“Snap her neck—that would do the trick.”
Panic blares through me with a shriller edge. I struggle twice as hard, as hopeless as it feels. The grizzly hefts me up in his arms like I’m weightless, one arm dropping to catch my legs, and then I’m bundled tight against him, barely able to move. I swing back my head, one of the few parts of me not clamped in place, and my skull slams into my kidnapper’s jaw.
He lets out the faintest of grunts, his grip not loosening in the slightest. “Kill her, and there goes the supply. We’ll take her—now. But we need her pliant to get her out of here unnoticed. August, the blanking grip.”
“But—”
The next word is a snarl. “Now.”
I wriggle in his hold like a fish wrapped in a net, my head whipping back and forth, but it’s not enough. The man with the warm, boyish face steps up beside the grizzly and presses his hand to the crook of my neck. As he says a quiet but emphatic word, his thumb and forefinger pinch and squeeze—and my awareness snuffs out into blackness.
3
Sylas
The moon is on the rise. Even with it hidden beyond the oaks and pines around us, I’m aware of every fraction of its journey to scale the horizon. The prickling energy of its full-faced state carries on the warm evening breeze alongside the green and musky scents of the forest and the beasts that live in it. Once, the ghostly impressions beyond regular sight that sometimes seep through my deadened eye show a glimpse of it like a translucent afterimage superimposed against the shadows.
Far too soon, that round white circle will be completely exposed in the darkening sky. With every passing minute, its energy niggles deeper into my bones.
I don’t like it. I don’t like the turn our mission took or how much time we had to spend departing Aerik’s fortress with our unexpected cargo. I thought we’d be hurrying off with a sheaf of papers or a notebook or two, ideally after downing a vial of the tonic. We’d have moved faster and had more advantage of stealth in our wolfish forms. We wouldn’t have needed to worry about that moon.
But there were no vials remaining in the fortress. Aerik and his pack must have taken this month’s entire batch to distribute. And while our cargo isn’t much more than a slip of a creature, she’s still significantly more unwieldly than a book.
Aerik and his cadre will know someone broke in. The pottery Kellan smashed—accidentally, he said, but the bastard can be fastidiously careful when it suits him—would have told the story well enough even if we weren’t absconding with an entire human girl they were keeping locked away. The last thing I want is to add our names to that story. No one can know it was Sylas and his cadre who stole the secret of the tonic, not until we’ve decided exactly how we’re going to leverage that secret in our favor.
So, we had to make awkward use of one of the faded pack member’s wheelbarrows and some hasty concealment spells, and now we’re tramping through the forest an hour later than we were meant to be returning to our carriage. Which means we’re an hour closer to the moment when the full moon’s energy overwhelms us completely.
There’s no telling what we might do then. Whether we’d spare the girl or savage her or misplace her in the woods. Whether we’d rage deeper into the woods or back out into the open fields where Aerik’s pack might spot us on their return. If we don’t make it away from this foray in time, we’ll manage to fall even farther in standing than we already have, and that catastrophe will be on my shoulders too.
August is carrying the girl now, slung over his shoulder, still limp from his magic-enhanced touch. With her ratty blanket wrapped around most of her scrawny form, she bears an uncomfortable resemblance to a sack of bones—and a half-empty one at that. The pink ridges of scarring that mottle one of her knobby shoulders bear testament to a more brutal savaging than the cut on her wrist some time in her past—a savaging that appears to have come with a gouging of wolfish fangs.
This is the key to Aerik’s surge in prestige, to all the favor he’s curried in the past several years, and he’s treated her with less dignity than I’d subject my worst enemy to. Starved, hunched, and filthy, mute with fear at the very sight of us…
I can’t shake the image of my first glimpse of her eyes, the pale green of newly budded leaves but bloomed wide with terror, so striking in her sallow, sunken face.
A rat would deserve better treatment, and humans are leagues closer to fae than any rodent. I’d amassed a great deal of disgust for Aerik’s methods already, and I believe tonight has just doubled it in magnitude.
Not all of my companions would agree with me on the measure of humans compared to rodents, though. Kellan stalks behind August with his silvery gaze lingering on the slumped girl, his expression like that of a cat planning to pounce on a mouse. I’ve kept our home free of human servants to spare them from his inclinations, but clearly that’s only given him plenty of time to stockpile his antagonism toward those who turn so quickly to dust.
He notices my gaze and gives me the bitterest of wolfish grins. “So much riding on a piece of dung. No wonder Aerik kept the secret so very quiet.”
“I expect it had more to do with the fact that the blustering prick relished lording his mysterious cure over the rest of us,” Whitt remarks in his careless way. He strides along with an air of total nonchalance, but I can scent a hint of stress from him.
I doubt it’s the coming of the moon that worries him, though all of my cadre will be able to sense it as well as I can. He’s never been overly concerned about the shifting of our natures—which I suppose makes sense, considering he earned the nickname “Wild Whitt” well before that wildness became inescapable. He has no shortage of pride, though. He won’t like the idea of our raid being discovered and the disgrace that would follow any more than I do.
Even Kellan’s chuckle manages to sound bitter. “Still, imagine having to keep this stinking creature around for years, having to handle the pathetic thing before every full moon, always needing to be so careful with it so as not to lose the rotting source of their claim to glory.” His lip curls with disgust aimed in a very different direction from mine. “The only proper use for a dung-body—”
“The only proper use for your mouth right now would be to take in enough breath to pick up your pace,” I interrupt, keeping the edge in my voice firm rather than acerbic. He is a member of my cadre, and I am his lord, and I will not swat him across the head as if he were a sulking whelp, as much as I might sometimes be tempted to.
I owe him more than that, and may I never forget it. He certainly never will.
Clearly I will have to keep an eye on him when it comes to the newest—if temporary—member of our household, though. So far, Kellan hasn’t overtly disobeyed a direct order. He knows there’d be no room for leniency there. But he has appeared to enjoy finding ways to maneuver around my obvious intentions, increasingly so in the past few years.
In consideration of his circumstances and our history, I’ve allowed him all the patience I can, but there are limits. There may come a point when he’ll regret trying me.
The bloated orb of the moon will be easing its thickest span above the horizon now. We have perhaps fifteen minutes before the change comes. As long as we’re on our enchanted ride and away, it won’t matter. The secure hold I conjured with the thing to ensure we didn’t damage our bounty is large enough to hold the girl.