This was a wolf pendant, exactly the same but shattered into shards.
Claude Wolfson.
The name struck her so hard she felt the wind knocked out of her.
She had wondered why her drawing of the Master of Leviathan looked so much like King Alexander, and she’d prayed so hard that it didn’t lead back to Ellie and her family. But it was all there, staring back at her in the eyes of the wolf, forcing her to rethink everything.
Ellie’s uncle Claude was the Master of Leviathan.
It was a truth she’d been so afraid to uncover, but now she knew it, nothing would ever be the same.
This is why Leviathan wanted the love letter King Alexander had sent, because it could destroy the Maravish royal family’s reputation if anyone knew he’d gotten another woman pregnant. It was dreadful to think that the sadness in Sayuri’s family could lead back to Ellie’s father. That everything led back to the Wolfsons.
Putting the broken wolf away again, Lottie stared at the bark of the tree, knowing she had to tell everyone, but knowing that would be the hardest part.
Only she didn’t get a chance to move. There was not a moment to let the truth rest inside her, because something wicked was creeping up on her: a monster in the woods stalking its prey.
She saw the shadow first, growing bigger around her in the silence. But by the time she realized it was too late—there wasn’t even time to scream. The scratched hand appeared like a cat’s claw, covering her mouth, while the other came down hard on the back of her head, tangling in her hair and pulling her up painfully.
Lottie knew who it was before she saw her snarling face.
“Hello, Princess,” Ingrid purred, dangling her like a mouse. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere.”
36
THERE IS A SPECIFIC KIND of fear that feels like acceptance. A prickly calm in which your mind cocoons you from reality. It says, This isn’t happening or It will be okay in a minute. It lulls you into tranquility, cradling you in a false idea that everything will be fine so long as you are very quiet and very still.
This was not the kind of fear Lottie was feeling.
“Would you quit struggling?” Ingrid hissed, pulling sharply on Lottie’s hair again. Even with her mouth gagged, and all odds against her, Lottie wouldn’t stop fighting, wriggling and kicking. She would not be helpless. Not again.
Grabbing her shoulders, Ingrid turned Lottie to face her. She was a dreadful sight, covered in scratches and welts, her once-sleek hair a knotted ratty mess, caked with mud and leaves. And worst of all: her eyes.
When Lottie had been little, her friend Kate adopted a cat called Coco from a shelter. It would bully anything small; its eyes would go wide, deep black pools of mania, unblinking and unpredictable. If you saw them, you knew it was too late—Coco was going to get you. But Ingrid was human, and seeing that same mania in her was like staring into madness itself.
“If you don’t stop struggling, I’ll drive this knife right into your hand.”
Lottie believed her.
Satisfied, Ingrid dragged her along the ground, muddying her clothes, and propped her up against the oak tree with a hard thud that nearly knocked the wind out of her lungs. Ingrid clearly had a plan that she’d been nurturing for a while, and Lottie dreaded to find out what it was.
She looked tall, a great monster that eclipsed the sun, staring down at her with malicious intent. There was something odd about thinking of Ingrid as tall, since she was significantly shorter than the other members of Leviathan Lottie had encountered, and yet something had grown within her, a poisonous spite, deforming her and stretching her.
“Now listen very carefully to me, Princess.” Her breathing was uneven when she spoke. “I’m going to remove your gag and we’re going to play a game. But if you shout or scream, I’ll tear your fingernails out, like this. Do you understand?” To emphasize her point, Ingrid took the tip of her knife and pushed it slowly under the fingernail on Lottie’s pinkie, just far enough to give her a taste of the pain. She gasped, the pink nailbed turning purple with the pressure, and she quickly nodded to make Ingrid stop.
Ingrid leaned forward, fumbling with the ties at the back of Lottie’s head, her scratched skin coming up to her face, and she could smell her. Iron and sweat tingled in Lottie’s nose.
There were two other things Lottie noticed as her mouth was freed.
The first was that Ingrid hadn’t spotted the sword. And the second was that Ingrid was shaking.
“You need to run; you’re good at running.”
It wasn’t her voice she was hearing; it was Jamie’s.
“You have to run as fast as you can.”
The only problem was she had to get free first.
Ingrid was a Partizan. She knew the Partizan tricks. If Lottie was going to do this, she had to do it her own way. Behind her thoughts she could almost hear the ringing of the sword, and she thought of Sayuri in Japan counting on her to solve this and tell her the truth.
She had to get away and warn them about Claude. There was no option to fail.
“What game are we playing?” Lottie asked as calmly as she could, and it appeared to work, a spark of surprise flashing across Ingrid’s face. Although her chances were slim, Lottie knew that there was something different about her. The frenzy in her eyes, her uneven breathing. She was not thinking with the usual Partizan precision.
“The game, Princess”—a wry smile had spread over her lips, dried blood crusting over her chin—“is truth or dare.”
It was Lottie’s turn to be surprised.
“If you fail to answer or do your dare, I’ll cut a line in your skin. Got it?” Ingrid stared at her, genuinely
