The Thing About Weres

“No,” he replied. “She speaks Merenwynian and wolf, and that is all. But I expect she will learn it quickly. She seemed adept enough at Court.”

“I hate her.” The words, venom-dripped, gushed out of me. Flushing, I looked down at my plate. Shreds of a paper napkin formed a haystack by it. “Why did you let him bring her?” I asked in a low voice.

“She would have been abused in Merenwyn. This is where she belongs.”

Gee, thanks, Lexi.

“You really are bonded to him, then?” he asked.

“We said the words, but—” I lifted my shoulders and let them drop. “But technically, Trowbridge may have been semiconscious when he said his part.”

Lexi picked at something on his arm. “If I asked you now, would you leave here? Tonight? Right now?”

“Stay, I can explain.” That’s what My One True Thing had said.

For once, you better say the right thing, Trowbridge.

I lifted Merry off my neck, placing her near her own saucer of maple syrup, which earned me the display of a double pulse of golden light. “What is the Safe Passage?” I asked, hoping to change the subject.

“It’s supposedly a secret portal from this world to the Fae’s.” Lexi stared broodingly at Merry. “One that was never closed and wasn’t keyed to reject Were blood.”

“Do you know where it is?” I pulled Merry and saucer closer to me.

“That’s what I told Trowbridge.”

“Then…” Hurt welled and my voice broke when I asked, “If you knew its location, why didn’t you come home?” I watched him, hoping for a cue, a reason, an explanation—Goddess, curse it, I’d have taken a lie. “If your life was bad, why didn’t you just come back?”

He rubbed his face with both of his hands, then muttered into his palms. “Who said my life was bad?”

“Does every half-breed wear a tattoo like that?”

My brother lifted his gaze to mine. “I didn’t know how to summon any portal until a few days ago. And I needed an amulet.” He leaned forward, eyes demanding that I understand. “For once, the stars aligned for me. I found a record of the song. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I turned the page, and there it was. Music. Lyrics. Everything I needed. Then the Son of Lukynae—”

“You mean Trowbridge.”

“I mean the wolf whom the Raha’ells have elevated to some sort of mythic hero status.” He sniffed and wiped his nose. “The Court considers your mate as big a threat to its race as we are to his.”

“Trowbridge.”

“The one and only.” My brother could nod and shake his head at the same time. “He might have one or two problems reintegrating with the Creemore Weres tomorrow. He’s lost his veneer of civilization. His wolves may have regrets in the morning. Maybe even now, as we speak.”

He’s out on a run with them. Alone, with only Cordelia for backup.

“Tell me more about the Raha’ells,” I said sharply.

“Of the three packs of Merenwyn Weres, they are the fiercest. I’d never venture into the woods they claim as their territory without a full company of my men. The Raha’ells know no pain. No fear. And they heal—too fast. You have to get them…” He stopped, perhaps belatedly realizing that he was dropping bombs like a foulmouthed hooker at a Tupperware party.

Lexi braced his hands on the table to stand. “I need a pick-me-up.”

“You just had one,” I said automatically. But my brain was busy. My brother has men. He hunts wolves. And he kept flicking hooded glances at Merry.

I put her back around my neck, stomach tightening.

Lexi picked up the shreds of my paper napkin and balled them in his fist. “In Merenwyn they keep the maple syrup and honey in beautiful pottery, and it’s served with much ceremony. Each diner has his own servant, and they pour your choice into your wine goblet.”

And for fun, they tattoo half-breeds.

“I used to watch them eat at the long table and tell my belly to be quiet.” On his way to the kitchen, Lexi checked on the ferret, who’d inexplicably chosen to go back into the mage’s bag for a snooze. “She’s curled up in a ball around my other shirt.” Anger flattened his mouth. “He’s worked her for days. Never letting her rest.”

“They kept you hungry?” I repeated, in a hushed voice.

My brother, my twin.

Chapter Thirteen

“Every servant is a little hungry.” Lexi opened a couple of cabinets before he found the garbage. Then, tossing in my handful of napkin confetti, he added, “The morning I discovered that I could see magic, I knew I finally had something worth bargaining with.” He shook his head. “I practiced on the sly at first. And discovered that I could steal it, too—but that’s not as useful as you might expect. I can’t hold it for long. Eventually it always seeps out of me.”

His black fitted undershirt pulled free of his belt as he arched his back in an enormous stretch. “Magic has a scent to me. I can track it using my nose, and once I’m close enough to it, I can see it—if I clear my eyes of all distraction, I can see its shine.”

I thought about that for a second, making circles in the bottom of my own bowl with my syrup-drenched piece of bread. “Wouldn’t admitting that have been dangerous?”

“To anyone else but the Black Mage, yes.” Cradling the backpack like a baby, Lexi eased carefully back down on the seat. “But he was quick to realize that my gift could warn him of danger. I could warn him of any danger. In less time than it takes to birth a king, I went from eating kitchen scraps to eating at the long table.”

In Threall, a sinister red heart winked from the interior of the Black Mage’s deep purple soul light. “Did the Black Mage raise you? Take care of you?”

“I didn’t need anyone to raise me after that first week in Merenwyn.”

“What did you do for him?”

A quick shrug of the shoulders. “Whatever he ordered me to do.” Then he knuckled his lip, and looked away. “Recently, most of my time has been spent working on the Old Mage’s Book of Spells.”

Fae Stars. To hear the book mentioned so casually, in this realm. I wiped my syrup-sticky fingers on a napkin, sorely tempted to tell Lexi that I’d seen the heavy tome with my own eyes. Instead, I feigned ignorance.

“Who is the Old Mage?”

Lexi snaked a careful hand into the bag. “Shh, rest easy, rest easy, I just need to get my—” He winced, and then carefully pulled out his reserve of the Fae go-go juice. “From what I’ve heard, the Old Mage was the last of the truly great wizards before he got himself into trouble and ended up with the choice of either putting himself into an eternal coma—the Sleep before Death—or being buried in the ground to his neck.”

“What exactly did he do?”

In reply, Lexi held up his silver flask. “He created this and it led to civil war.”

“Sun potion led to war?”

“It changed everything in Merenwyn,” said Lexi as he unscrewed the cap and placed it by his plate. “Before the old man found a way to extract the magic of the sun from the Pool of Life, the wolves in the FAC realm kept to their packs, their own territories, and their own kind. They were, in many respects, more animal than man.”

“That seems harsh.” I watched my twin fold a piece of salami and eat it in one gulp.

Lexi shrugged and swallowed. “Not if you take into consideration the fact that there are more full moons in the Fae realm and that Weres there spend a lot more time as wolves than the packs do here.” He paused to take an appreciative sniff of the contents of his flask as if it were a very fine spirit, not a nearly colorless liquid. “Then the Old Mage’s daughter fell in love with the leader of the Raha’ells, and she bore him a son named Lukynae. Elorna lasted ten winters, maybe twelve, among them and then she came back with her child. No one knew where exactly she’d been—the Old Mage had come up with a story rationalizing her absence that most of the Court had