The Red Wolf (The Wolf Fey #2) (9 page)

“Let's go,” I said quietly. “But when it’s night, and they’re asleep. Our chances of saving him is better then.”

She nodded, taking my hand and squeezing it tightly. “Thanks, Logan,” she said softly. The touch of her sent my skin tingling. “You're a good friend.” She smiled into my eyes with a smile that was regal, gentle, and like a sunshine burst in the sea of darkness and despair. I would do anything to see her smile like that, to feel the warmth of her pour through me. Looking at her then, I knew she was every bit the missing Summer Princess of Feyland, the girl I would do anything for gladly and willingly. Even if it cost me my life.

Chapter 11

A
blow to the head – the taste of blood on my tongue. The dank smell of rotting hay – the cold stone. Face down in a stagnant pool of filthy water. My hands tied behind my back; my wrists raw and bleeding. Blisters everywhere; burns up and down my body. Every few hours, the feeling of drowning: a pair of hands submerging my face in water. The pain, dull and then excruciating: it came in cycles. Moments when I couldn't bear the pain; moments when I longed for the pain, because it was better, at least, than this fear, this uncertainty. Rat-gnawed crusts of bread pushed under my prison door at irregular hours; starvation that could never even fix upon the hours of its relief. Sometimes hours would go by between meals; sometimes it would be days. Not that I knew the days. There was no light, after all, and the pain had drowned out all sense of time. I lived not in a cycle of day and night but in a cycle of pain and release – torture and silence. I saw no one. I spoke to no one. My cries were general – I was crying out to the world – but always unheard; or, if they were unheard, then they nevertheless went unanswered.

How long I had been like this, I did not know. It had been seven beatings, six water-tortures, two burnings, five applications of poisonwood to the skin. It had been thirteen crusts of bread. But where the twin suns of Feyland were in the sky I knew not. I knew only my own misery – the dry choke of a thirty tongue. The hunger pangs that kept me doubled-over. The festering wounds that hinted at healing, only to be cut open again during the next day's torture. That was all I knew. Soon, it would be all I even remembered.

We had gone back for Kian – yes, I could bring myself to remember that much. Breena and I had held Delano at sword-point, negotiated for Kian's release. There had been a battle, and Kian had been able to spirit Breena away on his wings to safety. But his wings weren't strong enough for the two of us. It was the only way.

The right way, I remember thinking. Breena and Kian would fly off together; it was left to me to let go, to fall back down onto the balcony below. A sacrifice for them: the last, best proof of my love for her.

Yes, that was how it was always going to play out. A fairy Princess like Breena – what interest could she ever have had in a Wolf, especially when she held the love of a beautiful, regal fairy Prince in the palm of her hand. She wanted him; his death would have killed her.

She had never wanted me so much.

Better, I had thought then, in that split-second moment before I had let go of Kian's wings and let myself fall crashing to the balcony below, better for me to die and for Kian to live. Breena loved Kian. And he would keep her safe – I trusted at least that much now. He would care for her as I would have cared for her: better, even. I hadn't been able to protect her, but perhaps Kian would.

It had been an easy decision: the choice to let go. The choice to die.

Better that than live without her.

I'd spent my life waiting to tell her how I felt, waiting to confess my love to her. But now it was too late. She had chosen another. I had waited too long – or maybe that didn't matter. Maybe even if I hadn't waited, she still would have said no. And I would have felt the blow of her rejection then instead of now.

And so I had let go. I had fallen back into the shroud of death, waiting for its oblivion to overtake me, along with its mysteries. But I had not died. I had not gone to the land of the Dead – that mysterious country from whom nobody had returned. Instead, there was only pain: the inside of a prison-cell, the nonsensical rhythms of my days. Beating, bread, torture, bread, burnings, the agonizing absence of bread. My stomach churned; my mind raged.

I didn't know where I was or what was happening to me. I knew only that
she
was safe – that she and her Prince had gone off to where neither I nor Delano could reach them. The thought of Breena's happiness, as painful as it was, was nevertheless the only thing that sustained me in the midst of my despair.

