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“Thank you,” he answered, meeting my eyes briefly.
“There’s more,” Credence said.
“Show me.”
“No,” Sariel objected. My chest tightened at the objection. “Not those ones.”
Despite Sariel's protest, Credence took me into an empty room. What I saw inside made my gut clench.
Wolves. Or, rather, one wolf.
Me.
Half-finished paintings of a black-and-white wolf were perched against one wall. Two fully finished ones were against the other. The largest looked so much like my wolf, I had to take a tentative step back; even the red and white color of my eyes were accurate.
The wolf was painted against the backdrop of a full moon. The light rays reflected on its fur, making it glow.
All I could say was, “Oh my God.”
I was frozen as Credence moved some paintings propped against the wall to reveal more of the same wolf. One in particular stood out to me; the wolf stood on a cliff overlooking a field of flowers, but upon closer inspection, I realized that they weren’t flowers at all. They were people. People with their heads bowed.
“Aria—”
“When did you paint these?” I asked, interrupting Sariel.
He stood in the doorway, his hands in his pockets and expression carefully blank. He swallowed, and Credence cleared her throat to prompt him.
“Right before I came back to AMH.”
I blinked. “You didn’t know me. You’d never met me before.”
“No, I hadn’t, pup.”
“You’re lying.”
My heart was pounding. Fear lodged in my throat, constricting my airways and making me dizzy. “Youknew. You knew who I was. You knewwhatI was.”
“Aria, he didn’t know,” Credence tried to soothe. She reached for me, but I jerked away from her.
“I swear to you, Aria, I didn’t know,” Sariel continued. He raised his palms in the act of surrender. “Sometimes, I… I get this uncontrollable urge to paint. It’s all-consuming. I can’t stop myself. I don’t typically know what I’m going to paint, but when I start, I can’t stop. I can paint for days on end…”
“He’s telling the truth,” Credence tried again.
I took another step away from them.
“I didn’t know I was paintingyouuntil the car accident,” he said.
I wanted to believe him. My wolf did, at least. She hadn’t even batted an eye at the paintings, and for the first time, I had to ask myself if she knew something I didn’t. If sheunderstoodsomething I didn’t.
“Give us a minute alone, please,” he said to Credence.
The woman eyed me warily before moving to the doorway. When she left, he went over like he was going to close the door, but my expression must have warned him that that would be a terrible idea, because he pushed it open wider so that I could see the kitchen.
“Days before my father took me into the forest and tried to maim me, I painted these.”
He reached into one of the closets lining the furthest wall and pulled out two medium-sized paintings.
On the first was a faceless, humanoid thing. It had no facial features—no eyes, nose, mouth, ears, or hair, the body itself gray and sexless—but it did have wings. One huge black wing and one huge white wing, in fact. Even those dual-colored feathers spattered in and between appeared in the picture.
