“Look at him, Tamra. Hedidchange. Hewaschanged.”
I swivel back to her, only to be faced with her unyielding features. I’m painfully aware of the distance between us and the fact that she’s refusing to close it.
Still, I plough on. “He was transformed from a man who loved his family into a wolf whose nature pushed and pulled him every second of every day.”
“You don’t know that he loved his family,” she replies, the corners of her mouth turning down. “You just want to believe that because it would make him more like you.”
“I know he loved them!” I thump my fist against my heart. “I know he did…”
I’m certain of it. As certain as I am that the titanium hammer resting at my waist belonged to Malak.
At the same time, I’m not surehowI’m so certain.
I know nothing of the Vandawolf’s past except that he spoke of a father and a younger brother, and that there was pain in his voice when he talked of losing them.
A pain I will feel if I losehim.
“If you heal him, he will have the chance to decide who he is,” I say. “His first real choice that isn’t influenced by obligation or expectations or fear. He doesn’t have to go back to the humans. He can forget that cursed city and the humans who betrayed him. He can make a new life.”
With me.
It’s a hope I can’t express because it’s too fraught with uncertainty. What I need is to know who he is without all the walls between us. The chance to discover if the glimpses I saw of him in our cage in the sky were real.
Tamra’s expression softens. “You don’t want to give up on him.”
“Ican’tgive up on him.”
If I give up on him—this beast, who was Malak’s creation—then it means I will have given up on myself.
Because I, too, have been poisoned by Malak’s power.
As long as there’s hope for the Vandawolf, then there’s hope for me.
I need to explain this to my sister. I need her to understand.
But her expression is already hardening. “I’m sorry, Asha. I won’t risk your freedom,” she says. “Or mine.”
She takes a step back toward the throne. “I will healyouas soon as it’s safe to do so, but I won’t healhim.”
My thoughts are suddenly bleak.
It won’t ever be safe to heal me. Not as long as the medallion is fused to my hand. A fact I’m refusing to acknowledge and will have to face soon. For all I know, my life is already slipping away, but with all this power clouding my mind, I’m oblivious to the danger.
It’s the Vandawolf who still has a chance and yet she’s refusing to help him.
I drag air in and out of my chest, trying to control the storm of resentment and powerlessness and disbelief raging within me.
Nearer to Tamra, Gallium has stepped up, reaching for our sister. “Tamra, won’t you consider?—”
“No, Gallium.” Her rebuke stops him in his tracks. “Like Asha, you want to see the good. You don’t want to see the bad. The Vandawolf closed his fist around her heart the day he let us live. She won’t be free unless he’s dead.”
Gallium has no response to that, his quiet gaze meeting mine a moment before Thaden speaks.
“I don’t pretend to know what you’ve experienced,” he says. “But I know what it is to live each day pushing back the darkness within.” He swallows visibly. “If I were in the Vandawolf’s position, I don’t know if I would?—”
“No, Thaden,” she rebukes him, too, but more softly. “You may battle the dragon whose soul you carry, but you are not a beast. You didn’t kill my people or cage my sister or use her love against her.” She gives him a rueful smile. “You didn’t hurt us or keep us apart. Since you came into our lives, there’s been hope.”
She gives a heavy exhale before she turns back to me. Her eyes fill with tears and I recognize the deep pain behind her resolve. Ten years of pain.
