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I looked back at him. “I’m sorry… I am.”
Tallin scrunched his nose. “I’m also choosing to believe you.”
“I mean it. I know I get a bit excitable sometimes… I don’t mean to be rude.”
He snorted, took a deep breath, and came up alongside me. “Huh,” he simply said.
“Huh?”
“Do you smell that?”
“I… don’t. That’s weird, isn’t it?”
“It is. With that big nose of yours you should be able to smell what the people of Lysa are cooking for dinner.”
“What do you smell, then?”
“Nothing good…”
I frowned at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean we should probably turn around and get out of here.”
“We’re in the Royal Forest. What could possibly go wrong out here?”
“Royal Forest or not, you and I both know it’s off limits for a reason.”
“I actually don’t know what the reason is.”
Tallin took a deep breath. “There’s dark magic in these woods. Remnants of the Veridian. We shouldn’t be here.”
“Is that what you’re smelling down there? Dark magic?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“I mean, if there’s dark magic down there, we should investigate, shouldn’t we? An entirely new section of forest just popped up overnight. Surely that warrants investigation. I think we should investigate.”
I was about to step toward the ridge when a sound behind us put my entire body on high alert. I spun around, fur bristling, fangs bared, a warning growl in my throat. But the sound hadn’t come from an enemy. It also hadn’t happened by accident. There, standing by a tree, wearing fine black clothes with silvery accents was a man whose substantial form broke what little light remained in this part of the forest.
Though his presence was enough to disarm my growl, it wasn’t enough to soothe my nerves.
“Amara Wolfsbane,” my father said. He stepped closer, the features of his face now coming into view. He was tall, broad shouldered, and had long, thick dark hair and black antlers that curved up and over his forehead, but his eyes—they were the cold blue of an icy lake. They were my eyes, and they were scowling.
There, stood Cillian Wolfsbane, King of Windhelm and the Kingdom of Winter.
My tail curled under me. “Yes, father?” I asked.
His eyes glanced over to Tallin, who had pressed his belly against the cold, snowy ground in reverence. My father gave me his eyes again. “You know you shouldn’t be out here,” he said.
“That’s not strictly true…” I said, daring to fact-check the King of Winter.
He peered across my shoulder at the ridge that lay behind me, now. “Come away from that place,” he said, “It’s time.”
“Again?” I asked. “Can’t we tell them to skip today?”
“Do you wish for me to tell the entire Court and every single contestant toskiptoday’s ceremony?”
I took a quick breath, then lowered my head. “I suppose not,” I said.
