The Red Wolf (The Wolf Fey #2) (12 page)

“How dare you!” Delano was getting angry now, snarling as he rose from his throne and strode towards me. “How dare you presume...”

“She'll never love you back!” I cried.

Delano took a deep breath. Suddenly his voice became once again calm, cool, and controlled. “She doesn't have to love me back. She doesn't even have to consent at all. If I decide to take her, to make her mine, I won't even need to ask...”

Now it was my turn to lose my temper. My cheeks grew blazing hot. How dare he talk about Breena that way? Pure, beautiful, kind Breena...

“Don't you
dare!
” I broke loose from my chains, rage giving me strength, rushing towards Delano with the full force of my anger. I struck him clear across the face.

Delano fell back onto his throne.

“Guards,” he called out in a low voice. “Guards!”

They came running and immediately I was shackled once more.

“Get rid of his rations altogether,” Delano said. “I don't want the boy eating anything. And have the torturers come in three times a day.”

My anger was still blazing; I barely heard him. I didn't care. At that moment, all that mattered was Breena – keeping her safe.

The guards dragged me away once more.

Chapter 15

T
hat night I did not dream of the Red Wolf Connell. The beatings were more savage than they had ever been before; my back was lacerated with the echoes of a cat-o-nine-tails, and torch-burns oozed agonizing pus from black bruises. My words to Delano had hit home – apparently, Breena was his weakness. His smooth, condescending manner had been transformed into pure anger. This was not the meticulously planned torture Delano had originally set out for me. No, rather, this was an expression of his rage. I had insulted Delano and now I would pay the price.

At first, I took the tortures bravely. I had won this victory, I told myself, gritting my teeth as the lash once again found those few remaining areas of flesh not already torn open. I had made Delano angry – I had put him off his game. Every lash I experienced, every wave of pain coming over me – it was a sign that Delano was weaker when it came to Breena than I had thought. Had he fallen in love with her, too, I wondered? Of course, it wasn't hard to fall in love with a girl like Breena. So beautiful – so strong and yet so gentle. She could fight off pixies with a sword one minute and then tenderly caress your wounds the next. Kian had evidently fallen for her in just over a week's time – surely the few days Breena had spent in Delano's castle would be enough for him, too, to realize just how special she really was. To pick up on that aura that Breena always seemed to carry about her: that shimmer of magic, like a rosy glow, that followed her wherever she went. Even in my despair and my pain I longed for it, as I longed for her: to inhale her sweet scent, to press my lips against her perfumed, silky hair. To stroke her. To have her.

I didn't know how long it had been since I had been without her. It felt like months that I had been here, caged like the animal I was in this darkness, in this filth. How could I even imagine that intoxicating smell of her – when my nostrils were filled with the decay and death of the dungeon? How could I bear to still think of her beauty, when all around me was ugliness. How could I show her my face – disfigured by wounds? Would she love me then?

But of course, Breena didn't love me. All those years we'd spent together, walking through the woods together, making tree-houses and daisy-chains together – the love we shared was a childish love, the true devotion of one soul to another. There was nothing romantic in it – it was a pure love too young, too new, too blossoming for romance. We'd both been so young. Too young for her to ask herself that question – the answer of which had become clear in my own heart. Were we more than just friends?

She'd still thought of us as best friends, as playmates, as two souls twined in one. She'd laughed when Clariss tried to seduce me, telling me that I was handsome. But did she
feel
it, in any sense beyond the aesthetic? Did she
feel
my love for her, the way I felt it – not merely a childish devotion but a man's desire. How surprising it had been to me that first day, when I was thirteen or fourteen, to discover that my normal love for Breena had taken on another, darker character: before, I had wanted to spend my life alongside her. But after that, I wanted to possess her, to make her mine – a rough and animal desire, a Wolf's desire – of which I had always been ashamed. How could I bring the bestial force of my longing to a girl as innocent and pure as Breena?

