“No need. I’m not needed on corpse watch.”
To her surprise, the young wolf, Sky, stepped forward, offering her shoulder, and Ferith accepted the near embrace without hesitation. There was a certain air between them, as if they’d bonded during their captivity. It gave her a sweet feeling to see Ferith’s head nestled next to Sky’s. The two descended the winding tower stairs together, completely in sync.
One by one, Raff’s wolves shifted back and since it was cold as hell, they went to don their winter gear. Only he lingered in the icy wind, but before he could speak, she dug into her dirty pack and found the clothes she’d been holding for him. “Here, get dressed first.”
The fact that he did it on the wall, casual as anything, well, it was endearing. Maybe she was reading the situation wrong, but it felt like he didn’t want to leave her side long enough to tend to his own needs. Not because he was obligated, either. Nothing in their marriage contract stipulated that he had to care.
“You all right?” he asked, tugging the sweater over his head.
He was a mess of fresh wounds, smeared with blood, and she didn’t mind. When he opened his arms in a silent offer of solace, she curled into him like they were magnets holding an opposite charge. Thalia nestled her head against his bearded chin, relishing the scrape of his hair against hers. Raff stroked her back quietly for a few seconds.
“I’m not well,” she finally answered. “But I’m still here.”
“Sometimes that’s all we can do. Think it’s true? What she said.”
She shrugged. “It’s possible. My father had so many secrets. Just when I think I can’t hate him more…”
“I’m sorry, princess.”
“To him, I was never even a person, just a tool to be used in his grand design. When I began to think for myself, I enraged him, but he couldn’t bring himself to get rid of me. Not when I was an emblem of his virility, sired from his loins.”
Raff stirred against her, and Thalia thought he was probably disgusted by these revelations, family secrets that she’d hidden until she was sick with their keeping. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t—”
“No, it’s good,” he cut in. “Well, the shit you’re saying, it’s terrible. No disputing that. But it’s fucking lovely that you trust me with it. I’ll be your vault, I swear. Nobody will pry your confidences from me, even with a hammer and chisel.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
Sometimes, before, the pressure built until she had to find a place to hide, where she could scream until the throbbing stopped. Now, hearing his words, it drained away on its own, like he’d physically taken it from her head. Thalia leaned against him harder, marveling at how easily he took her weight. Like it was natural.
I can’t be without him now.
And it was such a terrifying revelation, completely unprecedented, and certainly not covered in the contract they’d written up. Raff hadn’t promised her emotional support in those documents, so this could stop at any time. Her heart skittered, racing in anticipation of that loss, and she pulled away.
“What’s wrong? You’re scared?”
She hated that he knew, that he could sense things about her so easily, when she was meant to be a glacier of a woman: immense, icy, and immovable. Mechanically Thalia shook her head. “Just…reaction setting in, I suppose. So much has happened.”
“Right.”
There was one important task left, anyway—something she’d sworn before she knew who the traitor was. Without hesitation, Thalia snatched up Tirael’s head by the streaming hair and impaled it on a spike jutting from the front ramparts, a message to the enemies who were surely watching.
You’re next.
Raff had rarely wanted a hot shower so badly, but he had to see to his fallen first. None of Korin’s people had been lost in the taking of Daruvar, but Sky had just informed him of Janek’s death. His knees nearly buckled when she led him to the old wolf’s corpse, carelessly stashed in a storage room like Janek was a sack of rice.
“He wouldn’t kneel,” Sky whispered from somewhere behind him. “I did. I’m sorry.”
Tears thickened her voice, and he turned, wrapping an arm about the little wolf as she broke down. He whispered words that were meant to comfort but not quell. She shouldn’t feel guilty about surviving, but he understood why she did.
“You did nothing wrong, pup.”
“They were going to ask for ransom from Korin, more drones and mines,” she went on. “I didn’t expect her to pay, not for someone like me, but…I didn’t want to die. I’m sorry.”
“Stop. I only wish Janek had bent with you. There’s no shame in bowing your head, if it meant your life, and I know damn well that your heart never strayed from Pine Ridge.”
From her fresh injuries, it looked as if Sky had been tortured repeatedly. Animari healed so fast that the last session couldn’t have been long ago, as she still carried stripes on her back and fresh bruises on her face. What the hell was that awful bitch trying to learn? Sky had no access to the inner workings of Pine Ridge security. If Tirael had known that and still hurt the little one, then the quick end she got with Thalia’s sword was too fucking good for her. Janek had known more, and maybe that was why he’d chosen to die as he did, no risk of betraying the pack.
He knelt and closed Janek’s eyes. The old wolf had been left to stare at the cold ceiling in death, and that gnawed at him. Ignoring the bullet in his back, he swung Janek up in his arms and carried him out of the dark. Korin was waiting for him in the courtyard, their vehicles newly parked beside the mound of Eldritch. These had to be the traitors who would be buried without ceremony, no
