He shivered as the wind cut through the bars, and he wrapped his arms around himself tighter.
The crunch of frosted grass cut through his thoughts, and the hair on the back of his neck rose, his heart beating hard in his chest. He turned his head slowly, not wanting whoever was there to know he’d heard them. The silhouette that stood against the bars was thinner than he’d expected, their body curved in a way that made it clear it wasn’t a soldier. He turned slowly.
His mother was wrapped in a shawl, her hair loose around her shoulders. Her curls had gone wild over the past few weeks. His father would have hated it. She looked a little bit feral. Fox liked it.
She pressed something between the bars, and he moved with stiff aching joints to pick up the roll. She’d tucked some meat and cheese inside it, and he ate it in two bites, barely bothering to chew. His stomach cramped at the intrusion of food, but he knew it was better than not eating.
“Did you do it?”
Helooked up at her, unable to make out her expression in the darkness. He could just see the whites of her eyes, reflecting the light above.
“Do what?” he asked, his throat raw. He’d been accused of so much, he wasn’t sure what she was asking.
“Did you kill your father?”
The food in his stomach turned sour, and he clenched his fists, letting his nails bite into his palms. He didn’t answer immediately. If he opened his mouth, he was afraid of throwing up the food he’d just managed to eat. But she waited, the patience louder than anything Fox had ever heard before. He hated it. He wanted her to cry or to yell. Instead, she was silent.
“Yes.” He didn’t elaborate. Any excuse or context he had didn’t feel enough for her. She deserved better than that. So, he let the word speak for itself.
She was silent, but he watched her silhouette in the darkness and saw her shoulders shaking. A soft sob escaped her lips, and it cut through his chest like a blade. The whip had been nothing compared to that single muted sound of his mother breaking. This is what he had done.
He didn’t regret making the decision he had. He refused to regret murdering his father, especially knowing he would have killed him and Sofia both without a second thought. But he hated he had done this to her.
He waited for her accusations or anger, but she only cried until she took a deep breath, pulling back the sob and swallowing it. She breathed for a moment, and he held his body rigid, the pain shooting down his back in sharp cracks.
“There is a lot of animal activity around camp suddenly. More than there was before.” She said this with her eyes upturned to the sky, and Fox wondered, only briefly, if he’d truly broken her. If her mind had snapped with the pain of knowing her only living son had killed her husband. But then she was creeping away, and he was left with no answers.
It was only after her shadow had disappeared around the tents thathe thought of how she’d come to see him. Had Harlow granted her permission to come talk to him? He doubted it. So, she had sneaked out to meet him. He’d known Harlow had said she wasn’t a captive, but he didn’t know how free she was to wander. Had he been trying to save her this entire time only to find out she’d already been free? Perhaps she came with Harlow willingly, having heard of her son’s betrayal.
Fox let himself sink back to the ground, the icy cold of the metal cage pressing into his body. A single hot tear traced down his face, and he wiped it away. It would only turn to ice in the night air. He fell asleep to the moons glaring down at him and his mother’s last words echoing through his mind like some strange curse.
The fifth timehe woke up, body aching and chilled to the bone, the sun had just crested the horizon, the sky turning a petulant gray. Clouds had moved in at some point, and he shuddered, knowing he wouldn’t even have the sun to soothe away the cold today. Fox remembered reading stories as a child about overcast—when the sun hid behind the clouds as they blanketed the sky in gray. But had thought them just as magical and mythical as dragons and faeries. It turns out they were all true. He wasn’t sure he liked such blanketing clouds, though. Or faeries for that matter. The storybooks had described them with fewer teeth and cuter wings. If he ever made it out of here alive, he’d ask Sofia where the cute-winged faeries lived.
He was still staring at the clouds when a hawk swept through the sky, a brown streak across gray. A few moments later, another hawk flew by. Or perhaps it was the same hawk, sweeping back and forth.
Fox blinked. He sat up, the motion slow and difficult. His muscles screamed at him, and he wasn’t sure what aches were from the whipping, the cold, or sleeping in the metal cage. His eyes traced the sky, focusing to the point of pain, but then he saw it again. The hawk swept across the camp. It was staring down at them. Staring at him.
Surely, he was going crazy. He was making up stories inhis head, but then he remembered Lumi jumping and twisting their body and flying off into the sky as a hawk in the blink of an eye. That hawk had definitely been looking down at the camp, surveying it.
He watched until he saw the bird sweep over the camp six more times, head tilted in the same focused way.
“There is a lot of animal activity around camp.”
Not for the first time since his father was killed, he remembered that his mother had collected the faery books that had been kept in their library growing up. She’d been the one to tell him stories about dragons and faeries and even shapeshifters.
Fox let out a breath, the smallest sense of hope blooming in his chest. His body aching, he lay curled in his cage. But he listened, and he watched.
He saw the hawk sweeping overhead and the condor that would occasionally join it. He heard the soldier mumbling about their own hunger and the cold pressing in on them after days in this half-frozen forest.
“Another fight broke out,” one man said as he passed by the cage. “They caught five king-damned elk and refused to share any of the meat.”
“I say we just shoot of few of them in their wolf forms and eat them. They’re animals, aren’t they?”
“We should kill them all before they betray us.”
Their voices faded away, but Fox smiled, face tucked in his arms. They were going to eat themselves from the inside.
Fox faded again into sleep, the buzz of the camp and the gray-tinted sunlight doing little to stir him. They were coming. They had to be coming for him, which meant he needed to keep his strength up. What little he had of it. So, he tried to sleep and tried to find the bit of sunlight that broke through the clouds and crossed his cage as late morning came.
