Chapter Thirty

As the man strode free of the mists, they released him reluctantly. Smoky filaments trailed after him, grasping and caressing to the end of their reach over the promenade. To him, though, they seemed not to exist.

With chalky gray skin and eyes all pupil, iris-less, he had the alien stare of an insect. This impression was only enhanced by eyebrows like moth’s wings, and lips red and full as blood- gorged mosquitos. His hair was a shining black mass hung nearly to his shoulders and…rustling?

He wore a dusky tuxedo, sporting a prim bowtie. As I moved closer, I saw he had not hair at all, but a swimming nest of tiny beetles. Latched end to end by chitinus legs and pincers, they kept their own order. Now and again a pair of diaphanous wings would flutter as one shifted position, or lost its hold, only to flit eagerly back into place as soon as it could regain its balance.

They had been away from humans a long time, I reminded myself. They had grown strange.

“Well met, Lialanni.” The beetleman’s voice was formal, aristocratic, his expression bland even as his eyes flickered to Li’s hand in mine. “It has been long and long since you last graced us with your attentions. Arice will be…pleased.” Again, that flicker to our hands, but not a whit altered in his features to hint at what he thought.

If Li had tried to let go without good cause he would have had to pry his fingers free. As well for all of us that he didn’t.

“I am sure she will be,” Li responded dryly. “We have a favor to ask of her, if she would see us.”

Beetleman nodded tersely. “Not unexpected. There will be the matter of the tithe.”

Reaching into his jacket he withdrew a slender vial, as well as what would have been a thimble if not for the blade curving from the closed end like a raptor’s talon. I felt a chill.

“Only a moment.” Li squeezed my hand, for once his meaning clear. I let go on the premise that it was better to allow him to do what he needed as swiftly as possible to have it over with. But the last person I had heard demanding a ‘tithe’ had been Malice, and she had wanted Soma, Faerie lives.

“Li…” I began, but he shook his head slightly as he took the proffered items. “A small price,” he said, “much smaller than what will be paid in the future.”

What that was supposed to imply, I didn’t have leave to decipher. The impulse to watch was stronger than my dismay. Li administered the thimble blade too easily, as if he had had countless practice cuts before. The piece screwed onto the top of the vial so that when he slashed the inside of his arm, the sharp crescent somehow drew blood along its curve and into the aperture in the thimble. The slender vial filled by the drop, and then the trickle, so quickly I was almost sick. My mouth went dry.

It wasn’t the process itself that affected me; that was only like using a gothic syringe. No, the problem was the presence crowding my skull. The Shadow felt hunger and greed. It wanted that blood, a nauseating desire, but I felt it just the same. I couldn’t look away, and it was no help to my peace of mind to see this feeling mirrored in the glint of the beetleman’s inhuman eyes. I did not want to share anything with such creature, least of all bloodlust. I thrust away my Shadow, locking it tight.

When the beetleman took the vial back from Li, his hands were shaking, his already ashen features further paled. It was with a powerful exertion of will that he replaced the vial’s original cap and stuffed the set back into the inside pocket of his jacket.

“This will do nicely,” he said, licking his blood gorged lips. He swallowed. “Now, would you introduce us, Lialanni? My name is Be’el,” he offered in my direction.

“This is Abigail,” Li responded for me, but Be’el wasn’t listening. His question seemed forgotten. The beetleman ran a long-fingered hand through the churning mass of his hair and came away with several dozen pinhead sized insects, climbing his pallid skin.

“Tell Arice her Cariad is here,” he told the glistening pinheads, and they promptly took wing, hanging about him in a cloud for a second or two before buzzing off into the mists.

Her Cariad, I thought. Why would this Fae Queen be looking for me already?

One of the beetles did not fly; it struggled on the tip of a finger with a twisted wing. Be’el watched it beadily, then popped it into his mouth with a crunch. A shiver ran through his “hair” at the sound, but it was beneath his notice.

“Abigail,” he mused, “such a common, vulgar name.”

My mouth opened, and then closed of one accord. They will be strange . The beetleman glanced about the square, nodding.

“She likes this place. It won’t upset her. We must be careful of making her upset. We must be circumspect.” His message was beneath the words and beyond me.

