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“Where’s your pack?” he asked, his voice slurred. He realized the ale had gone to his head. The world around him felt unsteady. “My pack’s also gone,” he said, pointing his flask toward the gray wolf embroidered on his tunic.
He plucked another leg from the rabbit and felt the grease slide down his fingers. The wolf sat up, attentive, his eerie eyes glowing. Rowan carefully leaned forward and fed him the morsel from his hand. He licked his fingers clean, those intelligent, piercing eyes never leaving his own.
“I suppose the pack shall grow soon enough,” he said, taking a piece of meat for himself. “She’s heavy with child.”
He raised his flask in a silent toast, then drank.
He offered the wolf another fat morsel. He ate it straight from his hand again, then nibbled his palm. He rubbed the wolf’s ears with his other hand, shocked into a sudden silence by how quickly he’d trusted him.
A black wolf has come to me in my blackest of nights.
Hesitantly, Rowan tracked his hand over the wolf’s smooth, dark coat. The fur seemed to drink in the firelight; he watched, mesmerized, as the flames danced across it.
“I see them… I see them every night and every day,” he said, whispering to no one. “I see them even now.” Rowan cocked his head back and looked up into a dark ash tree. A body, its face swollen and purple, hung from the end of a noose. It swayed eerily in the breeze, and the smoke from the fire obscured its features. Rowan blinked. It was gone as quickly as it’d appeared.
“What should I do? Go back to the king? What kind of knight—what kind of man, what kind of father—would that make me?”
The wolf said nothing. Of course. Just stared at him with those glowing eyes.
Then the wolf lay down and made himself at home beside Rowan’s boots. His eyes darted back to the sigil on his banner: a gray wolf howling against a white field.
Rowan exhaled a breath, then watched as the wolf’s eyelids grew heavy and closed. He rested his massive head on his front paws. Rowan watched the steady rise and fall of his back… watched through the flames as they waved in the darkness.
Black smoke distorted the wolf lying beside him.
“Smoke,” he said aloud, talking to no one.
And the Black Wolf of Norland was born.
* * *
Rowan idly ran his fingers over his bandaged forearm, though his focus was on the sleeping princess beside him. The oversized armchair dwarfed her body. She’d curled up in the satin upholstery like a little kitten, her hands pressed together and stacked under her chin. Firelight washed over her from the hearth, and her striking blond curls appeared to come to life.
His storytelling had lulled her to sleep.
Rowan took her in his arms and brought her to her guest chamber. She felt so fragile in his grasp. A protective instinct thrummed through him.
No one shall ever harm you again.
Least of all me.
Her scarred cheek was upturned, a rough ridge that started at her delicate ear and spanned to the corner of her mouth.
A battle scar indeed.
Rowan reached over with his right hand and pushed back the material of his jerkin. A web of red scarring covered the upper part of his chest. Their scars were connected in a twisted sort of way, as were their fates.
He sat in one of the high-back chairs and planted his hands on his thigh. He watched her, transfixed, as the gentle rise and fall of her chest moved in a soothing rhythm.
Such a sweet young girl, he thought, remembering someone else. A lovely young girl who’s known so much horror.
How is she now?
And does she miss me as I miss her?
He tried not to bring her to mind—that other girl who he seemed to know a lifetime ago.
So close yet so far away, he thought, looking at Blanchette.
