“I never believed I did,” Ambrose murmured.
What he had seen, and believed, was that Prudence loved her sisters in the same way Ambrose loved his family. Enough to fight and die for them. Seeing that, Ambrose had suddenly wanted her fierceness for his own.
She retreated from Ambrose as she hadn’t from stone monsters, shaking her head.
“I’m not Sabrina, who has to try not to love someone,” Prudence spat. “I don’t even know why she tries so much about love.”
Ambrose tried to explain romantic love for one of the lost orphans. Prudence might have learned a way to love her sisters on her own, but she had read no poetry and received no tenderness. She had probably never even imagined being in love.
“After what Nick did for Sabrina, she’ll want to do everything for him. Be loyal, in all the ways witches and mortals know how to be. It’s a mortal notion, the idea of the only one, but she grew up among the mortals. She will love Nick as ferociously and completely as she can.”
Prudence gave a brittle-sounding laugh. “How absurd.”
“Is it?” Ambrose asked. He took a step toward her.
“Love always is. It won’t do Nick any good, her loving him,” sneered Prudence. “Not where he’s gone.”
She slammed her bedroom door in Ambrose’s face.
Ambrose was forced to admit that hadn’t gone particularly well, but tomorrow he and Prudence were going to a city made for lovers. He’d never been the type to back down from a challenge.
Ambrose stayed on the balcony, thinking of songs and lions, hope and Paris, and poor lost Nick. “You never know. Perhaps love might do him some good,” Ambrose murmured. “Even where he’s gone.”
I n hell there were dark shores and woods with leering shadows, chambers for torture and chambers for sinister pleasure. Nick was sauntering by when an attractive demon leaned out of a doorway, snakes in her hair reaching past her arms toward him.
“Child of earth and fire,” she murmured through sharp teeth. “Aren’t you beautiful?”
“Don’t I know it,” returned Nick. “What’s up, snake demon?”
The forked tongue of a snake flickered against the inside of his wrist. “Let’s find out.”
Nick paused, then shook his head. “My girlfriend wouldn’t like that.”
The lady and her snakes stared in genuine bewilderment. Nick shrugged. He didn’t fully understand Sabrina’s objections himself, but it was a small price to pay, to be with Sabrina.
“You’re not with her, though, are you?” murmured the treacherous voice in his mind, growing louder every day. One of the last things Sabrina had said to him was that she hated him. She’d spoken to him of hate, never of love. She probably didn’t think she was his girlfriend anymore. Nick would never see her again. No matter what Nick did, Sabrina wouldn’t know or care.
Drowning out misery in whatever entertainment offered was something Nick did plenty. He was great at being cruel and out of control.
Nick wished he could be sure he wouldn’t give in to temptation. He couldn’t. Nobility wasn’t really his style.
But he told himself: Not today. Hold out a little longer.
Long after passing the demon’s chamber, Nick came upon a stone tower nestled in the midst of a wilderness. In the window set above his head, there was a light burning.
He remembered this place.
In the days when Nick ran with the wolves, they stayed away from the covens, but the world was crowded by mortals and Nick was human enough to require some necessities. Nick and Amalia occasionally stole food and clothes from mortal villages.
Nick saw a mortal mother once. She had shining hair, and she sang to her child. Nick followed the sound. Amalia padded after him, inescapable as his shadow. They watched as the mortal mother chased her little boy, caught him, and made a fizzing noise against his cheek. She wasn’t trying to hurt him. “They’re playing,” Nick whispered. “Do humans do that?”
“They all play with their young,” said Amalia dismissively. “The mortals.”
“Oh,” said Nick. “I didn’t know.”
The only one who ever played with him was Amalia. Later, Nick was sure Sabrina’s family played with her when she was small. At the time, he believed it was only mortals.
After that, when the wolf pack ventured near mortals, Nick would … look. The mortals were fascinating, inventing substitutes for magic, using nonsense words like love and grace as though they were spells. Living with each other in little homes with false light that burned so bright.
Nick discovered a mortal girl living in a stone tower. Light burned in her window like a small sun he could, just possibly, have for himself.
He would sneak away from the pack at night and listen to the girl singing in her tower.
“Just a song at twilight, when the lights are low,
And the flick’ring shadows softly come and go,
Tho’ the heart be weary, sad the day and long,
Still to us at twilight comes Love’s old song,
Comes Love’s old sweet song.”
She had long dark hair, with gold in it. There was always something bright about the mortals. Nick thought she might like someone to sing to.
By day she wandered the hills, guarding a flock of animals. Nick couldn’t remember whether they were sheep or goats. They were food. The wolves pulled some of them down.
He tried speaking to her. The first couple of times hadn’t gone well, but you could always memory-charm mortals, then get another chance to make a good impression.
Later, Father Blackwood and his society would complain in Nick’s presence about the unreasonable demands of females. Nick found this tiresome. In his experience, women’s requirements were that you be basically clean and interested in what they had to say. That wasn’t hard.
The third time Nick had a first meeting with the mortal girl, he’d scrubbed himself in a spring, found the right clothes, and talked to her about her dreams of seeing the city one day.
“You’re a charmer, aren’t you?” the girl asked.
Nick wondered how she knew. The girl laughed a musical laugh.
“My heart’s not safe! Are you a big bad wolf?”
Nick saw she liked the idea of a little wickedness. “Something close.”
They sat on a low stone wall together. She wore daisies in her hair.
When Amalia found them, Nick was smiling, looking at the girl. He had only a split second to notice the gray shape slinking low on the winter ground, covering the space between them too fast. The mortal girl had less time than that. She never saw her death until it was on her. Her laugh broke apart and became a scream before her throat was torn out. Nick should have tried to save her, but he was frozen with horror. He watched as his familiar ripped the girl limb from limb.
“What did you want? ” Amalia snarled. “A little mortal love to call your own? The mortals don’t matter. This is where mortal love ends. ”
Blood on the snow, and the silence after a scream. Nick threw up.
Later Nick stood at the mouth of the cave where they sheltered, murmuring the spells from his mother’s books so he wouldn’t forget. Amalia came to him, in her transformed werewolf form—walking on her hind legs, human shaped, dressed in a long nightgown she’d stolen, but still with fur and wolfish teeth. Nick found her pretending grotesque. It made him feel more trapped than anything else.