Her Wolf King

le retour

"You wish to return home because your village is on fire?" Everett repeated.

Seated at the dinner table, him at one end of the twelve-seat structure and his wife at the other, he had never felt more alone. Never felt more strongly that she was drifting away from him. That he was doomed to lose her forever.

Of course, he was no brutish beast—at least, not entirely—to keep her from her family, from her father and brother, when she loved them so deeply. But he had thought, had hoped that—

That what? That she might love him?

"Yes," Lenore said, digging into her roast and not looking at him. Pinkish blood oozed from the cut of meat as she sliced into it, but his appetite was gone. He could only think again of the emptiness of the castle, the ghostly figures haunting him in reality and in his mind.

"But—the treasure," he said dully. Could he say nothing more? Could he not tell her the words that threatened to slide off his tongue, spilling his secrets to her like so much wine from an overturned goblet?

"I believe I have an idea of what it could be." She chewed her roast slowly, then swallowed. "I have reason to suspect that she hid the treasure in the horse."

"In your horse?" he repeated.

"Yes," she said. "Think about it. The horse, you say, is a creature that has always been on the grounds since you were... turned. Yet it's always shied away from you. It despises you, apparently, but when I arrived, it warmed to me. Why would it be so skittish around you, if Marya had not enchanted it to avoid you so that you might never learn of the treasure in it?"

He cocked his head to one side. Her proposition seemed reasonable. "Do you propose that we, what, slice the poor creature open and examine its innards for a golden egg?"

"It's hardly waterfowl," she said, that look in her blue eyes halfway between insouciance and resigned sorrow. "That doesn't seem necessary. All we need to do is keep the horse out of her clutches."

He sighed. "That seems like such a passive endeavor."

"I assure you, it is not one I enjoy the prospect of." She lifted one shoulder. "Perhaps I could bring the horse into the village, with me."

"The horse?" Everett choked on a bite of a roll. She was sliding out of his grasp. She would go back to the village, and he would never see her again. She would become only a distant memory to him. Even though Kirk was gone, others would see her, remember her. The village would claim her for their own. She would be lost to him. "Nay, keep it here. She may have sent her minions to set fire to the village, and what then? Seeing you with the horse, they would try to seize it from you."

"I suppose you're right. Then how do you propose I return to the village?"

"You will tell..." He swallowed. "You will tell them what your brother told them. That you married a mildly successful hunter, that he is providing you a carriage to visit town when you saw the fire, and that..."

"Why do you not want to come with me?" she asked suddenly. His heart seized, tripped, and seemed to stop beating altogether for a moment.

"How would you explain to your family that your husband turns into a wolf every night?" He arched an eyebrow. "What would you tell them about the night we met?"

She smiled. "That I found a man in the woods, injured, and I nursed him back to health."

The past rose up between them, a lump in his throat, a wall he could not surpass. "I could not impose upon your father."

"He is a very generous man. Almost as generous as you."

"I assure you, the comparison does not commend him much."