Guilt claws at me. I was so locked in on my frustration with Esmerelda that I couldn’t focus on anything else. In my mind, I replay everything I did from the moment I saw Mr. Lovell begin to petrify. What could I have done better? I could’ve been faster. I could’ve crushed the herbs faster. I make a mental note to make sure I have crushed as well as whole herbs in the apothecary in future.
I could’ve had my herbs organized better for easier access. How much precious time did I waste looking for mandrake root? All that time lost in the initial shock and horror. Did my shock lead to my incompetence? Did I hesitate? Was I overconfident? Did I think things through? I clasp my head with my hands as question after question delivers another punishing blow.
I taste metal. It spreads across my tongue the way blood does when you bite down too hard and pretend you didn’t. My jaw has locked tight enough to make the muscles buzz.
What good is knowledge if my hands were the ones that delivered the poison? What good is my oath to heal if I’m the one who delivered death with a smile and a well-rehearsed speech? All those years of training and it did nothing to sharpen my instincts.
I force in a breath. Hold it. Let it out slowly. It doesn’t steady anything, nor does it dull anything, but it keeps me from standing and putting a fist through the carved wall.
From the corner of my eye, a slight, almost imperceptible movement catches my attention, and I turn to face Esmerelda.She has been so still I could almost forget she was there except for her scent pulsing off her. Desperation. Sadness. Fear.
The fear is a cloying smell that sticks to every surface like a bitter oil. She’s hunched on the chair, the blanket wrapped around her like a force field, her fingers white-knuckling the soft material. She looks like a fox in a trap, desperate to leave the painful confines yet too scared to let anyone near.
I stay seated, unable to move even though every muscle in my body screams for action. I should tear down these walls. Fight whatever spell or curse they have on this godforsaken place. Retaliate. Avenge everyone. My wolf snarls inside me, straining to shift, to claw his way out, but the magic smothers us both. He paces, furious at my paralysis.
Esmerelda stares fixedly at one spot, looking at nothing in particular, but the width of her eyes tell me she’s seeing the same horrors I keep replaying. Her finger traces the pattern of the woven wool blanket in jerky movements. Her breaths are too high in her chest, but at least the sobbing has stopped. Because even though I can’t figure out if she’s acting or not, the sound of her tears nearly killed me.
She looks fragile, like at any moment she’ll break apart if a breeze wafts through the room. And yet the set of her jaw says otherwise. She’s an unending package of contradictions and I can’t figure her out. Even in her grief, I can’t figure her out. Is she fragile or is she strong?
I shouldn’t feel sorry for her. She wasn’t there when dinner started. She wasn’t there whenitstarted. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t there. The thought scratches into my mind like a needle on a record creating deep ridges. She wasn’t there when it started. She wasn’t there when her father choked on silence. She wasn’t there when the first scream tore through the air. She came in after, running, wide-eyed and looking like she herself might petrify from fear.
Why?
My chin tips toward her without meaning to. I track the small things, like the tremor of the hand that isn’t tracing the pattern like a jerky doll. She looks up suddenly and catches me staring. But her gaze is vacant. My mouth flattens before the scowl can settle. I keep my face neutral because it’s all I know how to do.
Do I hold on to the look of devastation cloaking her like that blanket she’s holding onto for dear life, or do I hold on to the way she smirked at me when I frustratingly told her to hurry up or she’ll be late for dinner? Do I hold on to the hollowed-out cheeks and blank stare that begs for what she has seen to be wrong? Or do I focus on how she strolled across the room in nothing but a towel when I announced that she only had ten minutes to get done?
Do I hold on to the way she screamed for her father or the way she laughed when Min chided her not to antagonize me? Is the Esmerelda I’ve caught glimpses of when her guard is down the woman I should be focused on, or should my instincts be telling me to focus on that one small detail yet so very important—that she wasn’t in the room when everyone else drank the wine?
