Chapter 11 11
Elias's POV
“No,” I said, shaking my head. "That is not possible. I am the king. I was raised by the Guild. I am human."
But even as I said the words I felt something inside me stir. A knowing. A recognition. As if there were some part of myself that had always known this truth and was waiting for me to finally hear it.
The world was watching me with those mismatched eyes, one gold and the other grey, and certainty in her gaze. She believed it. She knew it.
“Your majesty,” Nyrand said sharply, cutting deep into my circles of thought. We need no less time for this." The guards are going through the castle. They will find us soon."
"Find the king! Find the wolf girl! Search every room!"
My hands curled into fists. I had broken Jorah's wrist. I had converted in front of the whole court. This was not going to be forgiven. There was no such explanation satisfactory to them. The Guild would consider me corrupted, cursed and unfit to rule.
I spoke quietly, urgently to Nyrand. "Tell me everything. All the guild have of my origins.”
Nyrand looked to the broken chapel door points. The noise of the boots increased. "This is not the time."
“Talk.” I growled, and the noise that came from my chest was not entirely human.
Nyrand's eyes went wide but he nodded sharply. "Your records are sealed. Only the Archon can see them. But there have always been whispers among the older priests.” He swallowed hard. They said you were discovered as a small child in the woods during a raid. You were the Guild's orphan that had survived a wolf attack. But they muttered that you were snatched from a wolf pack. That you were born one of them.
“We have to leave,” Nyrand said suddenly. "Now."
The clomp of boots got louder. They were but a step or two from the chapel door. At any minute, they’d come crashing in and we were done for.
I glanced at Narnia, who was still pinned against the wall in a crouch with her white hair dishevelled and eyes wide. She had witnessed everything. She knew what I had become. And if the Guild caught up with her, they would murder her to keep the truth buried.
And I knew what to do in an instant.
"We leave," I said. "Tonight. Both of us."
Narnia's eyes widened. "What?"
"You heard me." I stepped toward her, voice firm and insistent. "We cannot stay here. They will carry out my death for striking Jorah. And they will murder you to conceal this. You're my only witness, to what I've become."
“I don’t want to race with you,” Narnia said, her voice trembling. "You are my enemy."
“You had a detractor,” I corrected. "Now we are both hunted. And if you remain here, people will die. Is that what you want?"
She glared at me, jaw set, but I could see the terror in her eyes. She knew I was right.
Nyrand stepped forward. "I can help you escape. Under the fortress there are ancient tunnels, from when this place was a monastery hundreds of years ago. They go toward the forest that extends behind the walls. I can guide you there."
I examined him closely, expecting dissimulation. But when he looked at Narnia, all I saw was resolve and something else. Something about it caused my wolf to bristle with possessiveness.
Longing.
He cared for her. Perhaps even loved her. And that knowledge made me feel a spike of irrational jealousy I could neither articulate nor suppress.
But he didn’t have time to deal with it. The voices in the chapel now were nearly at the door. I could hear metal scrapping against stone as they filed their way through.
Le ad us,” I snapped at Nyrand.
He nodded, and darted to the altar. He swept it to one side with some difficulty, uncovering a trap door let into the floor. Stone steps descended into darkness. He reached for a torch on the wall and motioned for us to follow.
"Quickly," he urged.
We stepped down into the tunnels as the door of the chapel slammed open over our heads. I heard shouts, the sound of furniture being knocked over, and then Nyrand was hauling the altar back into position closing us in darkness.
The long passages under the fortress were musty and obscure. The walls were jagged stone polished slick with moisture that dripped from somewhere above. The air had a smell like rotting and earth, it was thick in my chest. Our steps sounded eerily in the cramped, close chamber and there were flickering shadows in the dancing torch which Nyrand held—shadows that seemed live against the dark.
We rushed ahead, after Nyrand, into the maze of winding tunnels. I did not know how he followed the way. The passages were all the same to me: stone walls, wall after endless wall closing in on him. Yet he made his way boldly, without stopping at crossroads.
I could hear shouting from above just over our heads now. They had discovered the secret door. They knew we had fled in this manner. And they were coming.
"Faster," I urged.
Nyrand hastened, but the torch in his hand sputtered and waned. The oil was running low. And when light waned, darkness pressed in thick and suffocating.
But I could still see.
My eyes accustomed to the darkness as though I had grown up in it. I could see the grain of the stone walls, the uneven floor, a turning in the passage ahead. My other senses sharpened too. Damp earth and old wood I could smell, and something else, something living. Rats maybe, or bats up in the ceiling. Far off, I could hear water dripping, and underneath that the sound of Narnia's labored breathing.
She was struggling.
I looked back to see her staggering, a hand clamped against the wall for balance. Her skin was a ghastly white in the failing torchlight, her motions slow and pained. The weeks of captivity, torture and starvation had taken a greater toll on her than I knew. She was driving herself too hard, but her body was betraying her.