“I am always cautious,” Li said and returned his hand to mine. About time, I thought. I could feel him next to me like my skin had been magnetized, but I still didn’t know how I felt about the kiss. Well, I did. Thinking about it made my heart swell and my face burn and my Shadow cringe. It made the decidedly creepy Be’el into an annoying side note in an otherwise perfect scene.

But I didn’t know what he meant by it. Li had a way of being vague when I wanted him to be explicit. There I was, about to ask a host of extremely legitimate questions, and he has to go and kiss me. Not that I hadn’t wanted him to. I wanted him to still be doing it. It was a distraction, though; a wonderfully amazing distraction.

Trust him? How was I supposed to trust him when he wouldn’t even tell me what we were talking about? It wasn’t fair. A kiss didn’t explain anything, it didn’t make me sure of anything. Except that I did trust him, even if it was probably idiotic to do so. And that I belonged to him. I had known that before. Except that now it was clear that he knew it too, and that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. It was possible that he would love me enough to make my worries silly. It would certainly be genre appropriate. But it was too much to hope for.

What was also possible, and what my latent pessimism suggested, was that he had a use for me just like everyone else. Something to do with the Gates he was programmed to protect. But whatever he wants, my pessimism went on to say, you’re going to give him. Because you are his, whether or not he’s yours, and you’re going to feel guilty for doubting him even this much, feel guilty even if he feeds you to Malice and you don’t go with a smile. And there is nothing you can do to change it.

The scary part of this new truth was that I was more helpless than I had ever been in my life, standing next to my protector.

Beetleman’s voice broke through my thoughts.

“You should remember, friend Lialanni, that in Mori we all serve Arice. High and low, within her court or without, we are all her attendants - even you. That is the price of coming here.”

“I have not forgotten what she is like, Be’el, but there are things more important than your Queen’s whims.”

The beetleman’s lips twisted into a crooked smile, and his unsettling eyes flashed to me before returning to Li.

“Perhaps, Lialanni,” he said. “But you would do well not to let her hear that you believe that.”

This was getting worse and worse and the Queen hadn’t even arrived yet. What kind of relationship did he have with these people? It obviously wasn’t as warm as what was between him and the Numians. They had treated him like an honored guest, but it sounded like this Arice expected a suppliant.

“Li,” I said, “can I talk to you for a second?”

Li looked at Be’el, who smiled at me with those colorless eyes and too sanguine lips before nodding. He went to stand before the marble statue of the Praeda, and we went to the other side of the square.

“Li,” I said, “I do trust you. But I don’t trust these Fae. They aren’t like the others were at all.”

He gave me a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “You mean Be’el hasn’t inspired your confidence?”

“Don’t joke, Li. Please, I’m scared.”

And I was scared, terrified. I had one lifeline left in the world and together we were only one step ahead of outright flight. I was running from Malice, running from the monster in my head, and if we ever found a place to rest we would put it in immediate danger. These Fae wouldn’t help us. They were as bad as the mists they lived in. Why couldn’t he see that?

Li folded me in his arms and my head rested against his chest, against the coolness, the hardness and the yielding.

“I know, I’m sorry,” he whispered, smelling of lilacs. “You’ve done so well, I forget how young you are, what you must feel going through this all at once. If we could have stayed in Numia longer, it would have been better. The peace there would have been good.”

He sighed and pulled me closer. “I’ll never forgive myself for hurting you. But if you trust me, it will come out right.”

For hurting me? He said it like he had already done something, like he was apologizing. But that didn’t make any sense. Nothing that had happened was his fault.

“I wish I could make you understand,” he said, “that I’ve known you forever, and you’re stronger than you know. Things are going to seem to move too fast now, what’s coming will seem overwhelming. But it won’t overwhelm you. You will survive and you will be happy, in the end.”

His voice, always fluid as music, now faltered. He hesitated.

“Abigail,” he said, “whatever comes, I will love you.”

So simple, like he was saying goodnight. I went absolutely still, hardly believing what I had heard. Before I could respond in kind, I heard commotion in the fog.

A shrill flute sounding, hands clapping, singing, light and merry. We both turned to look as Be’el watched us with an unreadable expression. I wanted to say something, had to. I love you, Li. I love you; it should have been so easy but I was still afraid. I wasn’t strong. I couldn’t say the only thing that mattered, even when he had spoken first. My heart was caught in a raptor’s grip. How could I be so afraid? Li was still so close, and then… it was too late.

