Defiance

When I bloomed, Shanks had promised me that I could be the rabbit one day. I was looking forward to it. It’s an honor to be chosen to run. Dibs had been plied with pizza and beer, the hero of the day.

Ash had moved forward. His ruined cheek rubbed against my knee. He whined again, and rubbed some more.

I put my hand down, blindly. My fingers met the curve of his skull. The hair rasped, amazingly vital, against my skin. I petted him, scratched behind his ears—set low, the curves of cartilage hidden in fur.

The trembling in him relaxed. His fur rippled, waves passing through it like wind through high corn.

Sometimes, when I did this, patches of white skin showed. So fragile, unlined, something soft under all that fur and wildness. It looked like those bits of skin never saw the sun.

“I wish I knew how old you are.” I scratched and soothed, smoothing the fur, but avoided touching the patches of bare skin when they showed up. It just . . . it didn’t seem right. “You knew Christophe, right?”

The whine turned into a low growl. I tapped the top of his narrow head. “Stop that. I was just asking.”

The growl modulated, like he was trying to talk. It sounded like he was trying to say my name. Roooooo . . . A long pause. Grooooooo.

“It’s okay.” I sat up straight, opened my eyes, and soothed him. “Really. It was just a question. Hey, I know. Let’s go for a walk, huh? Walk? You like the idea?”

Jesus Christ, Dru. He could use your guts for garters anytime he felt like it, but you treat him like he’s a lapdog. Not very smart.

I couldn’t help myself. Not when he was leaning up against my leg like a hound on a cold night and orange gleams swirled through his irises under heavy lids.

He didn’t look too jazzed at the idea of going for a walk, but I slid to the edge of the shelf bed, bumping at him. “Maybe you’re ready. We could walk around, huh? Even just down to the end of the corridor and—”

“Bad idea,” Christophe said from the door.

I actually jumped, forcing my free hand down from the reassuring lump of the locket. Ash tensed, but his head didn’t leave my knee.

Christophe didn’t look angry. He just stood there, leaning against the doorjamb, his arms folded. Never in a million years could I ever look that graceful just standing still. Plenty of the other djamphir couldn’t either. He looked like the entire world was nothing more than a picture frame to set him off right, but not in an I’m so pretty way. More like in an art-print sort of way, the kind you’d find hanging in an expensive coffeehouse somewhere on the West Coast.

Ash blinked, very deliberately. First the right eye, then the left. The specks and swirls of orange in his eyes had run together into a steady glow.

I curled my fingers in the thick ruff of hair at the back of the wulf’s neck. Nobody except Graves had ever stood in the door when I visited Ash, and things had been all right then. Or at least, less messed up than they were now.

“You’ve never come down here before.” I was glad I’d stopped to put some shoes on. There’s nothing like staring at a boy you’ve both kissed and yelled at on the same night to make you feel grateful for having all your armor on.

“There was no need. And Ash and I have . . . history.” A small, tight smile. “Also, there is an emergency Council meeting. Your presence is requested.”

He said it like it meant required. I guess it kind of was. “This is about the shower, isn’t it.”

“Only tangentially. There’s information.” The pause was significant, but his expression didn’t change. “About Anna.”

Ash’s tension turned into sound. The subvocal growl was so low I felt it in my bones, and the blanket fell off the bed. He rolled his head back, looking at me, and his eyes were orange lamps.

“Leash the dog, Milady.” Christophe had stiffened perceptibly, and the aspect folded softly over him. His hair slicked down, darkening, and now his eyes were glowing, too. Cold, cold blue. “You seem to be the only thing keeping him calm.”

“Oh, please. I weigh a quarter of what he does in changeform. Like I’m going to stop him if he goes for you.” All the same, I hoped he didn’t. Of all the things that would just cap off the worst night I’d had in a while—and that’s saying something—it would be Christophe and Ash going at it in a cell. With me in it.

“If he comes for me, you’ll lose your Broken.” He managed to make it sound like a quiet statement of fact. “He is yours, now. Silver doesn’t account for this.” Christophe straightened and took one deliberate step over the threshold. Heel to toe, rolling through, so that he had his balance at every moment.

He was expecting Ash to do something.

The Broken werwulf went very still. He was staring at me, not at Christophe.

“I want to take him for a walk.” I didn’t mean right this moment, but I also didn’t want to be put off again. I stole another glance at Christophe’s face. My fingers ached in Ash’s fur, my fist clenched tight and sweating. The Broken still watched me, and his lip lifted silently. Sharp teeth, very white. And a lot of them.

“Not tonight, Dru. Please.” And how was it that Christophe could just ask me sometimes? If he did that more often, I wouldn’t get so frustrated.

My chin rose, stubbornly. That’s a look like a mule, Gran’s voice said in my memory, and missing her rose hard and fast in my throat. “Then when?”

“Tomorrow night. We’ll leave malaika practice. You’ve been going at it harder than I’ve ever seen a student work. I think you need a holiday.”

“Then it’ll take even longer. We aren’t ever supposed to relax, Christophe. You relax, and the night will hunt you down. Wasn’t that what you said?”

“What I say to you during practice doesn’t need to be repeated. It’s my job to push you, Dru. I have to be twice as hard as anything you’ll find out there. I’ve trained hundreds of Kouroi. Some of them are dead. I wonder, if I’d been more ruthless, pushed them harder, if they’d still be alive.”

But he wasn’t thinking about them, I’d bet. From the look on his face, I’d bet he was thinking of someone else. Someone with my hair, only sleek ringlets instead of frizz, and a heart-shaped face.

My mother. He’d trained her, too.

“And you want me to take a vacation.” Yes, I was being pissy. But he always had the goddamn answers. It was comforting, until it wasn’t.

Dad would’ve just told me to go do my katas and quit bitching about my bootstraps. I would’ve even done it.

Wouldn’t I? How would Dad have dealt with all this? He hadn’t even told me the most basic things about myself. About who or what I was, who he was, who Mom had been . . . but I hadn’t needed to know, had I? I’d known everything there was to know when I was his helper. His little girl.

Daddy’s little princess. Who had emptied a clip into the shambling corpse that used to be her father.

Of all the things that will fuck you up in the head, that had to be in a class all its own.

Christophe didn’t move. “I hope for the best, but I train you for the worst.” He let out a sigh. “The Council awaits your pleasure, Dru.”

“They can go on without me.” If I kept this up, that tone of painful patience would crack. I hadn’t managed to make him lose his shit yet, but I kept trying. I could almost feel him taking his temper in both hands, as Gran would’ve said.

His eyes were just as glowy as Ash’s, bright piercing blue. “No. They can’t. You’re the only svetocha we have. You are the head of the Order, even if most of your duties are ceremonial at this point. And information on Anna could lead to . . . other information. That you have expressed a great deal of interest in.”

He never really referred to Graves by name. It was kind of insulting.

I patted Ash’s head with my free hand, smoothing down the hair. He was still as stone, his teeth bared, watching me. It didn’t scare me as much as it should have. Stray curls fell in my face. I wished my hair was down all the way; it would hide my expression. “They liked it better with Anna running things. At least she knew what the hell to do all the time.”

“She was just as profoundly uncertain as you when she first arrived.” Choosing his words so, so very