RED | A dark retelling of Red Riding Hood | WATTYS 2021 SHORTLIST

Chapter Fourteen: Night of the Wolf

AN: 

Surprise! An update for you all! I am so close to being done with this story! I cannot wait to enter it in the Wattys! I am so excited just to have this printed out in my hand (lol, 150 pages are currently in my binder) 

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Marjorie flung forward from the mattress and inhaled full gulps of air. Her chest stung as though she had just been pulled from the bottom of a river, and her lungs were weighed down by freshwater and sandy gravel. Her eyes adjusted to the dimness of the room, proving that she drifted off to sleep and allowed the world to be swallowed whole by darkness.

"It was..." she heaved in a breath. She fumbled for the match on the bedside table. She needed light to think, to see. "It was just a dream. Sicily, it was just a horrible, terrible—"

She struck the match and pressed the burning tip to the wick of the long, skinny wax candle mounted to the wall.

Marjorie froze as flickering, golden light enveloped her corner of the room.

Just like her dream, her Grandmother was frozen where she lay. Her right hand slumped at an awkward angle and her jaw was slack, allowing her lips to part with an uncomfortable distance. Marjorie didn't have to hold her hand above her nose and test Sicily's breath to know that the old woman was dead.

She peered around the room, searching for any signs of Cedar but found nothing but silence. Although it was a dream, she knew he told the truth. The veil was thin.

She would join her grandmother soon. She would die tonight.

For half a second, she wondered what would happen if she returned back to the mattress and allowed herself to drift into a long slumber beside Sicily. Would she appear as a granddaughter in mourning, refusing to leave Sicily's bedside even in death? Or would she never wake, like Cedar warned?

Or, she thought, would the Wolf do what he always did—would he kill as I sleep?

Marjorie exploded into motion, suddenly aware that if Cedar was right— if she was meant to bring balance— Fenris must take a life tonight.

She stood up from the bed and reached for the candle. Now with it in her hand, the flame followed her movement and illuminated different corners of the room. Her feet slid onto the ground below. Like always, the wooden boards creaked with her weight.

She rushed toward the exit of her Grandmother's room, only to be abruptly stopped by a figure sitting in the corner, watching her with solemn, brown eyes.

"Petyr!" Marjorie gasped, half out of surprise, the other from relief. He was alive. Fenris hadn't killed him, or at least, not yet. "How long—how long have you been there?"

"Does it matter?" the young man asked. He sat with his arms crossed and his long legs bent beneath him. In his hand, he held a stick for prodding fire, always ready to keep Marjorie warm.

"I—I guess not," she admitted. "My Grandmother, she is—" Marjorie wasn't ready to admit it out loud. Instead, she trailed off, unable to match the cool intensity of Petyr's gaze.

"I am sorry," he whispered, regret crossing over his handsome face for only a moment. "We need to talk, Marjorie." At his words, an unkind steely expression appeared.

She froze, unsure of his sudden change of mood.

"I know," he said, before she could speak again.