Out of the mists, the Faeries came.

They came in pairs and in lines, in spirals and in columns, in formal dress and jester’s caps, in bathrobes and business suits. They came as a parade, a show of color and excitement, but their flags were drab and frayed. Their clothes were dusty and moth eaten, the steps of their dance uncertain as if they had breached the limits of exhaustion, staring with the glassy vision of the dead.

Their voices though, were pure, and when I listened carefully, I could pick out the words to a quiet melody, below and behind the parade. They all sang.

Some that sleep are better left

Some forgotten better lost

Lest you wish to count the cost

Do not wake the gods

Deep divide and chasm cleft

Don’t go lighting up the dark

Not a solitary spark

It would wake the gods

Some that sleep are better left

Black horn shining in the deep

May it not disturb their sleep

He will wake the gods

Out of the mists came four men with ram’s heads, carrying a covered litter between them. The litter was the only untarnished piece in the procession, inlaid with polished gold and studded with pearls, fine silk curtains disguising its occupant. As the other Fae marched and waltzed across the square without sparing us a nod, the rams and their cargo proceeded directly to the center of the promenade, to the forbidding statue, and to Li and me beyond it. When they passed Be’el, he hurried after them, though he hurried without ever coming abreast of the litter.

His face was utterly bland.

Trotting unsteadily behind them, the last of the Fae was neither raven nor man. He was dressed in tattered scraps and ribbons that would have once amounted to a garish display but were now only beggarly. He moved in a way that suggested complete weariness, a body held aloft by nothing but obligation.

“Don’t be afraid,” Li said quietly.

“Thanks,” I said. “Now I’m sure we’re not in danger.”

When they were a few paces away, the rams swept the litter smoothly sideways, exposing the red side curtains. One of the front load bearers shifted so he was no longer on the outside, but the inside of his pole, and then stretched so he was equidistant between the shafts, supporting both, so that his stocky upper body was like a W. He did not tremble.

His partner, no longer needed as a load bearer, stepped with military precision to the red curtained side, faced us directly, and bowed at a ninety degree angle.

The silk parted.

It revealed a child, malnourished, in a tattered shift. Barefoot, she hopped lightly onto the ram’s ramrod back and from there to the ground. Li made no move, but he suddenly radiated stillness, readiness.

And the child changed.

There is a beauty beyond beauty, and a reality beyond the real. Both are terrible in their loveliness. Arice, the Faerie Queen, belonged to these.

Physically, she was still the pathetic orphan, a waif with tangled flaxen hair. Her wrists were stick thin and her cheeks gaunt, but none of this altered her beauty. It wasn’t that she was extraordinarily attractive, but neither is the dawn or the raging of a stormy sea.

Her eyes were wild.

The beetleman cleared his throat loudly so that the music died down to a whisper, then he spoke in a clear voice that carried evenly across the promenade.

“All honor to Arice, Child of the Far Realms, Queen of Mori, and Keeper of the Stone. Raindrops, sunshine, murder, Thursday, Gaci mas do lyluwi.”

I thought of a line from the Lord of the Rings, “…and instead of a dark lord, you shall have a queen…” and immediately shoved it away. Even my Shadow felt subdued; the hate was there, but it was wary.

“Sit,” said the ancient child in a mellow voice, and followed her own advice. She dropped to the cobbles in a way that looked almost accidental, and wrapped pale arms around bony knees.

Li and I followed more carefully, but everyone else remained standing. The rams did not relieve themselves of their burden or even in one case, stand up straight again. The beetle man stood gazing studiously off into the fog, and the remainder of the Fae continued their festival as if nothing had happened. They were dancing and clapping and singing, playing flutes and tambourines, but the sounds drifted to us as if through a thick barrier of cloth.

Arice watched Li like there was no one but them in the world. I knew that look; I had given it. Come on, I thought, that’s not fair. It works on he r, too?

But maybe it’s not magic at all. Maybe it’s just Li.

“I know why you are here,” she said softly, and it was not a child’s voice.

Li, for his part, was looking past her, over her hunched shoulders. “Then you’ll help us meet with the wizard’s council?”

“Why won’t you look into my eyes, Cariad?”

For an instant, I thought she was talking to me, but Li answered.

“I don’t have a year and a day to spare.”

