A scrawny gray wolf was scampering away from the beta and a guard. In her mouth was her kill: a bloodied hare, the broken spine protruding from the skin. There was hardly any meat on the critter, though not much more could be said about the wolf. Fastened above the wolf’s ice-crusted paws were iron manacles.
Zenaide kicked the wolf. She tried to dodge his attack, but his boot struck her hard in the ribs and she yelped. He snatched the hare from her teeth and yelled at her to get lost.
As the scrawny thing trotted past Nocturne and Twyla, she slowed.
Nocturne’s breathing hitched; she knew those eyes.
And then the wind shifted, and Nocturne caught the scent of pine and loam—ofhome. Her stomach clenched as memories assaulted her mind.
Could it be?Nocturne wondered.Could it really be her?
From down the line, Zenaide yelled at the wolf, his raspy voice so loud the wolf wasn’t the only one who jumped. She scurried toward the courtyard, where the tree of ice in the very center of the snow-covered grounds gleamed a bluish silver in the sunlight.
Nocturne stared after her for a long time.
Twyla whispered, “Do you know that wolf?”
Nocturne swallowed, her eyes burning as she debated what the truth might cost her. She shook her head, her breathing shallow. “No,” she lied.
Twyla’s mouth became a thin line, but she didn’t prod for the information Nocturne was keeping from her—that she’d seen the wolf before, back when she was a child. Back before so many things had happened.
Killian and six other Firedrakes arrived on horseback a short time later, bearing red and black banners that snapped in the dry wind—the very same banners that now hung on the walls of the House of Ice, where the proud face of a white wolf had once watched over the North. The old sigil of House Sylvana, long since snuffed out by the sigil of the Dark Lord.
When a page rode ahead to inform the general that the Dragon was nearly here, all four hundred shapeshifters assembled into neat lines.
Nocturne kept her eyes on the horizon as the Firedrakes approached.
Killian’s shoulder-length hair shone red-gold in the sunlight. He was very handsome, his chiseled features and amber eyes drawing the gazes of every man and woman present, though his expression suggested he was bored to tears. Nocturne would hate to know how he quelled his boredom when no one was around to see; the rumors circulating the realms suggested actions nothing short of gruesome.
The king’s Firedrakes didn’t stop as they rode past the Wolf Pack, toward the House. They didn’t even deign to look the Pack’s way, though Killian slowed as he passed in front of Nocturne, the many jewels encrusting his gauntlets flashing in the watery light.
For a moment, he looked at Twyla, who tensed beside Nocturne but held her ground. There was no way of telling what he was thinking, his expression betraying nothing.
But when his eyes shifted to Nocturne, he held her gaze for a moment that lasted forever.
The first time Nocturne had seen Killian, they were both children, separated by the Tyrrhenia River that snaked through the forests behind her home. But he was no longer the innocent child she’d stumbled upon. He had grown not only into a man, but a cold-hearted beast much like those who stood around her.
Yet as he continued to stare at her, Nocturne wondered if it was possible that he recognized her from that day in the woods. But Killian’s memory had been wiped a decade ago, she reminded herself, when he was forced to serve in this festering army. She and Killian had one thing in common, it seemed: Neither of them was here by choice.
Sound melted away as Nocturne remembered that this was not the second, but the third time they’d crossed each other’s paths; the second was when her village had been sacked by the king’s men. The memory now returned to her in little pieces.
The blood of her family slick on her skin; her throat hoarse from all the screaming; the armored hands that threw her about as they forced her to the windowless carriages waiting beneath a smoke-filled sky.
And Killian watching from where he sat upon his horse, his eyes more beast than Fey.
Nocturne blinked, and the memory vanished.
Just before Killian turned to face ahead, Nocturne swore she saw his eyes shift. Saw his pupils alter, for one split second, into slits—like the eyes of a reptile.
But too soon he was gone, disappearing through the gate alongside his men. Though Nocturne was more than surprised that Killian didn’t make a grand entrance, as they’d all been expecting, she was relieved—and a little annoyed. But something told her they would soon be in for one hell of an introduction.
“We just wasted so much bloody time,” Nocturne grumbled in Twyla’s ear.
“Hush,” her friend said. “That was far better than I was expecting.”
Yes, far better than they’d both expected. Still, she couldn’t wait to get back inside, where she could thaw her numb limbs in a glass bathtub filled to the brim with hot water.
Some wolf she was.
