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War, war, war… always at war…
“I led the attack. But first, I came to the priests and offered gold and provisions for their surrender. They were starving, not killers. Not even fighters, truth be told. They handed over their weapons and swore they’d never lay a hand against the crown. When I returned with the news of a peaceful surrender, your father told me, ‘I said to lead the attack, Rowan. Do as I command or suffer for it.’ My men slaughtered them like sheep. I hanged the priests and whoever survived when we found them hiding.”
Blanchette lowered the cloth, her hand frozen in midair. Rowan stared forward with an empty look in his eyes. “I still see them swinging, Blanchette. Every night. Your father knighted me for that. I served him for a year more, haunted and half alive. Shortly after Mary was born, he asked me to do it again. I gazed down at my daughter, then stared at myself in the looking glass… ashamed. I’d become worse than my father. I didn’t want Mary to grow up in a world like that—a dark, cruel place full of shadows and monsters. I didn’t want her to grow up near me. I went deep into the forest, searching for what? Answers? I can’t even say. I think a part of me was looking for death. But it didn’t find me. Instead, Smoke found me, and I turned my father’s gray wolf banner into the black wolf. And, as they say, the rest is history.” He leaned the back of his head against the tub. “I was visiting merchants by the port when it happened. As soon as I rode up to my castle’s gates that night, I knew something was terribly, terribly wrong. He had my wife defiled and murdered in our bed. And poor Mary… well, he left her alive to keep me loyal. I secluded myself after that. Talked to hardly anyone but Edrick and Kath—” His voice faded in silence.
“And who?”
“Never mind,” he murmured. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”
The silence grew again. Blanchette’s heart pounded in her ears as a wind gusted through the castle. He’d committed atrocities… he was a dangerous man. She’d known this from the start, yet she found herself irresistibly drawn to him—like a moth to a flame.
“You were right to damn me, Blanchette,” he whispered. “And you were right to fear me. I’ve done terrible and unforgivable things. I’ve tried… God, I’ve tried to reinvent myself. Whoever I was when I bore my father’s gray wolf banner, when I followed the king’s orders blindly—he’s gone now. He’s ash and bone. But when I think of all the horrors… all the death and blood and grief that came at my hand… none so haunts me more than the pain I brought to you.” Suddenly, he took her hands in his own and gripped them with raw desperation. His palms and fingers were wet, and as he lightly pulled her forward, she felt the warmth from the bath water curling her hair.
“You are good,” he said. “You are the best of us. You are the change I was searching for in the woods that night. I believe that, Blanchette, more than I’ve ever believed in anything. The people of Norland need you… and so do I.”
Oh, God… what’s happening to me?
She excused herself and quit the solar before she could answer that.
* * *
The following day, they came to a clearing at the edge of the woods, where the trees scraped the sky and came to a dead stop. Beyond them lay a dense wilderness and winding rivers. Blanchette slid off the horse, her boots touching the dirt road in a hushed whisper. She wound her arms about her body and gazed into the dark woods, past the gnarled and ancient trees she’d often pretended guarded her castle. An image of her mother’s limp body tore into her thoughts.
Those trees were supposed to stand guard. Instead, they’d opened like the gates of hell, letting loose the Black Wolf’s army of followers and rebels of the crown. The people’s army she’d so often heard whispered in the halls of the castle and from the lips of wounded soldiers.
Her eyes opened, and he was beside her. Tall and dark, standing at that edge where the woods ended and her world began—and where her world had also ended last winter.
Rowan stared into the woods, too, gazing up at the trees with a numbing intensity.
What does he see? she wondered.
She was coming to know his ghosts well.
He shook his head as if dismissing a thought, then turned his gaze to her. His eyes softened, and the slightest smile lifted the corner of his lip.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Rowan said huskily. She heard herself scoff, though deep inside, she was very scared. Terrified even.
“I could say the same about you, Rowan.” She took a long breath and stepped back to better see those colossal and ancient trees. “I remember looking down at these trees from my window as a girl, believing with all my heart that they were silent watchers. My protectors. My own guard, protecting me and my family from whatever lay beyond them. Whatever horrors lay beyond my window were inconsequential. As long as the trees stood, we would as well.” She smiled and felt the scar pull tight on her cheek.
Then she closed the distance between them and laid a hand on Rowan’s shoulder. He adjusted his posture so his body aligned with her own. They stood side by side at the edge of the forest. Winslowe Castle towered behind them with the trees ahead of them.
“How… how is your forearm? The scar looked quite good,” she added with a blush.
He grunted, then his face broke into a wolfish smile. The hard lines of his face softened when he smiled, though the darkness never faded from his brow. It was a shadow that followed him everywhere, just like the ghosts and shadows who followed her.
“Luckily for my enemies, I shall never block quite as fast or well again.”
“Then you shall have to hit them harder.”
“Aye,” he agreed. “Though it’s not as easy as you make it sound.”
“No? Not even for Norland’s Big Bad Black Wolf?”
“Especially not for him, Blanchette. After all, hunters enjoy a few things more than a wolf pelt at the foot of their beds.”
It was her turn to smile, but it was sad… just as his words had been. She couldn’t understand why, but they’d brought intense sorrow and hopelessness back into her heart. One she’d been trying so hard to banish yet always returned uninvited at the slightest provocation.
“Well, come, Black Wolf. It’s my turn to show you something.”