I thought of her safe, healthy, happy. I thought of her cheeks turning rosy once again as she was restored back to health. I thought of her returning to the Summer Court triumphant, learning to take up her crown and scepter, greeted by her subjects as the Queen I always knew she could be. I thought of her sitting on her throne, throngs of fairies rushing over to greet her, to bow down at her feet, to rejoice that the Heir of Feyland had come home again. She was their last hope; their best hope. I knew that the people of Summer were despairing and downtrodden; Queen Redleaf's thirst for war had nearly destroyed the entire country. But Breena's return would augur a new era of peace, of prosperity. If anybody could do it, I thought, it was Breena. There was nobody else like her in the world: so strong, so self-assured, so willing to take chances, to do the right thing, to risk her life for those she loved. I remembered her beauty; I remembered her courage. When the pain of the beatings became too much to bear, I pictured her as I had last seen her in the pixie castle, bravely taking up arms to fight alongside me and Kian, her sword glinting in the firelight from the candelabra as she fended off pixies with such natural grace.

How had I not seen it before, I wondered? It was so abundantly obvious to me now – that Breena was the destined fairy queen, that she was the descendant of the great Summer King Flametail, that the magic of Summer flowed like golden honey in her veins. All those years in Gregory, Oregon, and I'd never noticed?

I'd always thought that what I saw in her was a result of my love – didn't all young lovers think of their beloved as the most beautiful, most courageous, most intelligent of all the potential lovers in the world? But now I knew that Breena's qualities ran deeper than that. The whole time I had known her, she had displayed all the qualities of a great fairy Queen.

Qualities I had never truly understood until now.

And so I could bear the beatings, the burnings, the poisonings, the agony. Whenever the masked men entered the room with their instruments of torture: swords, daggers, lacerating nails, matchsticks, torches, I simply closed my eyes and thought of Breena. I inhaled and let the sweet jasmine smell of her waft over me, drowning out the fetid dankness of the dungeon. I felt the blow of the whip and the lash and pretended it was the soft caress of Breena's touch. I tasted blood in my mouth and pretended that instead I was kissing her lips. It kept me alive; it was the only thing that made those days (how many days? How many nights?) bearable.

“Cur!” I heard the pixies shouting at me. “Mangy mongrel! Dog!”

I was shifting back and forth – I could no longer control it now. One second I was human; the next moment I was a wolf, howling in agony at the moon. They kicked me and spat upon me; they called me names and beat me. I longed for release and yet it did not come. The food rations began to vary – some days they would bring me an extra apple or a piece of meat, and then other days feed me nothing but wormy meal, a dish made all the more repulsive by the memory of a single bite of apple. The uncertainty brought me ever closer to despair.

And then the despair came. Not with the beatings. Not with the torture. No, the physical pain became a welcome relief. For I ceased to be able to think of Breena's happiness, Breena's safety, without the corollary. She was safe and happy – without me. She had chosen Kian's life over mine; she was willing to risk my safety for his. She loved him as she did not love me. And that was the despair worse than any application of poisonwood strips on my back. When I closed my eyes, I saw her and Kian before me: I played the lingering glances I had seen them share over and over again in my head, analyzing every single turn of the head, every single pursing of the lips. I dreamed nightmarish dreams of them kissing; every night I saw her slip her nightgown from her slender shoulders and – naked – walk towards Kian: letting him kiss her, letting him touch her, letting him hold her, letting him...

I ached for oblivion. My own life was worth nothing any longer. Not without Breena. Not without her.

And the tortures went on.

At last I heard the familiar footsteps of my torturers. Footsteps now familiar to me; as much part of my daily routine as the bread slipped under my door. The dungeon door creaked open; two shadowy figures entered.

But they did not start by kicking me, as they normally did. Instead they spoke to me calmly, even politely, as if I were a human rather than the mangy animal they normally saw in me.

“The King Delano would like to speak to you now,” one of them said.