Without thought, I halted and faced her. "You cannot keep this pace."
“I can stand,” she muttered stubbornly, but her voice was feeble and her legs shook.
I did not argue. I just stepped up, picked her up and kept moving.
She sucked in a breath and her body tensed against mine. "Put me down."
"No." I shifted her weight in my arms, pressing her close to my chest. "We have no time for your pride. And if I don't take you, you'll die."
She was about to protest when her body gave way a little and sat slumped again, too tired to argue. Her head was lying on my shoulder and I could feel her breath in a warm collar down my neck. Her hair still smelled of lavender a little, and the scent made something squeeze in my chest.
As soon as our bodies made contact, that spark exploded between us again. It wasn't as violent as the kiss, but it was there. Undeniable. Warm and electric and right in a way that was completely nonsensical. My wolf was nestled within me, quite and at peace for the first time during this change.
I heard Narnia’s breath catch, and I knew she felt it also.
In the back of my head, I heard another voice —not my own. Female. Ancient. Protective.
He is ours. The bond is forming.
Eira. Narnia's wolf. I could hear her as distinctly as if she had spoken. And for some reason, I knew it was my own wolf that was responding to her, acknowledging her, taking ownership of her.
"What is this?" Narnia murmured against my neck, soft and faint.
"I do not know," I admitted. But that was a lie. Some part of me did know. Some instinct in my bones knew precisely what this was.
A mate bond. The link wolves held with a single soul their entire lives.
But I did not say it aloud. Not yet. Not in the midst of everything else falling apart.
I continued on, carrying Narnia through the blackness, down the hall behind Nyrand to whatever freedom lay beyond these walls. My arms did not tire. My breathing remained steady. The power I felt in my body was no longer human any more, and there wasn't anything left pretending otherwise.
Finally, after what felt like hours but might have been fewer, I could see light ahead. Not torchlight. Moonlight. Silver and stainless, shining in the crack of the stone.
We burst out of the tunnels into the forest and cool night air slapped against my face like a gift. The castle rose up behind us, its ramparts black against the stars. And then, breaking the silence, came a sound of alarm bells ringing. Clang, loud and sudden — echoing in the trees.
They had realized we were missing.
I gently laid Narnia down, she supported herself by leaning against a tree and gasping heavily. Her legs wobbled under her as she stood. Stubborn. Always so stubborn.
Nyrand snuffed the torch and turned towards us; his vision was somber in the moonlit ocean depths. You can’t stay that close to the fortress. We'll have hunters out at dawn.
Seasoned trackers with predator-savvy hounds. The boys exchanged glances and nods, and the one who received this last warning said, "We've got to get as far from this place as we can."
"Where do we go?" ' I asked, even though a part of me knew what the answer would be.
Nyrand paused and replied, "Brother Malarik has a secret shelter deep in the Whispering Woods. It’s a three-day trip east from here, on the other side of the old Silvermoon Temple. For years he has pursued the curse, researching the Moonlight Guardians and the secret history which the Guild worked so hard to suppress. He’s the one guy that could help you make sense of what’s going on.”
I nodded, slowly storing the information away. Three days east. The Whispering Woods. I could find it.
"Why are you helping us?" I asked, watching him carefully. "You are a Guild priest. This is treason. If they find out what you did, they will kill you.”
Nyrand's eye fell on Narnia, and I saw that old ache in his eyes, sharp as ever. “We can’t deny the truth — we do what’s best for our people. And some truths matter more than doctrine,” he added in a soft voice. “And because she’s entitled to know who she is.”
Reaching into his robes, he produced a small leather journal with an old and worn cover. He handed it to Narnia with the utmost care. "This belonged to your mother. It was concealed in the restricted archives, entombed within a box branded with the sigil of the Moonlight Guardians. It's in the old wolftongue, but you might understand it."
Narnia accepted the journal with shaking hands and looked at it as one might look at a thing of glass. "My mother?"
"Yes." Nyrand closed the distance between her and hissed at her, and I felt a low growl emitting from my throat that I couldn't swallow back. He did not seem to notice. He was all Narnia to the tips of his fingers and the ends of his hair. "There's something else you should be aware of. Something the Guild has kept to itself for twenty years.”
I stiffened, every fibre of my being screaming that whatever he was going to say would explain everything.
Nyrand looked at me, then at Narnia. His tone had the steadiness of conviction, though laden with truth that weighed heavily. "Your mother was no ordinary wolf. She was a Moonlight Guardian. The final heir of a bloodline, granted power beyond imagining by the Moon Goddess herself."
Narnia’s eyes widened, but Nyrand had more to say.
“And Elias’s father,” he said slowly, each word a weighty stone in his heart, “was the hunter who murdered her.”