“A few times. Most recently to my sister. Margot. She died during her trial.”
“Is that what this was?” I scrubbed my face one more time, then I laid the rag over the back of a chair to dry. “A trial?”
“Yes. Your mother has been terrified of this day for years, so let’s get you cleaned up as quickly as possible, so we can send you home and put her mind at ease.” She glanced pointedly at the nightgown again.
I took my cloak off and hung it on a hook by the door, where my grandmother had already hung her own. “This trim . . .” I ran one hand over the fur edging her hood. “Is this whitewulf?”
“Of course. Tonight, I’ll go back for the fur from your first kill, and on your next visit, I will adorn your cloak with it. As is tradition.”
I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Fur was used as a warm lining in everyday clothing and as a decorative edging—a purfelle. But I’d never seen anyone in the village wearing fur with as fine a pelt or as pure a color as the trim on Gran’s cloak. My new trim would not go unnoticed.
Maybe people would think it was rabbit fur, from a distance.
“I need your dress, Adele.” Gran sank into a chair in front of the fire with the bucket of fresh water at her feet and a scrub brush in one hand.
“Sorry.” I reached back to untie my bodice and loosen the laces, then I pulled the dress over my head, careful not to smear any more of the blood on my skin. I stepped into her nightgown and handed her my dress.
“Next time, fasten your cloak at the front, and with any luck, your dress will be spared.” She dipped her brush into the bucket, then she began scrubbing at my clothing. “Eat, child. You must be famished, after your first change.”
I was. So I sank into the chair at her small table and dug in to the stew. “How did this happen?” I asked around a bite of potato and carrot. “How did we come to be guardians?”
“For as long as Oakvale has been threatened by the dark wood, the guardians—specifically, women descended from our bloodline—have defended it. Most other villages in the path of the unnatural forest have their own guardians. Heaven help any that don’t,” she muttered beneath her breath.
“Why have I never heard this? Why has no one ever heard this?” Yet I knew the answer before I’d even finished asking the question. “Because monsters are burned. Like Papa.”
She nodded. “Because the village would believe the same thing of a redwulf as it would of a whitewulf—that we are monsters.”
“And they’re not wrong.” That understanding bruised me deep inside. I shifted in my seat, trying to alleviate the sudden feeling that I didn’t fit properly inside my own flesh. That I no longer knew my own body.
“No. But they’re not entirely right, either. We are much more than just monsters.”
“We’re guardians. But . . . what if I don’t want to be a guardian?”
Gran looked up from her work, her gaze settling on me with an almost palpable weight. “That is your choice. But know that if you choose to stand by when you could fight, people will die. I know this is a lot to process at once. And I know it’s quite a burden to lay on a girl’s shoulders. But please believe me, Adele—there is no greater regret in the world than knowing you could have saved a life, yet you chose not to.”
“I . . .” I exhaled slowly. “I don’t want to shirk a duty. It’s just that . . .” This wasn’t how my life was supposed to go. I was supposed to marry Grainger, and he was supposed to protect the village. I was supposed to work at the bakery with my mother and live in a little cottage next door to Elena and Simon, where our children would grow up to be the best of friends.
This—whitewulfs, and guardians, and the dark wood—wasn’t a part of the plan. In my wildest dreams, I never could have imagined all of this, yet Gran clearly expected me to leave her cabin in my red cloak, having ascended to a position and a responsibility I never asked for. I never wanted.
Did my mother truly expect this of me too?
“Eat.” Gran dipped her brush into the bucket again. “I know it’s a lot. But the more time you spend in the dark wood, the more natural it will all feel. Of course, that’s a double-edged sword.”
I took another bite and made myself swallow it. “Why are guardians needed, when we have the village watch? Grainger is a skilled fighter, and he’ll take over for his father someday.”
“Grainger, and his father, and the rest of the watchmen can’t see in the dark wood, child. There is little they can do in the forest beyond the fall of whatever light they bring with them. The watchmen need us, though they don’t even know we exist.”
No one knew. Yet if I were going to marry Grainger . . .
“Gran, if we tell them—if we show them—we could work together. We could—”
Her chair creaked as she stood to scowl at me, my dress hanging from her white-knuckled hands, splotched with water from her scrubbing. “Do you remember what it was like to watch your father burn?”
Pain gripped my chest. “Of course I remember.” There was no clearer image in my memory, and it haunted me every single day. Every time I passed the scorched post in the village square.
“Do not speak of the guardians to Grainger Colbert, child. Nor to anyone else. Not if you value your own life. Or your sister’s. Or your mother’s. Promise me.”
“I . . .” Her fierce expression gave me no other choice. “I promise.”
“You will have to be wary of him, Adele. Your duties will overlap his, but he must not know this. He must not see you go into the forest at night. He must not see you return. He must not find blood on your clothes, or weapons on your belt, or leaves in your hair. I know you care for him, but it is dangerous for a guardian to be so familiar with a watchman.”
“He would never—”
“He would,” she insisted as she sank into her chair again, with another pointed look at my stew bowl. “Watchmen burn monsters, child. So you must keep your word.”
“Of course.” I ate several more bites in silence, my thoughts racing along with my heartbeat. I intended to marry Grainger. How was I supposed to keep such a secret from my husband?
“What are my duties, Gran? Am I to patrol the dark wood, like the watch patrols the village?”
“No, the forest is much too big for that. You can see in the unnatural darkness, now, but you are not the kind of monster that truly belongs in the dark wood. Your job is to hunt the beasts. To cull their population, particularly where they venture near Oakvale. A guardian protects her village at all costs, in both the town and the woods. But she does it in absolute secrecy. So you will hunt, and you will patrol the path where it runs through the forest, especially on rare occasions when there are villagers to guard. When a caravan heads out or an emergency messenger is sent through the woods.”
That only happened during an outbreak of illness, fire, or famine, in the winter months when the river could not be traveled—rare occasions indeed.
“But the watch accompanies anyone sent into the woods. To protect the travelers.”
My grandmother heaved an unladylike snort. “And who do you think protects the watch? We guardians chaperone them from the shadows, making sure those men with their swords have little to protect the travelers from. That nothing attacks the caravan, if a torch goes out. You will be there, watching to see that no one strays from the path. You will protect them from the darkness. And they must have no idea you are there.”