What was it about her eyes? I hadn’t focused on them. Taking her in all at once had been more than enough.

But now I wondered. She wasn’t watching me, so it’s not like I’m going to offend her by…OH CRAP! I gazed into my hands, which were cramping, and I decided that in the future, if Li told me not to do something, I wouldn’t do it.

“You used to like my eyes, Li,” she said in a decided sulk.

He what ? And she called him Li, not Lialanni. No one else had done that before. No one, but me.

“I forgot myself, Arice. You helped me forget. But I have remembered now and I hope you don’t hold that as a grudge against me. I need your help. I need to contact the wizards.”

I was beginning to suspect that Li’s relationship with the Faerie Queen had been more personal than he let on. There were a lot of thing he knew about fairies, or said he had learned from the Fae. I understand he had to have gotten them somewhere, but did it have to be from her ?

I was upset. But winning out over upset by a wide margin was suspicious. Something about Arice did not scream magnanimous, maybe because all the other Fae were openly nervous about the thought of displeasing her. Did they want to be dancing, or did she make them? How long had this festival been going on?

And here I was, eyes downcast, holding hands with her ex. Still, I didn’t intend to let go, not for Malice, not for the Fairie Queen, not for anything.

“Have you seen my bauble?”

I started at the non sequitur; her voice was different. She really did sound like a lost little girl. But when I looked at her, my gaze not staying any higher than her lips, I saw she had aged. She was willowy, but no longer starved, and she had a generous mouth. She might have gained ten years, but she still only looked sixteen.

“I droppeded it.”

Was she serious? Dropped-ed? Her ‘r’ came out like a ‘w’. A bauble immediately brought to mind the diamond, the Tiare, hidden in my bottle. If Li hadn’t clamped down on my fingers and given a light shake of his head, I might have asked about it.

“We haven’t seen your bauble,” Li said. “But there are marbles scattered all over the square.”

“Raven!” the Queen called sharply, and the bird man shuffled closer from where he had crouched behind the litter.

“Mistress,” he murmured, nearly prostrate where he cowered. “How can I serve, Mistress?”

“Find the stone,” she said in a voice cold and imperious enough to fit any majesty. A woman’s voice again.

“Yes, mistress.” The Raven groveled, and set off scouring the square with his beak nearly to the ground.

The stone. Keeper of the Stone was one of her titles. I was suddenly very aware of the uncomfortable bulge in my back pocket. I was very likely sitting on one of the symbols of her office and the fact that she was crazy enough to have ‘dwoppeded’ it and left it on the cobbles did not bolster my sense of well-being. What had Li gotten us into? Maybe it was something else, not the diamond.

“The wizards, Arice. You said you knew why we were here.”

“I do,” she said. “I do. I heard about you from my little cousins, the flowers you set free. They told me who you are running from, and I expected I would see you. I offer you safety here, a home. But of course, only you, my Cariad, only you.”

The last words were much, much too intimate. For once, my Shadow and I were in agreement. Mine.

“We’ll be leaving as soon as we know where to go,” I said firmly.

The Fairie laughed. “Oh, she speaks! That’s good, child. You mustn’t forget yourself, even for him. Why don’t you look at me?”

I caught myself as my head began to automatically respond to her suggestion. Don’t look in her eyes, not again, not when she is looking at you. I felt her gaze like spiders dancing on my scalp. I focused on her feet as I said, “Are you going to help us? Or should we just go?”

There was a pause.

“Li,” she said, “in the future you should teach your pets better etiquette before you begin showing them around. I can only imagine what will happen when she calls a Tellurian ugly.

“Some of them need to be reminded,” Li said wryly. My cheeks burned. It would probably be better if I didn’t make her angry, but she really sounded like she didn’t think of me as any more of a threat than she would have considered a whining dog. I simmered.

Li tried another tack. “You know what Malice will do if she wins. You know what that would mean for the world.”

“I care nothing for your world.” She was standing, tall and haughty and achingly perfect, wrapped in that tattered shift that somehow accentuated a flowering beauty. Her voice was ten voices and the stars burned brighter, flowing in jagged, agitated patterns above. “Let your world burn for Malice’s hunger.”

All around us, the festival had frozen. Be’el adjusted his collar, still gazing studiously ahead. But Li was unfazed.

“Do you care nothing for yourself, for Mori?” he said softly.

