He understood my decision not to heal the Vandawolf, even though he disagreed with it, but he will not forgive me for speaking so cruelly to Asha now.
The Vandawolf’s reaction to my accusation isn’t what I need.
I want him to react badly to my taunt, especially because I addressed it to him instead of to Asha.
I expect him to rage at me because it’s as clear to me as the beating of my own heart that he loves her.
I saw it ten years ago when I first laid eyes on him at the Blacksmith Academy run by my mother. Gallium and I were only nine years old. We had been summoned to the Academy’s forge, where the Blacksmith students worked at their anvils, shaping their metal.
Our mother stood in pride of place at the front of the room in all her regal beauty.
The Vandawolf was positioned at Asha’s elbow, where our mother had forced her to be. He was gripping a chunk of deadly crimson coal, holding it over the bowl beside Asha’s anvil.
I’d caught the fading laughter in the room as the door opened and witnessed my sister with her shoulders slumped. I knew immediately she was the subject of her classmates’ ridicule.
Oh, but the look on the Vandawolf’s face.
I had never seen him before that moment. Of course, at nine years of age, I didn’t have a hope of meeting all of the humans in the vast city.
Even so, the Vandawolf was taller and more muscular than any other human I’d ever seen. Stronger-looking than any human teenager I’d encountered.
He looked well-fed. Determined. And fucking angry.
His gray eyes cast fury at the other students.
Despite the fact that he was dishing out coal that could set him on fire, he seemed oblivious to its danger at that moment.
And then, when the student who was standing at the anvil directly behind Asha’s position used his metal to fashion a spiderweb of sharp blades and spun them at Asha’s back, cutting her…
The Vandawolf did something I’d never seen a human do.
He took hold of the crimson coal in his bare hand, burning flames and all.
I thought for an impossible moment that he was going to ram it down that bully’s throat. By the saints, I wanted him to.
But Gallium acted first.
My brother snatched our mother’s hammer right off her belt and threw it across the room with all his might. He was strong, even then.
The hammer spun all the way to the anvil next to Asha’s, hit the bowl of coal next to that anvil, and sent the burning rocks flying through the air.
The explosions that followed took my breath away.
The Vandawolf ran straight for Asha, but she was already racing toward us, darting through the fiery chaos, her ragged, silver hair flying—and all of her determination blazing in her eyes.
She scooped up Gallium and me and tore out of there with us.
The last glimpse I caught of the Vandawolf, he was standing in the middle of the flames, watching us disappear to safety, wearing a breathtakingly unexpected smile on his face.
But there was something else.
A sapphire glow had lit up his body, and it was like nothing I’d ever seen before.
That glow was gone the next time I saw him on the night he was turned into a beast. By then, he had annihilated my people. Killed my parents. And dressed himself in gore.
His hair was dripping with blood, his snarls were far from human, and his breathtaking smile… Well. It was gone.
And so, I thought, was his love for Asha.