But she wasn't innocent anymore – at least not in the sense she had been. We had been children – but Breena was a woman now. She had breathed the Feyland air; she no longer needed to be shielded from Feyland, from its dangers. She had stood tall and headstrong before me; she had risked her own life to save Kian's (as I remembered this, a jolt of pain passed through me). Her hair seemed to shine with the light of the Feyland suns; her eyes, too, were brighter and keener, filled with a new intelligence. What a fool I had been – ashamed of my own desire for her, ashamed to admit it, ashamed to intrude upon the delirious folly of our childhood. Unwilling to admit that I had grown up, that my longings for her were a man's urgings, and not a child's.

And now I knew that Breena had grown up too. I had seen it in her eyes, her half-parted lips, the swelling of her breasts. She too had known desire, a desire so deep it sent her bones shuddering.

But not for me. The surety of it echoed like a terrible refrain. She had felt her womanhood drive her to longing – but for another. A man with piercing blue eyes and a brilliant smile, an unearthly beauty and marble skin. She had grown up without me. She had grown, like a vine against a house, towards the body of another.

And yet I dreamed of her. I hallucinated about her figure in every corner of that dark, stifling cell. In the claustrophobia of my agony I saw her – sitting on the hay, leaning against the walls, lying back upon the floor. But this was not the Breena I remembered: the young, girlish Breena with her long coltish legs and her messy ponytail, fiercely insisting that we remain protesting the destruction of the Gregory Woods overnight. The Breena I saw was not a girl but a woman. In my dreams she wore only a thin strip of gauze to cover her womanly curves – or else she wore nothing at all. I had never dared to dream of her this way before. Something always held me back – some fear of my own emotions. I couldn't admit to myself the full scale of my desire for her.

But the beatings and the torture and the exhaustion had taken their toll on me. I couldn't hold back any longer from my longing.

She came to me night after night, naked, ecstatic, lovelier than any creature I had ever seen. I dreamed of holding her so tightly her creamy skin bruised; I dreamed of forcing my lips against hers. I dreamed of allowing her to rip my clothing from my body, of lying back as she caressed each of my wounds, kissing them, trailing her tongue across the latticed lacerations on my body. I dreamed of our tongues twining, our bodies twining; I dreamed, for the first time experiencing that agony of pleasure, of taking her to my bed. How I wanted her!

I thought again of Connell, of the bargain he had made with Queen Panthea. He gave up his fairy ways – the fairy defenses against emotions and desires – in exchange for animal abilities alongside animal instinct. Well, now I felt that animal instinct, my wolf-self, stronger than my rational mind. A desire so strong it brought her to me in dreams.

The feeling – however imagined – of her body against mine gave me hope. It gave me strength to withstand the beatings, the pain. Each night the pleasure came anew; my visions of her grew stronger and stronger, until in my feverish brain I actually felt every contour of her slender body.

No, I said to myself, as the fever took hold – I couldn't live without her. I knew that now. My duties as a Wolf came second to my duties as her love. If we got through this – if
I
survived this – I would make sure Breena knew exactly how I felt. I would take her in my arms and kiss her and with the full force of my desire for her I would make her forget Kian, forget her cold fairy prince. He was Fey – he couldn't love her like I could. He couldn't want her like I could.

I would make her love me, as I loved her. No more excuses. No more fear.

The promise of that love kept me alive.

Chapter 16

T
ime became meaningless. Without any light in the dank, fetid dungeon that had become the very perimeter and boundary of my world, I could no longer discern the difference between day and night. There was no difference any longer. Sometimes I slept fitfully; sometimes I woke. Perhaps there were hours between the torturing’s – perhaps only moments. Time meant nothing in this place; this was a place only of death and desolation. It would come for me soon, I felt – that mysterious creature whose duty it was to lead souls into the afterlife. I felt its presence at the back of my mind; I felt its breath hot on my neck.

But what about the Wolfstone? My fevered brain resisted the gradual surrender of my body. What about my destiny? Had Connell not come to me in dreams so vivid that they left me awakened and shaking? Had he not taken my soul and let me see through his eyes, experience his life through my own phantasmagorias? Surely it was more than a mere fantasy – surely it must have meant something! I had a destiny to fulfill...a destiny to restore the Wolfstone. To save Breena.