She sat, shrinking until she was only the waif child again. The Fae danced to fill the silence.

“Wax and wane.” Arice was lilting, wistful. “Live or die. I sometimes wonder at the way we linger, wasting, wasting.” Her head drooped and fatigue weighed insurmountable on her child’s frame. When she spoke again, her voice was a haunting plea.

“Won’t you die with me, Li? Can’t we leave the world together, like we dreamed before you woke? I thought Darkhorns never lied. Isn’t that their law?”

“I did not say those things, Arice,” Li said gently. “You know I did not.”

“Maybe, maybe, maybe…” she murmured. “Secrets and whispers, then they die. I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

This wasn’t for us. She no longer seemed to realize we were there. All my earlier anger quickly dissolved into fear. Arice was insane.

The Raven came shuffling back, barely above a crawl. “Mistress,” he said. “Mistress.” Arice did not acknowledge him. “Your bauble, mistress. It isn’t here.” The Fae did not have lips, but he gave the impression of licking them. When she still did not respond, he shuffled closer.

“There was nothing, mistress. I saw nothing.”

In one moment, Arice’s hands were both in her lap; in the next, her right arm was held out stiff and the Raven was on his side, rasping to the cobbles. She had slapped him and bones had cracked against the stones.

“Be’el,” she said softly, “please take him away.”

“As my lady commands.” The beetleman stepped wide around our circle and grabbed the Raven by one booted foot, dragging him all the way out of the square. The Fae, human and animal alike, continued their festival, faces painted with a rictus joy.

“See what we’ve become,” Arice said. “See what we’ve become. It’s the mists, Li. You know what they do to us. Mori is dying. I told you it was dying. And when it dies, we die with it. If you would not die with us, Li, I told you what I would do for it. Why did you come? Why would you come, knowing me?”

Her words, a rushing stream, thundered at last into a waterfall.

“Why would you come when you knew I would betray you!?”

Tears hit the stones, red tears that hissed and sprouted dark roots among the rocks. Moss grew there, irregular crimson patches where she cried.

I stood up without having to see Li begin to do the same.

“What is she saying? What’s going on?”

The music was suddenly loud as fairies crowded around us, not close enough to touch, but close enough that we could not escape. They stood shoulder to shoulder, lions and lambs and satyrs richly clothed in moth-eaten garments. They never ceased dancing or smiling their eerie smiles.

Li grasped my shoulders. “No matter what happens, you will be strong enough to meet it.” His eyes were violet shoals, brimming with the waters of a thousand unremembered years, and there was not an ounce of fear in them. That steadied me.

“Oh,” I said.

Then a rock crashed into the side of his skull and Li collapsed like an unstrung puppet.

“Please excuse me,” Be’el said deferentially, “but it was a necessary evil.” He had approached from behind while we were distracted by the crowd. But I hardly saw him. I saw a reflection of myself, hardened, icy, striding out of the darkness.

“It will be easier this time,” my Shadow said as the world blurred around me. “Let me hurt them, let me have them. I can protect our Lialanni. I can save him for you, if you let me.” Her eyes were roiling back, a twin abyss of hate and hunger, but I didn’t care about that, or the pain.

I nodded and suddenly there was nothing in existence but the Shadow and I. She was reaching for my temples, hands curled like claws, and I didn’t care. Not if she could stop them from hurting Li again.

Then there was pain; a searing, wrenching agony as a molten hand dipped into the back of my skull and I was standing in the square. I couldn’t feel my Shadow.

“You mustn’t do that,” said Arice. “There are no dragons in my forest.”

I did not have to look at her to feel butterfly wings fluttering against the glass of my mind. She could be gentle, she reminded me, but she did not have to be.

“A wizard came to me,” said the Fairie Queen at my back, “but he was not of the Council. The wizard told me he was your father.”

I went to my knees without hearing her, cradling Li’s head in my lap. The Fae no longer existed. There were shapes around me, dulled, and voices, muted. They did not matter. There was blood in Li’s hair. That mattered. The one time I had wanted to hear my Shadow, it was silent, because Arice had muzzled it.

Nothing seemed to be broken. He was breathing steadily. He could have been asleep, but he was not. Why had you seemed to be preparing me for this? Why would you bring us into a trap?

He wasn’t getting up this time. He was alive, but he wasn’t getting up.

