A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the wind.
We didn’t stopat the Irish Wolves’ secret kingdom. Just passed through briefly before Sadie drove to a stone tower gate that brought us back up to The Above.
“Naomi asked to meet at a neutral location in The Above,” Sadie explained, hauling the duffel I’d brought with me out of the cart’s back seat. “We’ll have to get out and hike for a bit. I hope you don’t mind.”
“No, not at all.”
After arriving in the stone circle above the wolves’ kingdom, we trekked across real life rolling green hills toward a two-story red house sitting in front of a sparkling lake.
“So… why me?” I asked as we got closer to our destination.
Sadie didn’t seem to have satisfying answers about anything. But the holoscribe in me just couldn’t let it go.
I tried asking my number-one question again, since it might be my last chance. “I was told you requested me as their ambassador specifically, even though I just moved back to Scotland after going to uni and working abroad.”
Sadie, who’d insisted on carrying my da’s old Scottish army canvas duffel bag for me, shifted it on her shoulder.
The bag was packed with enough supplies for a week-long stay in the Irish Wolves’ kingdom. From clothes to the diplomatic gifts the bears had carefully selected themselves and encased in a large protective ruck sack composed of their poreless, seamless god tech version of rubber. Even though it was the middle of summer, Sadie had also given me an Irish knit green cardigan before we left, insisting, “It might get quite cold on your trip.”
But now the literal mama bear hardly seemed able to look me in the eye.
“I hope you’ll understand after you meet Naomi,” she answered, her gaze stuck on the verdant green grass. “It could only be you.”
I didn’t understand, though. And the coil of unease that had formed the first time I asked “Why me?” wrapped even tighter around my gut instinct.
The neutral location turned out to be a red brick house sitting in front of a body of water that Sadie called the Three Gods Lake.
My Aunt Naomi emerged from the residence with two of her children flanking her. All three were dressed like medieval bandits in leather pants and vests, and they all radiated the same sharp, dangerous energy.
Naomi looked like my mother. If someone had shrunk Maem down and carved away everything gentle in her soft features, leaving behind only the freckles.
The first thing she said was that I wasn’t allowed in her home. The second thing she said was that we would talk beside the lake.
Having never learned to swim during my cloistered upbringing in Canada, I’d studiously avoided lakes after moving to Scotland at the age of twelve.
Da had talked about teaching me the summer after he got back from Ireland, but then he had died and that had been that.
This particular lake immediately became my least favorite kind of body of water. It was more like a massive basin than its Highland counterpart. No beach, just a grassy lip with a steep drop. Surrounded by warning signs about no swimming allowed.
Looking at it filled my heart with terror. But… diplomacy.
I dutifully followed Aunt Naomi and Sadie to the last place I wanted to conduct tentative peace talks.
The third thing Naomi said before I could even get out my list of questions was that she’d personally killed my da.
I didn’t have to ask her about it.
“It was me,” she volunteered with a tilt of her head. Madness sparkled in her eyes. “He murdered my husbands and then dared to come to the castle to negotiate peace. But, of course, there could be none after what he did. I slit his throat with the dagger my Wild King gave me as a baby moon gift. It is important to me that you know that.”
She’d killed him. Killed her own sister’s husband. And recounted the tale with glee.
The world narrowed to a pinpoint. My vision went red at the edges. Every diplomatic question I’d meant to ask burned away like paper, leaving only a ringing in my ears.
I knew then that the Mountain Prince had been right, and that Sadie had definitely understated when she’d warned me Naomi was “not always kind.”
My aunt was a bitter bitch.
And the wolf who’d murdered my father while he was trying to negotiate peace.
