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She gripped the cage’s steel bars, bringing her face to the gap with a simpering smile.
Tear her throat out, I silently ordered him. Turn into the wolf I know you are and break through your bonds.
He didn’t.
Only wrapped his hands over hers on the bars and said something that made her laugh uproariously.
My stomach turned. The vile submissiveness of it. The weak subservience.
I felt the animal rage rising in me and craved the release of an attack. If my brother wouldn’t do it, I bloody well would.
I would wait until her attention was elsewhere. Creep down the chimney or break one of these stupid, ridiculously thin windows.
The witch’s laugh rang against the panes as she pushed off the cottage floor, her feet lifting from the ground as the cage began a wild spin. I’d heard the term cackle before but always thought it an overstatement. The ecstatic glee with which this woman laughed...
It made me self-conscious. Maybe angry. It made me jealous.
When had I ever laughed like that? Even once in my life, had I been able to let go the way she had? To give myself over entirely to any one feeling? The answer came almost immediately.
I had. With Sal. I banished the thought, reminding myself she’d nearly sold me to this woman. That it might have been me in that cage instead of my brother.
Blessed anger coursed through me, feeding my grudge.
This witch would know my wrath. She would feel my rage. She would—benefit from about thirty fewer cats. I knew one thing. She would soon be down a one if the vile creature weaving through my legs didn’t stop rubbing its disgusting little face on my flank.
I issued a warning growl. Making sure it knew in no uncertain terms what my intentions would be if it continued this unwelcome distribution of affection.
It only gazed up adoringly at me with pumpkin orange eyes, emitting a strangely comforting rumbling from its throat.
“Go away,” I rasped in my deepest possible growl.
The filthy thing only began kneading my leg like a wad of dough. Its tiny paws pressing in a succession that proved oddly relaxing.
Unnatural beast.
“Leave me be, or I’ll harm you most grievously,” I threatened.
And then, do you know what that verminous skin sack did?
It rose on its hind legs and pressed its wet nose to mine. Then, quite against my will, an intensely maternal feeling overtook me. And instead of rending its innards out, I found myself speaking to it in an imbecilic voice.
Asking the inanest of questions and, worse, answering them.
“Who’s a pretty girl? You are! You’re a pretty girl Oh, yes you are!”
And so forth.
I had progressed to rolling on my side to mirror her adorable posture when a cleared throat brought me up short.
“I see you’ve met Grizelda?”
From my prone position, I looked up into eyes glowing a foul green.
The witch had donned a robe but wore nothing under it.
“You’re here just in time. The moon is nearly full.” A blinding red flash seared my eyes and filled my head with tremendous pain before the screens were lowered on my vision.
I woke with my entire body stiff and sore and a strange creaking in my ears. Glancing upward, I quickly discovered the source. I now hung in a cage beside Mark’s. Perhaps it was the lack of sleep. Perhaps the ridiculousness of it. Whatever the case, I began to laugh. Hard enough that the soft body beneath the shift she must have dressed me in began to jiggle.
