Page 38 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

“Yes, I can fucking read!” I point to the door as he lifts both hands up as if in apology. “Get. Out.” When he doesn’t immediately move, I shove both hands into his chest.“Now.”

A scowl sharpens the carved lines of his features. Wolf turns away from me and strides across the stone floor, boots barely making a sound.

“You’re not seriously just going to walk out of here, are you?” I raise a brow. There are gardai all over the castle, and surely they know what the Whisperers look like.

A hard laugh escapes him. “Worried about my safety?”

“Your sanity, more like it,” I mutter, more to myself than him.

“I know my way around.” Shadows weigh in his eyes. The doorknob creaks beneath his grip, and he pauses halfway through, not quite turning back toward me.

“Start with chapter thirteen,” he says roughly, closing the door behind him.

A couple of hours later, my cup of coffee is long cold as I flick through the pages. I haven’t let myself skip ahead yet to chapter thirteen. Partly because I really do want to read from the start, but mostly out of stubbornness.

The mist in the garden clings around the roots of a gnarled old willow, its long leaves obscuring the close-curtained windows of the rooms opposite mine. These are the only two rooms opening onto the small garden, but there’s no sign of anyone else in the other one.

The leaves rustle and whisper in the breeze as I let my head lean back against the willow’s rough bark. Old Ones know how much sleep I got last night, but it wasn’t much. My eyes drift closed. Just for a minute, I tell myself.

A few moments later—or maybe longer—a leaf crunches beneath a cautious footstep.

I open my eyes and jolt up, book tumbling from my lap, and reach for my blade.

A pair of dark blue eyes stares into mine from just inches away.

My muscles coil.

Then those blue eyes widen, and the girl stumbles back, a soft breath escaping her lips. “Oh!”

“I thought noblewomen knew their manners.” I level the longer of the blades Wolf gave me at her throat. “Trying to kill someone while they’re sleeping is incredibly rude.”

She can’t be more than a few years younger than me—sixteen, maybe? Her sandy-blond hair is braided in elaborate plaits down her back; her rosy cheeks flush at my stare. The worn edges of her cloak are thick with rich purple wool, woven into elaborate spirals up the hem.

Ice races down the back of my neck. The tiny sea snails whose shells are crushed for that hue can only be found in the Málmar Islands, the magic-rich archipelago north of the frigid, wild Seaof Serpents. It’s where the finest steel comes from too. There’s only one way in or out of the sole cove that’s safe for a ship, and even the Cymreans aren’t war hungry enough to risk their precious navy on a single route through the treacherous northern sea passage. My mother said mages relied on their caoranachs to get across the sea before the uprising. Before magic was drained and the mages were banished.

No one noble enough to wear a cloak like this, even if it’s faded, can mean anything good by venturing this close to me.

The girl cocks her head, and there’s no fear in her eyes. “What are you waiting for?”

My grip tightens on the hilt of my blade. “Tell me what you want, and maybe I’ll let you walk away.”

She lifts her chin. “In case you hadn’t noticed, this is a shared courtyard. That’s my door.” She gestures to the only other one opening into the garden. “And I have just as much right as you to enjoy the only peaceful part of the day here too.”

There’s a hard edge to her words, enough to pique my grim curiosity.

I look her up and down. There’s no blade in her hand, no vial of poison to be seen. I see no hunting snare to wrap around my neck, or a necklace of thorns—the brutal, bladed garotte the Cymreans invented. Just a long dress made of blue wool that matches her eyes, a pair of scuffed boots with a low heel, and the cloak with the purple edges.

“If you’re not here to hurt me, then there’s no reason for me to hurt you.” I step back, lowering my knife, but keep a careful eye on her.

She watches me with an eerie calm.

“My mother had a dog once,” she says, brushing off a fraying piece of fabric from the edges of her cloak. “She snapped if you came too close, and she’d get this look in her eye just before she snarled. You remind me of her.”

I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with that. “Thanks?”

“It wasn’t a compliment.” She studies my face, then sits at the edge of a thick root. The willow above us rustles. “Just an observation.”

“Okay.” I rub my face, exhaustion like a weight around my neck.