THIRTEEN
I woke up suddenly, not too long after I had gone to sleep. Beside me, Ariana still slept deeply. I had tired her with my lovemaking this night, trying to drown the strange energy that filled me in her body. I had succeeded insofar that afterward I’d been able to sleep—only to be awakened by the moon’s call.
I got up out of the bed carefully so as not to awaken Ariana and stepped to the open window, where the moon hung high in the sky. I had learned time passed differently in Ariana’s home than it did in the outside world, but the moon’s song had not changed between the world I knew best and Underhill. I lifted my hand toward the moon as if I might reach it.
And she reached back.
A sizzling, burning energy coursed through me, calling the wolf to hunt—and the wolf answered. It was a better change, now that the witch’s power didn’t fight the wolf. Over the years, I had learned to ease my way between wolf and human, but even so, it hurt.
I dropped to the floor and writhed under the moonlight as the wolf tore through my human flesh with as much care as he would have given the carcass of a deer. In all the years I had been a werewolf, I had never met the full moon in my human flesh. I had not realized that the moon would call the wolf, will I or no. Helpless, I held my silence as long as I could, but wolf and moon between them reft me of my humanity, and I cried out.
“Samuel?” Ariana’s voice, full of worry and love and all those things that meant I wasn’t alone, should not have filled me with dread.
The wolf, who eclipsed me in my own mind as he had not since the very early days of my running on four feet, rose to his feet and met Ariana’s eyes. Ariana’s beautiful green fae eyes. The wolf could see in darkness better than my human self. So he watched as her pupils expanded to eat her iris until her entire eye was black.
Ariana’s scent changed until the smell of terror made the wolf drop his head and growl in pleasure. He bared his teeth, enjoying the spike of fear that followed. He was playing; he knew as well as I that she was not to be hurt. I, caught by surprise and thus overcome by moon-called wolf, was unable to do anything to reassure her.
Haida knocked on the door, “My lady? My lady?”
Ariana moved to get off the bed, and the wolf blocked her in, his countermove bringing him closer to the bed. Ariana made a sound then that I hope never to hear again. A keening, sorrowful sound like a rabbit who knows it will be dead before it draws another breath.
The door to the room opened, and the wolf snarled ferociously, angry at the intrusion into his game. The little hobgoblin stayed in the doorway, dropping her gaze.
“Samuel?” she said.
I felt the pull of my name, felt the wolf begin to give way to my control. I took a step toward Haida.
No!
The voice that uttered that word was not my Ariana, though it came from her throat. It was a roar more felt than heard, and it made my wolf think that we were under threat, and he turned again to face the bed and Ariana.
Her face was oddly distorted; I do not know if it was just the extremity of her fear or if there was some magic at work. Her dark skin was lit by scars that by a trick of magic, because that was thick in the room, or just some oddness of light looked the same color as her silver-lavender hair. The map of her pain was tattooed forever upon her skin, bared to the world.
My attention was caught by her for a moment too long. I didn’t realize she was gathering more magic until the bed dissolved beneath her and she dropped to the floor. Walls crumbled around us as she pulled magic from Underhill to protect Haida from the wolf she thought was attacking her friend. When she thought Haida was threatened, she protected the little fae with all the power she could draw.
She thrust it at me in a deadly blast I could see, wine-dark power bearing the scent of death.
Haida stepped between us and let it hit her instead of me. She hung in the air for a moment, while the magic knocked me through the doorway and into the hall.
“My lady,” she said and then the only thing left of the little fae who taught me to cook and gained such joy in music was a whiff of foul-smelling smoke.
The beast who had replaced my Ariana screamed hoarsely. I hesitated, caught by grief and unwilling to leave Ariana alone in her pain, but the wolf knew better than I. He bolted for the front door, which opened before us. A glance over our shoulder showed only a battered lean-to that collapsed as I watched.
I ran until the moon set, then I curled up in the shelter of an overhang where the last autumn’s leaves were dry. I awoke human and naked as the day I was born, with the scent of Ariana in my nose and snow on the ground. I had expected her to come. She was not a coward; she would feel it necessary to face the consequences of last night.
I rose from my bed and went out barefoot in the weeks-old crusty snow to meet her.
She looked different. Her waist-length hair had been shorn to a finger’s length, and she wore a gown of white, something that might have been worn in a king’s court.
“Samuel Moon Called,” she said, not meeting my eyes. I could smell her grief. “Well have I loved you.”
“And I you, lady,” I told her, sounding surprisingly steady for a man whose heart was bleeding with grief. Haida was worthy of mourning, and so was the future that Ariana and I had lost.
“And yet,” she said, “and yet I would have killed you had not Haida sacrificed herself for you.”
“Haida whom you also loved,” I said. “It was not your fault, Ariana. She would not blame you.”
She nodded and looked away. “I cannot risk destroying anyone else I love.”
I wanted to drop to my knees and plead with her. I had no pack, they were all dead. My da was dead. He took with him the name I had been born with. He had kept the names of my lost family and their faces safe for me. And he was gone. Ariana was the only person I had left.
And without me, who would keep her safe? Who would hold her when the evil of what her father had done to her overwhelmed her dreams?
Yet between us lay the death of Haida, forming an impenetrable barrier between us.
“I will carry you in my heart until it beats no more,” I told her, giving her the only thing I could think of that would not hurt her more.
Her eyes welled, and her mouth tried to smile, and still she did not look at me. Her eyes were fixed at my feet. “Spoken like a poet and singer, my dear Samuel. You’ll forget things, forget me—this world does not easily hold the things best left Underhill.” Her mouth trembled. “I need the chain I gave you.”
I unwound the silver chain and held it out to her.
She took a half step closer, then closed her eyes and swallowed. When her eyes opened, black was trying to consume the green. She took a full step back. She stretched out her arm, and I felt her magic burn my hand.
“If you ever need me,” I told her, “I will come.”
The silver chain unmade itself and fell to the ground from my hand, now a small pile of pebbles. She took out a small pouch and took out some of the hair inside, burning it as it nestled in her palm. When nothing except ashes were in her hand, she stepped closer, so that when she turned her hand over, the ashes fell onto the pebbles that had been her silver chain.
“Fare thee well, Samuel Silverheart,” she said, turning away.
I waited until she had gone before I made my answer. I threw back my head and let the wolf sing our grief to the unkind moon.
FOURTEEN
After a day of aimless wandering in my wolf’s skin, I found a task to turn my hand to and headed for the remains of the witch’s hut. I no longer knew which direction Ariana’s home was, but my wolf knew exactly where the witch had lived. The burnt hut looked just as it had when I’d last seen it. It smelled the same, too. Though weeks had passed in Ariana’s world, here it was still the same winter that my da had died. I could smell my own scent as clearly as if I’d only been gone a few days.