Her green eyes glisten with tears, and she presses her palms together, chewing on her bottom lip as she stares back at me.
The silence between us stretches for so long that my heart progresses up into my throat.
I try to bring moisture to my lips as a new fear fills me.
A possibility I never considered.
“Tamra?”
Her hands stop wringing. Her expression wipes clean and she shakes her head resolutely. “I won’t do it.”
My heart plunges into an abyss.
That dark pit is pulling me down again, and I’m not sure if I’ll be able to claw my way out of it this time.
I want to believe there’s another force at play here, that somehow, my sister isn’t making her own choices.
But her expression is clear. She doesn’t take glances at anyone else, as if they have sway over her. In fact, both Thaden and Gallium appear surprised by her declaration, their foreheads creased, as if they assumed she would at least try.
“Why?” I ask, my voice barely more than an exhale.
She meets my gaze with an increasing calm that slowly breaks my heart.
“If I heal the Vandawolf, he’ll cage you again.”
“No.” My denial is quiet but instant. “He gave us our freedom. He told us to leave?—”
“He hadten yearsto free you!” Tamra snaps back at me, her calm composure breaking. “He didn’t.”
Her cry rings out around us and I’m aware of the way the Queen is suddenly smiling.
“Well, well,” she says, an eager exclamation. “What an unexpected conflict.”
Elowynn steps toward us, as if she thinks our disagreement should be stopped in its tracks, but the Queen halts her.
“No, no, dear Elowynn. Let them fight.” Queen Karasi licks her lips. “If I’d known this would happen, I would have allowed them to speak much sooner. This is far more entertaining than any story.”
Her speech fuels my rage, but I clamp down on it and try to focus on my sister.
I have to change her mind.
If I don’t…
“He wasn’t free to make his own choices,” I say. “Yes, it took him ten years. But he spent those years playing games of survival with humans who hated him. Humans who ultimately tried to kill him when he was already injured and my back was turned. They wanted him dead. They thought of him only as a beast, never as a person.”
“Heisa beast!” Tamra cries, her voice once more cracking through the silent room.
Deep down, I recognize her anger. It’s a rage she was never at liberty to feel before now. She could never express her outrage and pain. She was never free to fight back against our situation. I was the leverage used against her, just as she was the leverage used against me. Her love for me imprisoned her.
Now, her cry echoes what the Vandawolf himself told me:
I am a monster. Never forget it.
“Yes,” I say, not denying it. “He is a beast. But that doesn’t mean he can’t make different choices.”
Tamra shakes her head at me, her lips pressing into a hard line. “He is who he is. He can’t change.”
“‘Can’t change?’” I stare at her, incredulous, before I cross the distance to him, drop to my knees, and brush the damp hair away from his forehead, fully revealing his face. The sharp tooth peeking between his lips on his left side. The wolfish shape of his left eye. Even the texture of his hair.
