The house stood before me, corpse-like. I knew in my bones what I’d find if I went inside.
So, I didn’t go inside. I stayed there, paralyzed, the cloak pooled around me, a cry stuck in my throat, and unshed tears blinding my eyes.
It felt like years had passed before a hand touched my shoulder. I jolted as time snapped back to its normal speed, my heart slamming in terror as I rose to fight.
But it was Grandmother.
She put a finger to her lips and helped me up. I was shaking, but her hands were strong and steady. I turned toward the cabin, my expression hopeful.
The windows were still dark.
Hope struggled up in my chest. My parents? Kassian? I turned back to my grandmother, looking into the forest behind her for them.
There weren’t there.
My grandmother lowered her gaze and shook her head.
The second grief of losing them after that brief and wild hope struck like a slap. A hole opened inside me. Tears rolled down my cheeks, but I made no sound. I couldn’t. It was as if my voice had been sucked from my throat.
My grandmother put something into my hand. I turned my palm over and looked down. My gifts—the ring she’d given me, and the collar-necklace my mother had made. More tears flooded my eyes.
She reached out and traced one finger down the cloak. I’d put it on with the red side out, but still, the Sworn had not seen me in the shadows.
“You were protected,” my grandmother whispered as if reading my mind. “The red side of the cloak shields the wearer from the eyes of the Sworn. What a happy incident of defiance on your father’s part, and yours for wearing it. He was right to give it to you tonight. I wish I could tell him he was right.” She fell silent again. She turned her head toward the house as if trying to make a decision.
“Can we go back now?” I ventured to ask.
“No, Meredith,” my grandmother said gently. “There is nothing there that you want to see. Come. You’re going home with me.”
My grandmother reached out her hand, and I took it, and we stepped together into the forest.
NINE YEARS LATER
CHAPTER ONE
I WAS ON my way to a hanging. The cloak that had saved my life as a ten-year-old child lay around my shoulders again, the black side facing out this time, the golden embroidered flowers shimmering faintly under the early morning sunshine. Dread lay in my belly like a dead snake, but determination danced atop it like cold fire.
The cart I drove rattled on the cobblestones of the city street as I steered it left toward the correctional yard and the gallows. My stomach curled into a hard ball as I caught sight of the structure and the rope that dangled from it. The noose, twisting in the wind. The hangman, leaning against the steps, smoking a cigarette with a bored expression on his face.
I pulled the cart to a stop and climbed out. My pulse hammered in my throat as I approached the steps.
When I reached the hangman, I licked my dry lips and tried to summon moisture into my throat. The wind blew, making the cloak flutter around my ankles. It was not quite autumn, and the air was still heavy and humid even in the early morning.
The hangman looked up, his eyes bright and brown as they met mine. Human eyes, instead of the strange moon-silver irises of the werewolves. He wasn’t a Sworn. He was human.
A traitor to his kind.
He was young, with curly black hair and smooth brown skin. I’d imagined the hangman to be a monster, burly and cruel-faced, with a mask on and a crooked, sadistic smile. But this young man looked more tired than anything else. Tired and defeated, as if he’d already seen enough nightmares for a lifetime.
Still, I hated him.
I began, “I am here to formally protest the execution of—”
“Can’t yet,” he interrupted, cutting off my prepared speech. “You have to wait until they arrive.” He took another drag of his cigarette and turned his head to blow the smoke away from us both.
“When are they arriving?” I asked. “The edict said sunrise.”
For a split second, I was terrified that I’d been too late, that he was mistaken somehow or thinking of a different wagon of prisoners, but my fears were soothed at the man’s reply.
“These things rarely happen on time,” the hangman said. He finished his cigarette and dropped it to the stones, grinding out the burning bit with the heel of his boot. “Little warm for a cloak, isn’t it?”
I drew the folds around me stiffly. “Executions chill my blood.”
He jerked his chin to say he didn’t care as he turned away. I stepped back to the side of the cart to wait.
If there was any mercy left in this world, I wouldn’t be forced to wait too long.
I heard the procession before I saw them. The thud of the brute-beast’s feet on the road, the creak of the execution cart’s wheels. The gray-skinned behemoth swung into view, drawing the wooden vehicle with the cage in the back, two Sworn sitting in the driver’s seat, wearing their black armor and masks, and three men huddled inside, dressed in rags, their hands curled around the bars between them and freedom.
My eyes found those of the one I sought.
Neil.
On his way to his execution, and still, he shot me a cocky smirk and an exaggerated salute in an effort to make me smile. Only the tension at the edges of his mouth and eyes and the stiffness of his shoulders betrayed his terror.
My heart pounded harder. I didn’t smile back. My lips were too stiff to force into the shape of the lie.
He didn’t know why I was here. He must think I’d come for moral support. To watch the escape.
He was expecting a rescue, of course.
But not from me.
The prison cart stopped, and the two Sworn stepped down to open the cage. They were tall and muscular. Their black, sculpted body armor seemed to suck all the light into its wicked depths, and their wolf helmets made them look even more inhuman. They moved with a sinuous grace that unsettled me, a kind of animal fluidity that left me prickling with unease like a mouse in the presence of a snake. While I’d gotten more glimpses of them since the day my family had been murdered, and I knew they looked human beneath the armor, I still thought of them the way the stories described them—monstrous, with faces like dogs beneath their masks, and hard bodies ridged with unexpected skeletal protrusions and masses of dark, wiry fur beneath their black armor.
The Sworn prodded the men onto the cobblestones. The prisoners’ hands were tied together in front of them, the ropes trailing like leashes on the ground. Neil’s face turned toward the gallows, and his smile slipped. His fingers, I noticed, were trembling.
The Sworn seized Neil by the arms and pushed him toward the wooden staircase up to the gallows. One, two, three steps up to the platform. His feet moved too fast.
My opportunity was passing by in microseconds.
I swallowed as he faced the executioner, still wearing that smirk across his mouth like a bandit’s bandana. The morning wind stirred his hair, and he lifted his chin, confident, as the hangman read his crimes to the pitiful assembly—the Sworn, the other prisoners, and me. No one else had come in the misty dawn to witness this hanging. There were far too many hangings to attract much notice anymore.
The hangman’s voice carried through the stillness. “I hereby charge you, Neil Grimmick—”