After dinner, Sarai accompanied Carala back toward her apartments, but tried to divert her off to the Gloaming Library so they could continue planning their salon and, of course, trade gossip about Lord Marhollow and a hundred other topics. It had been nearly a year since the sisters had seen each other.

"Oh, no, Sarai -- I really can't." Tacen had been insisting he see Carala earlier and earlier, and she would have to sneak out very soon indeed. "I am terribly behind in this painting Madame Greythorne wants, and I need to make some real progress with it before Denisius arrives."

"Well, that's all right," Sarai had smiled cheerily. "I'll come with you to your apartments. I bet I could help you, Cara. You know I was always much better with a brush than you are."

"I -- no, Sarai -- I -- you know I don't paint well with an audience."

"Oh," her sister had replied softly, unhappiness shadowing her face for a moment. "I understand, Cara. Well, if you change your mind, I'll be in the Library. I want to see how badly father's letting it fall apart." She had given Carala a sad smile and turned away, heading toward the Gloaming Wing with her heavy tread.

Carala looked after her with a look of anguish. She had read Sarai's expression perfectly well. Now that she was promised to a lord, even a minor one, she didn't feel the need to make time for her older sister.

Though most of their siblings treated Sarai politely at worst -- Silenio was as fanatically devoted to protecting her as he was Carala, completely blind to both girls' looks -- Carala had seen this exact reaction from too many of their innumerable cousins, not to mention unrelated noble houses whose powers had made it clear that Sarai was an unsuitable match for any of their sons. There had even been a few handmaidens over the years who had said cruel things about Sarai where they thought they would not be overheard. Carala had to give her father credit: when such handmaidens' loose tongues were discovered, they were shipped off to the furthest, most inhospitable courts in the empire. Somilius Deyn suffered no insults to his children except his own.

Oh Sarai, it's not like that, I swear before the gods it isn't, Carala thought as she watched her sister's broad backside disappear into the shadowy corridor that led to the Gloaming Library. I'll make it up to you when it's all over, I will, I'll tell you everything and I'll tell you how sorry I am for making you feel like this. She wondered with a nauseated stab through her belly what a man like Tacen would have thought of Sarai; a man who was truly nothing but a wolf and saw women as fit only to seduce or kill. Which was Sarai? And what did it say about Carala that she would willingly lay with such a man?

Again, the urge to throw herself at her goodhearted sister's feet and confess it all seized her, almost irresistible. But ultimately her wolf would not be denied.

Usually Tacen met her at the watchman's door at the base of the Tower, but tonight he was lounging naked in the Conservatory, watching her with hungry eyes as she sauntered from the door to where he sprawled on one side amid the flickering circle of candles. In the week and a half since she had first lay with him, she had learned he enjoyed watching her shed her clothing as she approached him, and so she did.

The brightest phase of the moon Saya was rapidly approaching, and the closer it came the more Tacen let the wolf emerge in his body: in addition to the hypnotic wolf eyes that shone from his face, soft brown hair coated his entire body, not quite thick or concealing enough to be called fur. The tips of his ears had sharpened to points, like those of a fairy elf from a Nythelian folktale, and his lips were given a lush fullness by the sharp fangs some of his teeth had become. To her shame Carala found all these feral alterations to his body even more alluring than his human shape.

A hungry look on her face and in her eyes, Carala joined him on the floor. The thickness of his manhood was already rubbing against her thigh before either of them spoke. "Wait," she whispered breathlessly, breaking his kiss, her fingers roaming the thick tufts of his shoulders. That forest smell was stronger than it had ever been, and in its haze she found it impossible to think clearly. "Wait, Tacen. There's something I must tell you."

"Anything, my dear princess."

"I -- I know what you want from me."

"Yes. A princess of wolves, you will be one soon, my love."

"I -- I -- Tacen, I don't -- I don't know if I can -- "

"You can. You will."

"Please. Please let me talk." Tacen's tongue wet his lips, flicking against his fangs, but he held his peace for a moment. "I can't . . . lose control. Lose everything I am."

"You won't. You will lose nothing. You'll only gain things, the most wonderful things. There is no loss of control."

That contradicted everything she had ever heard about werewolves, although admittedly she was no expert. "How is that possible?"

"When you change, when the wolf inside you comes forth to run under the moon and hunt with me, we'll leave this city. We'll go to Gallowsport. There is a man there who knows everything about the wolf's blood. He will show you everything you need to please the moons, to please the wolf. To please me . . . and yourself."

She shook her head all through this. Even now she could not look away from his eyes. It took every ounce of will she still possessed not to agree to everything immediately. If not for the pain she already knew she'd inflicted on her sister, she might not have been able to manage it. That pain soured the lust Tacen awakened in her, made whatever prowled inside her shier than it might have been. "Tacen . . . no. This has to end. I'm to be married. Gallowsport, I cannot go with you to Gallowsport, I cannot go with you anywhere!"

Tacen's laugh was more like a growl. His thickened hands continued to roam her bare flesh, his nails sharp and rough, black in the candlelight.

"Go with you -- I cannot even meet you anymore this week! My husband to be visits soon."

"You will never marry him, Carala. No wolf would lay with so soft a man. You've told me all about him. Soon you'll understand a man like him is nothing but prey to you."

Violently she began to shake all over, horrified by the thought that she might see Denisius, sweet, inoffensive, soft Denisius, in no different a light than a she-wolf saw a skittish deer grown fat from being spoiled in the Emperor's forest preserve. "No -- no, Tacen, that isn't going to be me -- "

"My princess, it is already you."

And he began to change. For the first time he let the wolf emerge fully before her, the paws, the tail, the snout that consumed his face, everything. And she screamed. And as he took her those screams became cries of sheerest ecstasy, all fears forgotten, everything but her lust for the wolf fleeing her mind. Not just lust for the wolf claiming her, but for the one caged inside her, on the very edge of breaking free. When the wolf dipped his muzzle between her legs, his thick saliva pooling in the triangle of silky black hair above her sex, then his tongue plunging into her, Carala's body undulated and writhed in a pleasure beyond anything she had ever known, even beyond anything Tacen had done to her to that point.

Then his fangs sank into her inner thigh, deep enough to puncture her flesh, deep enough to draw hot blood from her body, deep enough to poison her with the wolf blood that possessed him, but not deep enough to kill. And the pleasure of the wolf's bite, the pleasure of knowing her blood would become wolf's blood, was even greater than anything she had felt before.