Or simply, perhaps, to die.

I no longer could tell day from night, black from white, right from wrong. Ideas melted into one another like sun-warmed snow. One moment I was convinced that I would survive it all – my strength rallying as I dreamed of being able to withstand the torment, escape the castle, fulfill my destiny. And then the next moment I was once again in despair, feeling the creep of death ever-closer as my body began to give out. I was being kept alive by pixie magic, Delano had said – if he had not chosen to let me live, the fall alone from Kian's wings would have killed me. Surely all Delano had to do was choose to withdraw this means of supernatural life support and I would expire in a heartbeat. It was then that I began to despair. If I was being kept alive by pixie magic and pixie magic alone, then no amount of resolve could keep me from dying as soon as Delano tired of me.

But I didn't have the energy to convince him that I was useful. I had no intention of giving up any information about the Wolfstone, and I certainly wasn't going to tell him about Breena. Sooner or later Delano would realize that not even the most gruesome tortures, the cruelest lacerations, could break me.

And then, I knew, it would be all over for me.

Only one question yet lingered in my brain. Was Breena safe – was she happy? A question I both loved and feared: if she was happy, then my life meant something. I had been able to save her, to give her what I had always wanted to give her. But if she was happy, that meant too that she was happy with
him
. And the thought of that I could not bear. My animal selfishness warred with my human compassion: I wanted nothing but her happiness, unless her happiness meant loving him.

And then at last one day my questions were put to rest. I had been leaning against the metal door of my cage, trying as I always did to catch slivers of conversation from the pixie guard. Hearing language – words, ideas – kept me sane; I even enjoyed eavesdropping on their most trivial banalities: what they had for dinner, what so-and-so in the barracks was doing in order to advance to the next rank. It stopped me from turning into a complete animal. At least, as long as I was hearing and understanding words, I was something like a man.

But this time the pixies were not gossiping about affairs in the palace. Rather, their conversation was far more grim.

“He tortured two messengers this morning, did you know that?” one was saying. “I can't say I envy anyone who has that job.”

“He hasn't lost his temper like that in a while,” the other one observed philosophically. “I've never seen his Majesty so angry. To torture a messenger...”

“Eh, they know what they're getting into,” said the other pixie. “That's why the job of a messenger is well-compensated. They have to know that sooner or later they'll deliver a message to somebody who really, really doesn't want to hear it.”

“I don't care how much they'd pay me,” observed the other guard, “if I had to go and tell the Pixie King that his beloved fairy Princess is safe and sound at the Summer Court, I wouldn't take a million gold pieces for the privilege. I'd keep my mouth shut and run.”

My heart leaped in my chest. So Breena was alive and well. And safe! If King Flametail truly was her father, as it appeared he was, then no doubt he would welcome her home with open arms. My heart warmed for her. This would be the first time in years that Breena had seen her father. How proud he would be to see his beloved daughter in the flesh: to see how strong she had gotten, how courageous. To see what a beautiful, self-assured young woman she had become! The news may have gutted Delano, but I was overjoyed. Kian and Breena had managed to make it out alive.

And, if Breena was at the Summer Court, then she was likely at Kian's side no longer. This too flooded me with relief, although I hated to admit it even to myself. At least some good had come out of all of this, I thought to myself. Even if it was true that my life was coming to its end, at least I had done something of value in my seventeen years. I had saved the woman I loved, and helped her achieve her destiny. That would have to be enough.

And yet thoughts of the Wolfstone still haunted me...the ancient magic of the Wolf Fey calling to me across centuries. But how could I do anything to help the wolves while trapped in this dungeon? Perhaps it was only a trick of the mind: I was near death, and so I was being sucked into the stories of the dead: the ebbing of my life bringing me into a liminal space between life and death, a place where the Red Wolf still roamed and walked the earth. I did not know.