“Why?” Cyrus rasps as the anguish clouding his eyes recedes enough for rational thought to take its place. “Did you send me here to face my brother? Were you trying to get rid of me? Do you really hate me that much?” I can see the wildness in his expression, the overwhelming fear and madness that all he’s endured has wrought.
My chin wobbles as I speak, and I cannot look him in the eye any longer. “I don’t hate you at all, Cyrus. In fact, I have a fresh perspective on everything that’s happened between us. Nobody deserves what you’ve faced, and if I had known what Wolf was up to, I would never have sent you here.” The words pour out of me in a hiccupping, tear-soaked confession. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Cyrus turns his face away from mine and mumbles something under his breath. Whatever he says, I think it is not meant for my ears. In fact, watching his eyes track to the right, I’d almost guess that he speaks to a figment of his imagination, a phantom in his mind. When he finishes, his shoulders are shaking with effort. “What is your plan?”
“It hardly matters. You’ll be dead before the night ends,” comes a seething voice from behind us as Wolf enters the tent. He grabs my wrist and tugs me outside toward the House of Piranhas. “It appears that you and I need to chat. Let’s go restructure your priorities.”
Wolf drags me up to the house’s porch, his feet slowing before they cross the threshold. A scream issues from upstairs, a woman howling in unimaginable torment. Another one dressed in a medic’s apron hustles down the stairs to the kitchen. She hauls a boiling tea kettle with her as she returns to the crying lady. “Lynx?”
“She’s been like that all night,” Wolf answers wearily, leaning against the wall as he listens to her cries. I wonder suddenly if the baby Ddraig I’d held back in the Pith would belong to Lynx’s child. “Why did you heal him, Iris? Have you forgotten what he did to you?” Wolf grips my arms tightly as he pulls me close to his chest, as if bodily proximity will somehow reawaken whatever I am supposed to feel for him. “This is all the Ddraig’s fault, isn’t it? It tells you he’s important and you believe it? Why would you take the word of that scaly overgrown lizard?”
I keep my voice deadly calm, wishing I could claw my way out of his grasp. “This has nothing to do with Siri. I know all about your past. You’re the one that gave Cyrus the scar on his face. You left him to die alone in the forest outside my old house. And I know that your father never gave the order for you to kill him. You did all that yourself.” My hands pat his chest softly, confusing ideas jarring my mind. Friend, monster, kind, murderer, gentle, crazed and brutal…who exactly are you, Wolf? “I cannot understand it. The persona that you’ve shown me is nothing like the child I’ve been told about, nor the self-serving conqueror I see before me now.”
Wolf drops his hold on me and jerks away, declaring, “I’ve never changed, Iris. I’m still the same man you’ve always known. But you were too blind or desperate to recognize it. You always came to me to do your dirty work! You needed a fighter, someone who could make the tough decisions no matter how terrible they were, so you never had to shoulder the guilt! I was that person for you, but you never allowed yourself to see the real me.” A wolfish smile overtakes his mouth, eyes glittering with cunning madness.
He was always rough, but I had clung to the idea that his actions were out of kindness toward me. “You’ve been good at disguising yourself,” I mumble, my body going rigid as I stare at the stranger in front of me.
“I am not a villain, Iris. But I never claimed to be a hero either.” His fingers reach to brush through my hair, and it is hard not to flinch. A dangerous game I am playing now. “Why did you heal my bastard brother?”
Suddenly, a crazy plan forms in my mind. Maybe you’ve been a good actor, Wolf. But now it’s my turn. I force myself to think on things that I find exciting, just to make my eyes sparkle. In many ways, I feel as though I am enduring a life in a mask once more. This persona, however, is not the Mynah bird I once loved; this face is a husk of brutality that I hope is strong enough to fool the monster before me. If it works, I just might be able to free Cyrus without any more bloodshed. “I wanted the pleasure of causing those injuries myself.” I lift the back of my shirt slightly to make my point, letting the scars of Falcon’s beatings speak for me. “Surely you can understand. I want his blood to paint my knife, to see the whites of his eyes as they roll back into his head because of the pain I’ve caused. I want him to suffer again; and I want him to know that it’s my hand causing the agony.”
Wolf doesn’t seem to notice my lies as he nods, a small smile catching me off-guard as he replies, “That’s my girl! But I want him gone by the morning. Can you have your vengeance completed by then?”
This time, I can answer
