Page 42 of Tides of Shadows

“Not exactly,” he said with a shrug. “She treated it as inevitable. As though the blood of Cavareth could birth nothing less. I cannot say whether she trusts so wholly in our Family’s untouchable fortune, or whether nothing on earth can startle her now.”

We sat in silence, lulled by water and wind. The world felt gentle.

Then the forest cracked.

A harsh rustle sounded from the wood. Not wind in leaves, something heavier, as if a thing crept, step by step. We turned our heads as one.

A wolf slid out of the woods. At first glance it looked no different from any hunter of the wild. The illusion shattered. It came tottering, white foam upon its jaws. Its eyes burned red, not the eyes of any creature born clean, but fevered and foreign.

The Plague.

We rose together. Aidenar set himself before me and drew a dagger. Steel caught the last of the light.

Two more wolves followed from the forest. Each with froth and that same unnatural stare.

I reached for the water in their bodies and couldn’t. Nothing. Emptiness. As if the Plague had seared the life out of them and left only rage and death behind.

“If you want to bend your power to some worthy use, now is the time,” I said.

“I do not know if I can,” he answered and I saw uncertainty in his eyes.

The wolves began to circle. Step by step, with a soft, hateful growl. Praise the waters, we stood near the stream. It was my only advantage.

“Guard me,” I said. “I will cast down as many as I can.” I pulled hard at the stream and set a globe of water whirling.

A fourth wolf burst from the brush. It sprang for us, jaws gaping, spittle and foam scattering like sleet.

I drove the water-sphere as a ram, smashing the fourth aside and hurling it into one of the others. Squeals split the air, and I heard bones breaking.

The last two leaped together. I had no time left.

Aidenar moved at once. In a blink he was upon the nearer beast. With a speed I had never seen in him, he drove his blade upward into the skull. The wolf gave a long, riven howl, then sagged to earth.

The last one halted. It met my gaze. A chill ran down my spine. That look was not that of a beast. It was a man’s. And to my horror, it looked pleased.

Before I could take a step, it sprang for my throat. I lifted my knife, yet the brute’s weight would have crushed any defense of mine.

Aidenar crashed into its flank. His knife plunged into the side of its head, blood spurting across his arm. The wolf roared and twisted, snapping for him. He went down with it, rolled, then sprang away, leaving the creature writhing in its death-throe. It dragged itself through the grass, teeth clacking, blood pouring from the torn maw. Aidenar came back to me, took my knife from my hand, and, without the least falter, drove it straight into the wolf’s skull. One sure, heavy blow.

Silence fell.

We stood shoulder to shoulder, chests heaving, and watched the last tremor leave the carcass. Aidenar wiped the blades in the grass, then went to the other bodies and made certain none yet lived. I stood rooted, the memory of that sickened gaze boring through me.

“Are you hurt?” he asked when he returned, spattered with blood.

“No. And you?” I looked at his arms, where dark streaks ran downward. “That blood?”

“Wolves,” he said with a shrug. “Though I should wash it off at once. It stinks of rot.”

He did not tarry. He went to the stream, stripped his shirt, and waded in. He plunged beneath the water to get rid of the tainted gore quickly.

I could not help myself. I felt the water that slid over his body. It pulsed around him and gave me every detail, the rise of gooseflesh, the beat of his heart, the deep, rough draw of breath. My gift answered to him of its own will, as if it longed to touch him.

A breath of wind stirred across my skin. Delicate, scarcely felt, yet I knew it was him, perhaps unconsciously.

I was still in shock. The Plague was not just a tale from an old book. It crept nearer with each day. Aidenar came back to me, wet but clean of blood. He raked his hair back with his fingers, and his gaze was more grave than I had ever seen it. The boyishness I had grown used to was slipping from him.

He set my knife in my palm. Only then did I note that my hands were still shaking. Before I pulled away, he closed both his hands over mine, firm and steady.