So when the Wolf of Winter offered nothing more than a stiff nod, she understood exactly why her heart gave a painful little pinch.
Nocturne waited for something more, her eyes no doubt betraying every feeling coursing through her body. But the general stayed silent, his stone-cold expression revealing nothing, and when Nocturne turned to walk away, he merely vanished into his tent, the flaps whipping shut behind him.
~
Nocturne couldn’t sleep. She tossed and turned for hours, listening to the sound of her tent groaning against the dry wind.
A dream of her family had plagued her mind for the few minutes she had managed to drift off. Most of the time these dreams were nightmares—images of their bloodied and bruised faces peering at her from a dark void, their eye sockets stuffed with writhing worms. The reek of death would cling to the insides of her nostrils long after she woke up, and every time she would blink, their faces would haunt her again, as if they were stitched to the insides of her eyelids.
This time had been different. Instead of blood, bruises, and worms, they were alive and well. Their skin was unmarked, their eyes undisturbed. They had beckoned to her from the other side of a wide ravine—from the shelter of a dense forest aglow beneath a sun that refused to shed light beyond the fringe of oaks. Nocturne had walked helplessly toward them, but her foot had slipped at the edge of the ice-slick cliff, and she nearly went down.
For a long time, they stared at her from the other side of that yawning ravine. Nocturne had called to them. Shouted their names over and over, until her words turned into incomprehensible sobbing. Until she collapsed to her knees and watched her family disappear, one by one, swallowed by the rosy light setting the trees ablaze.
Somehow, this dream was worse than the nightmare. The knowledge that they were so close, yet so,sofar.
Kicking off the blankets, she donned her cloak and ducked out into the raw night. The wind had died down to a breeze, the camp lit only by the stars. Those on guard duty were nodding off, the embers of their dying fires barely glowing.
Nocturne walked for miles and miles through the forest, losing herself to the sound of her rasping breaths and the crunch of snow beneath her boots. She kept her neck craned back as she walked, her eyes trained on the constellations staring back at her.
“When?” she whispered, her voice cracking from the cold. “When will the pain end?”
The sky was silent and abandoned. It was like shouting at the top of her lungs down an empty corridor, and not even her own echo was there to answer.
She turned her gaze to her frayed boots and trudged on.
Eventually, she came to a ravine. Far below, water sloshed against the sides. It looked exactly like the one in her dream, and she stumbled to a stop before she could slip off the frosted edge. There was a sickening moment of familiarity, a nauseous feeling that twisted deep in her stomach. She peered across that depthless chasm, to the forest at the other side.
A glowing figure stepped from between two snow-heavy pine trees. A little girl with flaxen hair and white eyes that bore into her like full moons.
Nocturne’s blood ran cold. “Who are you?” The three whispered words sounded far away, as if they had come from someone else’s mouth.
Behind the spirit, one by one, appeared Nocturne’s family. First her father, strong and handsome. Then her mother, youthful and lovely as always. Last came Olive, her nose splashed with freckles, her shiny hair falling in curls to her narrow waist.
Nocturne stumbled forward, a gurgled cry escaping her lips.
Ghost orchids sprouted from the ground at their feet, and the haunting chuckle of a young girl bobbed across the ravine.
Tears slipped down Nocturne’s numb cheeks. “I’ve missed you,” she whispered, her voice trembling. She took another step forward. “Please—”
“Nocturne!” called a male voice.
“Father?” she rasped.
“Nocturne!”
She lost her footing, and she slipped to the ground, her legs kicking out over open air.
“Nocturne, for the gods’ sake—”The Wolf of Winter caught her under her arms, and he dragged her back through the snow. Away from the edge. Away from her family who now faded away, one after the other, just as they had in her dream. The little girl was the last to leave, followed by the ghost orchids that shrank hesitantly back into the frozen earth.
Broken screams were erupting from somewhere deep in Nocturne’s chest. She kicked at the general, hating that his eyes were filled with concern, hating how he held onto her as if the broken pieces of her were worth keeping together. She kept screaming as she clawed at his neck, narrowly missing his face as he dodged each blow. Until her screams and curse words became wordless sobbing, and she sagged, defeated, in his arms.
He held her for a long time, the world around them silent and cold. She was tired—she could feel it in her bones and in her blood. The tears rolling silently down her face eventually stilled, and each new breath she took was steadier than the last. She opened her mouth to speak—to apologize—but he cut her off.
“I know,” was all he said. And she realized, for the first time since she had seen him that day the soldiers had pulled her from that reeking wagon and forced her into the House of Ice, that hedidknow. He knew exactly how she felt—had perhaps known this entire time.
“What happened to them?” she whispered, her lips trembling so hard she could barely understand her own sentence. He knew she didn’t mean her own family.
Kit took a deep breath before speaking. “Before I became alpha, my living family consisted of my mother, my wife, two sisters, and a brother,” he began, his voice so quiet Nocturne had to strain to hear him. “The packs recognized me as the alpha after I helped the king take the Shadowlands. Without an alpha, the army was too unpredictable to control, and he offered me the position as general the day I’d planned to leave.” His arms tightened around her, and the snow shifted beneath him as he adjusted. “I tried to decline as politely as I could, but the king didn’t take well to being denied what he wanted. He locked me in a cell with iron walls, and before closing the door he told me…he said…,” His words faded as he hesitated. He took her hand in his, and she let him. His fingers dwarfed hers.
