What I heard made me vomit there in the hall. I am sick with it. I am so ill with guilt and horror that I fear it will kill me. Papa has had to force food and water down my throat, but I can hardly keep it down. I don’t want to. Everything is ash and bile in me.
I cannot stop thinking of my sweet boy, with his fierce courage and wolfish grin. I cannot keep food down, nor sleep. I am undone by grief so great it is breaking me apart into ever-smaller pieces.
Rasmus will never shift again.
This is what my father so casually discussed with Harrod — that the child I adored so has had his soul stolen with a single injection of my venom. It is apparently standard with shifters, though he still wishes to test this theory on more types to be sure.
Sweet Rasmus, you didn’t deserve this horror. By all the gods, I am sorry. I am sorry. It would not be an even trade, but I would give myself for your wolf if I could. Gods, I would. I would. I would.
ChapterTwenty-Two
It was a good thing,Josephine thought, that they had twelve hours together. It took about that long to work out a rough plan of escape, and about as long for Otto to convince her to attempt the sigil on his cell door.
He was determined that she not put herself in more risk than absolutely necessary, and stressed that desire frequently as they worked out the best way to set him free. He said he did not want her to do anything more than find the keys to his chains, unlock his door, and throw them inside. Once that was done, he would handle the rest.
Josephine, having determined that nothing mattered to her more than getting him out of her father’s clutches before he was injected with her venom, was markedly less concerned with her safety. After all, what would her father do if she were caught? Certainly nothing he could do to her would be worse than what he had already done.
Her concern was with Otto and him alone.
Get him out. Get him safe. Get his bite.
The thoughts circled around and around as she stumbled through the motions of a tense evening meal. Her mother had excused herself, claiming an uneasy stomach, leaving Josephine with her father and Harrod, who ignored her.
She was hyper-aware of them as she pushed her portion of boiled potatoes and salted pork around her plate. Did they suspect something? Did they know that Otto had pleasured her? That she’d begged him to bite her? It was a marvel they couldn’t sense it.
To Josephine, it was as if he’d branded his handprints, his kisses, on her skin. She felt them burning her long after she forced herself to walk out of the cell and back into the house. What a beautiful feeling it was, too! Josephine had never felt more alive than she did after Otto whispered rough endearments into her skin, sealing them with lips, tongue, teeth, and breath.
Peering at her father and Harrod through her lashes, she only saw two men entirely engrossed in their discussion. Harrod’s eyes strayed to her more often than she liked, but that was their new normal, so she tried to tamp down her paranoia as she picked up the thread of the conversation.
“…reckless,” her father announced, slapping the tips of his fingers against the edge of the table. “We don’t know how it will spread, and if they want to keep their soldiers under lock and key, they would do well to listen to an expert. If they want thebest,they need me!”
“It’s confirmed, then?” Harrod pressed, dabbing his napkin against the corner of his thin mouth.
“Unfortunately. They’ve begun to let them bite prisoners under completely uncontrolled conditions.” Her father grimaced, his disgust palpable. “They aren’t picking the stock. Anyone who can fight is good enough. Gods know what a mess that will make of things.”
A deep internal chill settled over her as she grasped what her father was complaining about. Normally she held her tongue unless absolutely necessary, as her father was wont to take her art supplies when she pricked his temper, but in this instance she could not help herself. “They— they’re making more werewolves at the front?”
Both men’s gazes swung to her. She usually quavered under their combined stares, but she was so horrified by this news that Josephine found herself staring boldly into her father’s lined face. She looked at him so rarely that it was always a shock to see how much he’d aged, his features worn down by stress, ill health, and his own relentless ambition.
“I’ve told you not to use that word,” he scolded her, sniffing with distaste. “You are not awolf.Your transformation is lupine, but these things are not the same. You are awere.”
Josephine couldn’t care less about what she was called. “They’rebitingpeople? Infecting others? I thought only I could—”
Her father waved a hand dismissively as he reached for his wine glass. “Of course they can infect others. Lyssa is highly contagious. We use you because you are pure stock, entirely untainted by any illness that might skew results. You are fit and healthy, if not disappointingly weak. And it wasyourmutation that made the infection so powerful. Gods only know why.” He paused to take a long sip. Cheeks flushing, he added, “Apparently we are not moving fast enough for my benefactor’s liking, so they’ve begun allowing any disease-riddled trench rat to bite others.”
Josephine dropped her eyes to her plate, overwhelmed by all the implications of this news.
Not only did this mean that lyssa was spreading beyond her father’s victims but also that he might be losing his value.Shemight be losing value. If her father’s benefactors lost their interest in him, or became capable of creating their own weres, then a great many things would change.
The only thing that had protected them all from the ravages of the war was the favor of the benefactor, bestowed on her father due to his value. If that evaluation dropped, the protection disappeared.
The memory of watching Washington go up in flames, of people running through the streets clothed in icy blue dragonfire, screaming until they sucked the fire inside, haunted her. Where would her father go if not in favor? Was there any place on the continent that was not ravaged by decades of the cursed war? What had begun as a territory dispute between the elvish sovereign and the Orclind had melted into a war so vicious, so all-consuming, that no one really knew what it was about anymore. From Josephine’s pinhole perspective, it appeared as if all the world was on fire.
Where willwego?the beast fretted.Where will we build our den if nowhere is safe? Otto must know someplace. He must. He promised a den. He promised cubs and a table and places for my paintings. Didn’t he? He wouldn’t lie.
“We don’t know that those bitten by others experience the same level of enhancement,” Harrod chimed in, interrupting the swirl of her increasingly panicked thoughts.
Her father set his glass down on the table with more force than necessary. His eyes gleamed with the fervor she recognized too well. “From all reports, it appears they do. And now they wish to relocate us again, claiming we are too close to the front. They’re demanding things, too. Always demanding more. No respect for the methods that have gotten them what they asked for! I suspect they will find an excuse to dispose of us all soon enough.”
