WHITE MASK
PROLOGUE
EVEN WHEN I was a young girl of no older than four or five, I’d been the best of all the village children at hiding games. I knew instinctively how to curl up inside the hollow innards of a tree and stay still as an owl in daylight so that the other children of the village could never find me. I could lie motionless on the forest floor with leaves scattered across my back and dirt smeared on my cheeks and listen as they walked five inches from my flattened hands, and I wouldn’t stir once, not even when the urge to giggle crawled up my throat and banged on my clenched teeth while the bewildered children called to each other across my hidden body. I had a knack for hiding, my grandmother said. A natural sense of the forest and how to melt into it. I could become as still and ponderous as the trees themselves, and not even breathe when someone searching for me was crouching near. I let the forest absorb me, wandering into my thoughts like a rabbit escaping into a thicket. I took lessons from the moss-covered trees that had stood without moving for centuries. I studied the leaves and vines that held still in their places on the ground, and I closed my eyes and imagined myself to be made of leaves and vines, too. When I imagined it, I easily found my fingers relaxing as if they were made of wood and sap. My hair became moss, my eyes stones. I was part of the forest, and no one could seem to see me once I’d crossed to that place in my mind.
No one, except one.
Somehow during these games of hide and find, manhunt, catch the crook, and kick the can, against all odds and despite my best impression of trees and rocks, Kassian always found me.
My best friend had an uncanny sense for me, as if he and I were two halves of a piece of sticky taffy, with sinuous, thread-thin strands of spun sugar stretching between us no matter where we went, linking us together even when we were far apart and hidden from view. Was I Gretel from the stories my mother told, laying down crumbs for him to find and follow?
Truly, I used to wonder sometimes if he could grab ahold of a soul-rope between us, something invisible and intangible but undeniably powerful, and pull himself hand over hand toward me like a miner coming up from the depths of a dark cave, never stopping until we were in the same space again, breathing the same air. Until we were once again in sync with each other, side by side, arm in arm.
His heart and mine, beating together, was how we both longed to be, and we were like magnets.
Still, I tried to hide from him when it was my turn. I wanted to win. I wanted to laugh in delight when even Kassian couldn’t discover my clever hiding place. I wanted to be the best at the game in the whole village, and see the faces of the other children as they called for me to reveal myself because they’d given up. My five-year-old heart longed for vindication.
But, alas, the story was always the same. I would hide in impossibly clever places where the other children my age were afraid to go—underneath the tangled, damp roots of trees that hugged the riverbank, or down in abandoned animal burrows still scattered with broken shells or the bones of devoured prey, or inside one of Farmer Elias’s haystacks—and every time, if he was playing, Kassian would discover my hiding place. Was he cheating? Sometimes, I was certain he was cheating. How else was he so good at discovering me?
We fought about the matter too many times; I accused him of following me, or tying a string to my sleeve, or other impossible accusations, and he always denied it, laughing at my irritation and protesting his innocence. He said he simply knew my brain so well that he knew what I would choose to do as well as I did.
“We’re best friends, Erie,” he’d say. “We’re made from the same stuff. Your soul and mine, we were cooked in the same batch and poured into different bodies. But I know you too well.”
“That isn’t how people are made,” I’d argue. “We aren’t baked like gingerbread men, Kass!”
And he’d shrug and smile at me instead of arguing.
After a while, I refused to play hiding games if he was searching for me, for there was never any question of the outcome. It was a fact as certain as the moon:
Kassian always knew his way to me in the end.
He always, always found me if he was looking for me.
CHAPTER ONE
UNDERBRUSH CRACKLED SOFTLY all around me in the darkness as I crept toward the village. My father’s cloak fluttered at my ankles, the red side out. My heart battered against my ribs like the wings of a bird trying to escape its cage. Beside me, Dog moved as silently as I did. She’d learned how to be as quiet as a shadow at my heels.
I could barely breathe as I paused to look through the bushes at the village.
Kassian was here.
I’d been on the run for weeks after escaping the capital with the help of the controversial human-werewolf sympathizer, Graysoul. Graysoul—who was really the Sworn wife Iola—had promised me that her people would help me rescue Chosen girls from a fate in the capital. She’d given me a name and place to contact others of her organization, if I could get to the meeting place safely and give the signal.
But I hadn’t made contact yet.
After I’d escaped the capital, I’d wandered, desperate for word about Kassian’s fate, despondent at our separation and sick from worry. Had he been accused of treason? Had he been punished or exonerated?
I’d slipped into village taverns and lingered outside shops, listening to the gossip that flowed from travelers and merchants until I heard someone mention his name like they were spitting a curse.
Vixor Rae, they said, was on the move again.
I’d clutched the wall to keep from crumpling to the ground when I heard the words.
He was alive, and not imprisoned. He was on a mission for the Alpha, most likely.
Knowing he was still alive fueled me with enough hope to keep going through the grim, grueling existence of staying alive as a wanted fugitive.
I’d spent weeks stealing food from barns and gardens in the early hours of the morning. Weeks of sleeping in thickets wreathed in mist with Dog at my side, and waking covered in dew with my heart banging in my chest and a cry still in my throat from my nightmares.
Weeks of listening for any more word of the Silver Wolf and his whereabouts.
Now, I’d found him.
He was here in this village.
I’d been following a caravan of Sworn soldiers from afar for days now, trying to get close enough to overhear any gossip about where Vixor Rae might be now. I’d watched from the treetops with Dog clasped to my chest as the Sworn swept into the village and searched the houses for any signs of Crimson sympathizers while terrified women and children stood to the sides with their arms around each other, wailing. Typical thuggish pageantry from the Sworn that made me grind my teeth in fury.
Then, hoofbeats rent the air. A Sworn in silver-threaded armor rode into the village on a warhorse. I’d clung to the tree branches, my breath caught in my throat as I’d watched the Sworn soldiers bow to the famed Silver Wolf as he dismounted and strode to meet their commander. His silver helmet had glinted in the late afternoon sun like a mirror.
Vixor Rae.
My husband.
I’d waited in the trees while they made a temporary outpost in one of the village houses. I’d counted my heartbeats waiting for sunset, planning my every step for after the sun went down. He was here. He was alive and whole and here.