed, and there, in the forest that had once been her father’s, he loved her in the sweet grass.

•   •   •

Ariana watched Samuel tease her Haida and smiled to herself. He was one of those rare people who needed others to take care of. Once he’d decided that they were his, he was easier about his father’s fate. He had a purpose and that suited him.

He suited her, too. When he held her at night, she didn’t wake up cold and shaking, certain that the red hounds were on her again.

Like her, Samuel was not happy sitting around doing nothing; soon enough, the tasks around her house would not be enough for him. Already he was restless, getting up as soon as he sat down and pacing rather than sitting still. She decided she wasn’t one for sitting idle, either. Perhaps they should do a little traveling.

“I think,” she told him as he sang to them after dinner, “we should go traveling, we three.”

Haida’s eyes grew round. “Oh, they would never let the likes of us into a court, lady. You, of course. But I’m a hobgoblin and he a human. They treat humans with no gentleness.”

“I’m not talking about visiting my mother,” Ariana told her. “But why shouldn’t we travel throughout the human kingdoms?”