It’s really hard to reconcile the two women. The one whose laugh filled the courtyard when Khan, my Rottweiler, backed into her until she was forced to sit on the step so he could claim her lap as his. He barely fit on her lap, and yet when he was perched there, he looked like he had just been named alpha, he was so proud. The patience in her voice when old Farin talked about the mare and asked about the year the winter feed failed, like she really cared about those details. And the woman who would do anything to antagonize me. My head pounds with the relentless thoughts. I don’t like puzzles I can’t solve. It usually means I’ve missed something obvious.
My senses heighten with each thrum, thrum, thrum of the pain. The ancient markings on the stone vibrate at a level no human can hear, or they would certainly go mad from the sound. The air becomes thicker, and the urge to loosen my clothing from its constrictive hold becomes almost unbearable. Where is the sound of water coming from? Is it coming from under the stone? The hearth spits embers into the room that float and seem to steal the oxygen with them as they do.
I could press Esmerelda for questions again. Ask her why she was late. But what would be the point? When I asked her the first time, I didn’t smell deceit coming from her. And yet I didn’t smell anything wrong before the poisoning either. I can imagine the look she’d give me. The flat, unimpressed stare that says she has judged me and found me lacking. And the thing is, I don’t know if I deserve it or not.
It would’ve been so much easier if she was the woman I’d prepared for: thoughtless, blunt, all muscles and command with a lack of sense to back it up. It would be easier if she were the type of person who could stand outside the door and listen to everyone in a room turn to stone and do nothing but feel victory. But she ran. When she saw her father, she made a sound I’ve only ever heard from animals in traps. She went to him as if she’d claw her way through burning wood to get one more moment with him. That didn’t seem like a performance. That felt marrow-deep.
The metallic taste thickens, and I swallow against it. Or swallow it down. At this point, I don’t know what I’m doing. My tongue feels too wrong in my mouth. Heavy, clumsy, like it belongs to someone else. The heat in my face seems to steady, like pain that’s here for the long haul settles into a dull ache.
Replaying the last two hours is a silent torture. Worse, though, is the undeniable wish that I could rewind time. Of all the magic I have learned, the only power I would love to possessis to reverse time. Pity that time-based magic does not exist. I cannot go back and change my failures. Cannot tell my younger self to be more alert. I can do nothing but helplessly carry the burden of guilt, which I will gladly bear. Because my lack of instincts killed mine and Esmerelda’s families as surely as if I had poured the poison down their throats one by one.
I look at Esmerelda again, because I can’t not. As much as I hate to admit it, there is something about her presence I can’t ever ignore, no matter how hard I try. She’s still, and yet not. The energy around her vibrates with tension. It’s the kind of tension which screams containment. Like if she let herself go, she would implode from the inside out. There are too many contradictions with this woman, and it’s maddening. I wish it was all clear-cut. I hope I’m not making the second biggest mistake of my life. I can’t afford to be wrong about Esmerelda. Not now.
The door creaks open, and my wolf rises, hackles raised, braced for more questioning.
But it’s Leonard who bursts in with Minerva right behind him. Both are windblown, wide-eyed, and wild with worry until they see me.
“You’re okay,” Leonard breathes. Then he pulls me into a rough, grounding hug before muttering, “Damn it, you scared the hell out of me.”
Minerva doesn’t wait for an invitation. She crosses the room in three long strides and wraps Esmerelda in her arms, murmuring something I can’t hear. Esmerelda, who looked like she might shatter just moments ago, sinks into her friend’s strength.
Thaloran and Eryndor enters behind them, their faces solemn but not as stern as before. “We’ve concluded that neither you nor your companions are suspects,” he says. “In fact, it’s likely whoever orchestrated this didn’t account for the unexpected. Miss Lovell, you can thank your lucky stars youwere tardy. You saved your lady-in-waiting and Leonard. And of course…” He looks at me. “If no one knows about you being a half-breed, there was no reason to suspect you’d be immune to wolfsbane. It seems it was your lucky day.”
“We lost everyone we love. How is that lucky?” Esmerelda stands. There’s a strength in her voice that hasn’t been present in her body language.
“Yes, a rather unfortunate choice of words. The other unexpected change in plans is that Councilwoman Tallulah was a casualty of all this. Her family is enraged that this happened in your care.”
“Well, do they know we had nothing to do with it?” Esmerelda asks.
