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Blanchette froze in mid-step as that wolf’s howl shook through the wood again. She should have been frightened, yet that melancholy sound comforted her. She felt safe, knowing the woods belonged to him.
She held her breath and closed her eyes. The howl came again, a long, trembling cry.
The sound of snapping twigs. Broken bones, she absently thought.
A smooth, slick body brushed up against her skirts. Blanchette gasped aloud, her heart racing, then opened her eyes. Two hazel globes stared up at her, nestled in fur as black as night.
His head dropped low, his eyes remaining fixed on her. His lips curled back, flashing pearl-white teeth. A low growl reverberated in his throat and sent another shiver through her.
She leaned forward and ran her palm over his silky muzzle and dark fur. He bristled beneath her touch, and his muzzle broke out into a panting smile.
Then she heard a light creaking—the sound of a ship’s broken mast moving in the wind… or the eerie creak and sigh of bones rattling. She looked up, up into the towering soldier pines. She saw the four of them above her.
Her brother’s mutilated body, limp and hanging.
Her mother’s dead eyes staring forward.
Her father, the spikes of his crown dripping blood, the crown itself hanging halfway off his brow… and Grandmother, too, her wrinkled white throat torn out and gushing red.
As red as my red riding cloak.
Without thinking, she tightened her hold on the wolf’s dark fur. He tensed beneath her, and a low warning growl rolled through the forest.
Her mother’s body creaked. Dead eyes moved in their sockets. She stared down at Blanchette, then wept tears of blood. They fell down her sunken cheeks and onto her red riding cloak, blending into the fabric. She couldn’t tell where the blood began and the cloak ended.
“Mother… please…” she moaned. “Rowan, help me…”
The world twisted and flipped in a dizzying flurry. Blanchette was upside down, hanging from a pine, bloody tears falling from her eyes and wounded cheek. The Black Wolf lurked below her. His eyes shined like stars. Blanchette opened her mouth in a silent scream.
Only blood came out.
Blood. So much blood.
I’m drowning in it.
It pooled on the dark, muddy ground below her dangling head and body. She watched in horror as the Black Wolf lapped it up eagerly, slaver and blood dripping from his jaws…
Twenty-One
The village they’d visited months ago now lay in near ruin.
The scent of smoke and ashes and blood permeated the air. It was a stench not unlike most of the battlefields Rowan had walked.
I shouldn’t have brought her here, he thought as he glanced at Blanchette. She rode a white mare with a banner of flowing silver mane. Smoke had remained behind with Mary, ever her guard dog.
Blanchette’s blond hair was gathered under the hood of her red cloak, and her beautiful blue eyes appeared to stare inward. Not at the destruction before her—but at some internal destruction. Something she couldn’t look away from. She was strangely quiet, too, her lips pulled tight.
Although it was midday, the lingering smoke obscured everything and darkened the world. They both ordered their mounts to a halt. Rowan glanced at the few peasants who’d stayed in the town or survived the massacre.
Now, no children or mothers ran out to greet him. No one heralded his arrival with prayer-filled calls or waving wolf banners. Instead, they ran inside the shelter of the few remaining dilapidated houses. Mothers grabbed the hands of their sons and daughters and rushed them away as if a true wolf lay in their midst. Rowan tightened his hands on Shadow’s reins and coiled his fingers.
I should have listened to Edrick.
God, what have I done?
He spotted a black flag staked into the soil. A pirate raid.
Blanchette dismounted.
