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Bron was gone.
* * * *
Bronwyn promised herself that when she made it to her tower, she would change into good old peasant clothes. Her second-best dress was hardly making it easy to run through the fields. It seemed to catch on everything as though invisible hands were trying to reach out and grasp her and pull her back.
She felt the tug of Lach and Shim. By now they had to know she was gone. The phooka had stayed behind to create a little chaos, but before he’d left her, he’d taught her how to throw up some mental shields. According to the phooka, she was wide open to the men she’d dreamed about most of her life.
She pulled her skirt free of a branch. It tore. Just like everything else in her life right now.
And she hadn’t even known it was real. They had spent their whole lives understanding that she was a real, actual living creature, but Bronwyn Finn had walked around thinking she was insane. And everyone else had thought she was crazy, too. And now they thought they could just walk in and take her virginity and her blood and cart her off to goddess only knew where.
And that damn dog wouldn’t stop following her.
“I don’t have anything to feed you.” She stared back at the animal. It was a pretty thing. She. For some reason Bron was pretty sure the dog was female. There was something delicate about its features. The dog, who might also be a wolf, sat back on her haunches as Bron found herself snarled in a bramble bush. “You don’t want to go where I’m going. So shoo. Shoo, dog.”
The dog snorted, her muzzle lifting in a fashion that made Bron think she was laughing. And it didn’t move until Bron did, then the dog simply trotted along behind her.
“Fine, but you’ll see. I’m going on a long journey.” She rounded the final curve and her tower was close. It was tall and dominated the countryside. It had been her home for almost four years.
It had been her prison.
“She didn’t care about me. Not really. I think that’s what hurts worst of all.” Bron watched for a moment trying to figure out if anyone was in the tower. She thought not. The phooka had claimed the others were all still in the village waiting for the best time to flee back to the Unseelie plane.
The wolf sat beside her and gently nuzzled her hand as though asking her to continue.
“You’re a weird wolf or dog or whatever you are.” She stood up and started to move. She only needed one thing really, but she would change her clothes, too. She needed the knife. She couldn’t leave without it.
The wolf barked, an impatient sound. Well, maybe the phooka wasn’t the only strange creature she would meet today.
“I’ve spent almost half my life with Gillian, and I just found out she never cared about me at all. Not the real me. She just saved me because she wanted me to marry her brothers. She told them to impregnate me so their claim would be indisputable.”
The wolf growled low in her throat.
Bron stopped and looked around for the threat. The courtyard was completely empty. Then she realized why the wolf had growled.
“You didn’t like the sound of that. Did you? They used me. Gillian pretended to care about me and protected me from men only because she wanted me to be a virgin for when her brothers took me.”
There it was again. The deep growl.
Bron got to one knee. She wasn’t sure how, but this wolf understood what she was saying and seemed to deeply empathize. She was pretty sure no one else would. Everyone else would say that was what royals did. They traded their daughters and sons in exchange for treaties and alliances and land. Her own brothers’ engagement had been made in an attempt to bring Maris’s family’s great wealth of resources into the Finn family line.
“I know I should have understood that any marriage I make will not be one of love, but I’ve lived as a peasant for far too long. I’ve watched the way they live and how many choose mates based on love and affection.” She reached out and stroked the wolf. Maybe it wasn’t so bad to have a companion, even one who couldn’t talk back. “The real problem is that I’ve loved those men all my life, and I didn’t even know they were real. I loved them. Never wanted anyone else. And all they want from me is an alliance.”
The wolf seemed to shake her head, but then she growled and got to all fours, the hair along her spine standing straight up.
Bronwyn stood to face whatever was coming her way.
Niall. He walked out of the tower, placing something in his pack. The guard had changed into what looked like travelling clothes, divesting himself of his armor and cape. He wore suede pants and a tunic, with boots covering his feet.
He was quite the master of disguise. He looked like a peasant now and not a particularly dangerous one. He could likely make his way on the roads and survive by smiling and looking helpful and proclaiming, “long live King Torin.”
Her memories of the day were vague and fragmented, but she remembered him. He’d saved her, and then he’d dumped her.
He walked down the lane as though he hadn’t just stolen into her home and taken her things. The bastard had taken her knife. She sought her memory. In those last moments when she could still speak, he’d asked about the knife and she’d told him.
“Calm down, wolf.” Bron put a hand on her new pet. “We should get answers
out of him before you eat him.”