A hand on my shoulder, a human hand leading up to warm, peridot eyes that glowed beneath short gray hair streaked with coal.

“Fletcher?” I didn’t understand. “What are you doing here?”

“We’ve come to take you away,” he said.

A space had cleared for the Totem brothers. Two great wolves flanked us, one russet and one dark, Casey and Abram. Ajax stood a little farther back, a grim titan splitting the circle of the Fae. Hope bloomed in an instant but was pruned just as quickly. Fletcher’s expression was much too controlled, too forbidding, for this to be a rescue.

“Where? I asked. “Where will you take us?”

“Let me carry Lialanni, child. He needs Esme to look after him.”

Fletcher tried to move around me so he could take Li, but I leaned over his body, refusing to let go.

“How did you know we were here?” I demanded.

Fletcher’s hand fell away and he dropped to his haunches.

“We were sent,” he said, looking away from my eyes. It was Ajax who mumbled a more complete answer.

“Malice is holding Numia hostage,” he said. “Until we bring you back to her.”

“You’ll hand us over? You’ll kill us for her?”

I could see his jaw clench, the slabs of muscle on his shoulders tensed in anger, but he didn’t deny it.

“Not for her,” he said, “for the Naiad, for our people. It is your mother come hunting in Numia, following you. I will do what I must, whatever I must, to see my family safe.”

I glared at him, but then I looked at Li.

“Let him stay here. I will go with you, but my mother doesn’t have to have him, too.”

I could feel Arice’s eyes on me, prickling my skin. That is what she wanted from the beginning. She was probably insane, but anything would be better than Malice, who was sure to kill him outright. Esme would never be given the chance to heal him, but if the Fae could wake him, he could heal himself. By that time, if it was too late to come after me, all the better.

At least, he would be safe.

“No.” The giant’s hands were pulling me away from Li and Fletcher was there to catch him.

“I’m sorry,” said the old wolf.

“No!” I screamed. “Leave him alone! You can’t!” I flailed against Ajax with all I had, but I may as well have been a toddler throwing a tantrum. He had me helpless with one arm.

“Malice made us swear that we would bring you both if we could. I won’t risk her wrath, not even for Lialanni. Not when there is so much at stake.”

“Let him go!”

None of the wolves would look at me, and Fletcher had turned away with Li lying across his arms. I was briskly carried out from the circle of Fae and into the square.

Arice watched us go and the music, which had paused, began again.

Wizards work to weave the world

Sorcerers bend their bounds

But both do bow to the Wilding song

In terror of those sounds

The lyrics meant nothing to me. I saw a fifth member of the wolves’ party waiting for us at the edge of the fog. It was only when I recognized him that Arice’s words settled in my mind. ‘A wizard did come asking about you…”

Tall and dark and thin, he was not quite as I remembered, but people never are that have been away a long time. When I recognized him, I stopped struggling and three quarters of the way to the edge of the fog, Ajax set me down. My father wore a black robe decorated by the outline of a dragon in red. But what was really different? It was the absence of the sadness that had defined him all of my life. He was not sad any longer; he was…fevered.

“Abigail,” he said, and held out his arms as if to embrace me. Tears were on my cheeks, but I was not crying. I crossed the distance between us in a daze, and then I punched him.

“How could you!”

He was surprised but not hurt, and caught my arm before I could hit him again.

“That is quite enough,” he said in a voice unlike any I could remember, hard and aloof. “I belong to your mother, to her and her alone, as do you. You were born for her and live at her disposal.” He looked over my head. “Ajax, take hold of her again. She won’t cooperate.”

I felt the great man’s hand settle on my shoulder and I did not resist. My arms fell to my sides.

“She will walk,” Ajax said gently, if an earthquake can be gentle. “She understands now.”

Acton, my father, gave a curt nod. “As long as you keep her from causing any trouble before we come to the Door.”

“Dad…?” I said, but there was nothing in his face of the man he had been, nothing but a physical resemblance. His eyes met mine with all the tenderness of permafrost, and he turned into the fog without a hint of acknowledgement. I felt him dying again.

“Law,” said the unfamiliar wizard, and a ball of yellow flame the size of a grapefruit appeared above his upturned palm. The mists fell away from him.

With wolves at my sides and something far worse ahead, we plunged back into Mori.

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