Chapter 12

I
was led into the grim-looking antechamber of King Delano, a cruel and miserable-looking room, decorated with painted skulls and too-shiny stone, from which I thought I could almost hear faint but high-pitched screams, like the vibrations of crystals. The place was opulent, to be sure – even in the palace of the Duke of Autumn Springs, I had never seen such riches. Furs and jewels lay everywhere; intricate frescoes lined the walls. The floor was lushly carpeted with expensive rugs from the Spring Lands; each gemstone glimmered with unearthly brilliance. But there was nothing beautiful about the room. No, even the jewels seemed cold, insincere. The beauty of Delano's rooms was all an act: the ugliness underneath was palpable from the beginning. Delano had most likely stolen or plundered all these goods – I could hear the magic in them crying out for their rightful owners, the fairies who had fashioned them.

The guards dragged me before Delano. I followed willingly, stumbling and hazy as a result of my exhaustion, but that didn't stop them from being as brutal as possible with me – shoving me around corners, striking me with the hilts of their swords when I failed to keep up. At last they threw me down onto the purple carpet at Delano's feet, giving me an extra kick for good measure.

“No need for that,” said Delano smoothly. “Let the Wolf get up. Sit, Wolf.” He motioned to a chair, which immediately glided towards me, knocking me over so that I involuntarily sat back into it. “Now bind him with silver.” The guards complied, yanking silver chains so tightly around my chest and neck that I nearly choked with pain. “I don't want you turning on my watch,” said Delano. “One of your kind gave me a nasty bite a few years back; I have no interest in repeating that singularly unpleasant experience.”

I said nothing, but only watched him, waiting. What did Delano want with me? I could give him nothing – I didn't know where Breena and Kian had gone, and even if I did, I would rather be tortured and die than risk even a fraction of Breena's safety. If Delano knew this, he would have had me killed already. But he had kept me alive. What did he think I had for him? What did he think I could give him?

“Now, Wolf, I suppose you're wondering why it is I've kept you alive.” Delano looked me up and down, a sneer spreading across his jaundiced face. “You would be dead long ago if I hadn't used my pixie magic to sustain you – no normal Wolf could survive that fall. Your bones broken, your skin bruised and bleeding – I could very easily have left you to die, my lupine friend. But instead I chose to show you mercy. Even after you kidnapped my prisoner, invaded my castle, showed such
disrespect
to me, I showed you mercy. Now, don't you think I deserve just a tad of thanks?”

He raised an insouciant eyebrow.

“Thanks?” I spluttered. “For keeping me chained up in a dungeon! Beating and torturing me every day!”

“Well, that is unfortunate,” said Delano smoothly. “But it was for your own protection, you know. Many of my pixie men lost their comrades when you staged a full-on assault on my castle – many of them would have murdered you for revenge had I not kept you in protective custody?” His voice was as smooth and sickly sweet as treacle.

I knew something was up. I didn't trust Delano then, and I certainly didn't trust him now. He was purposely playing the “good cop,” trying to soften me up by treating me kindly after my days of abuse. But I wasn't going to have any of it.

“What do you want?” I barked.

“Well well
well
!” Delano looked faintly amused. “I know Wolves aren't exactly known for their good manners, but nevertheless one would
hope
that creatures like yourself would at the very least be capable of behaving in some manner approximating respect to royalty.”

“I'm a lot more polite when I haven't been tortured and beaten,” I said. “Really, you should try it.”

Delano smirked. “Now, listen,” he said. “I don't want anything major from you. Just information.”

“Information?” I looked up at Delano suspiciously, struggling against my silver bonds. They burned into my flesh as I moved.

“About the Princess Breena.”

“Listen, Your Majesty, I didn't even
know
she was a Princess until a few days ago. I just figured she was a normal human girl – I don't know any more about her Fey blood than you do.”

“That's not what I am talking about,” said Delano lightly. “You don't need to give me the inside school on Fey palace politics – I have other spies who can get
that
sort of information for me. The information I want from you is of a completely other kind.”

“Like what?” I wasn't in the mood to be diplomatic.

“What sort of girl Breena is. What she likes. What she enjoys. How one can convince her to...shall we say...be a bit more malleable? She's a spirited little spitfire, isn't she? Not all men could handle a girl like that. But I can. You handle a woman the same way you handle a horse – plenty of kicking and pulling at the reins. And eventually they become tamed. Domestic. Docile.”