chapter 5 The Howl

There are howls that mean come home, and howls that mean stay away. Every wolf learns the difference before they learn to walk.

This one meant neither.

It rolled over Crestmoor from somewhere beyond the walls, long and low and wrong. It didn't rise and fall the way a howl should. It waited. Like a hand held out in the dark, palm up, patient as a grave.

Every student in the stairwell froze.

"That's not a pack call," someone whispered.

"That's not any call," said someone else.

The lockdown bell tolled again, slow and heavy, and the howl answered it, note for note, as if mocking it. A girl near the notice board started to sob. Two of Cassia's friends grabbed each other's arms. Cassia herself stood utterly still with her father's letter crumpled in her fist.

Mara, my wolf said.

Her voice was small. I had never heard it small before.

What?

I know that sound.

Cold ran all the way down my spine. How? You've been awake for four months.

I don't know. A long, shivering pause. But I know it. I know it the way I know the inside of your ribs.

"Everyone to the Great Hall," Rhys said.

He didn't shout. He didn't need to. Three words, level and calm, and the whole stairwell turned toward him like flowers toward a window. "Now. Walk, don't run. Stay with your year group. Anyone who sees a door open that shouldn't be, tell me and nobody else."

They went. That was the thing about Rhys Calloway. People went.

I started to follow. A hand caught my elbow.

"Not you," said Sable.

I looked at him. "Why not me?"

"Because it's you they want in a crowd." His voice was rough, like a rusted hinge. Four words, and his eyes were already scanning the windows again. "Not a crowd. Not tonight."

"Then where?"

"Up," said Kieran, and there was no humming in it now. "Somewhere with one door and four walls and the three of us outside it."

"I'm not a parcel," I said.

"No," Rhys said quietly. He'd come back through the thinning crowd without my noticing. "You're a person someone is hunting. It's not the same, and I'm sorry for both."

I opened my mouth to argue.

Then the howl came again. Closer.

And my wolf answered.

I didn't mean it to happen. I swear I didn't. One second my mouth was open to say something sharp, and the next, a sound tore out of my throat that I had never made in my life. It wasn't loud. It wasn't even long. It was low and clear and carried, a single rising note that rang off the stone like a struck bell.

The howl outside cut off mid-breath.

Silence. Total, perfect, dreadful silence, as if the whole night had put its hand over its mouth.

I clapped both hands over my lips. My heart was hammering so hard my vision pulsed.

"I didn't..." My voice shook. "I didn't do that. She did. I swear, she..."

"Mara."

Rhys's hands closed gently over my wrists and pulled them down. His thumbs rested on my pulse. His gray eyes were very steady, and I held on to them like a rope.

"Breathe."

"They heard me."

"Yes."

"They know where I am."

"They knew when the glass broke." His voice was so quiet that only I could hear it. "That wasn't a mistake. That was an answer. And now they know your wolf is awake, and strong, and can't be silenced. Which means they'll be more careful." A pause. "And so will we."

"That's not comforting."

"I'm learning to stop trying."

The corner of my mouth twitched against my will. It wasn't a smile. It was the memory of one.

Behind him, Kieran let out a long, ragged breath and ran a hand through his hair. "Well, that's the end of subtle."

"Subtle ended at the sword," said Sable.

"Subtle ended at the ankle," Kieran corrected. "Remember when she tripped over her own skirt in the corridor and everyone laughed? Four months of subtle. And I wasted it all on being amused."

I stared at him. "You saw that?"

He went still. For a heartbeat, his careless face flickered, and something much more honest looked out of it.

"I saw all of it," Kieran said softly. "That's the part I'm not proud of."

They took me to the north tower.

I had never been up there. It was reserved for the infirmary wing and the visiting examiners, and it smelled of lavender, boiled linen, and old stone. A winding staircase climbed past three landings and two guards, who stepped aside for Rhys without a word, and then ended in a narrow corridor lined with small round doors.

Rhys opened the last one.

"Visiting scholars sleep here," he said. "The Council will approve it by morning. I've already sent word."

I walked in and stopped.

It was a small room. A very small room. A bed with a patchwork quilt, a narrow desk, a lamp with a green glass shade, and a window set deep in the wall with a cushioned seat. A fire had already been lit. Someone had folded a clean nightgown at the foot of the bed.

Not a cot at the foot of Cassia's bed.

Not a servant's pallet.

A bed. A real one. With a door that closed.

I didn't realize I was crying until Kieran made a strangled noise behind me.

"Oh, no. No. Nope. Absolutely not. I can handle swords and assassins and Garrick Hale's face, but I cannot handle that." He backed away with both hands up. "Rhys. Rhys, do something."

"I'm not doing anything," Rhys said. His voice was suspiciously rough.

"Sable?"

Sable didn't say a word. He crossed the room, set a small wrapped parcel on the desk, and left.

I wiped my face with my sleeve. "What was that?"

"Dinner," said Rhys. "He raided the kitchens twenty minutes ago. He thought you'd miss supper."

I stared at the door Sable had gone through. A strange warmth was spreading through my chest. It had nothing to do with the fire.

"I don't understand," I said. "Why are you all being so..." I waved a helpless hand. "Kind."

For a long moment, nobody answered.

"Because somebody should have been," Rhys said at last. "A long time ago."

He turned to go. At the door, he paused with one hand on the frame.

"Lock the door behind us. Window latch is iron-bound, so it'll hold. Don't open it for anyone you can't scent." A beat. "Even if they sound like someone you know."

"Rhys..."

"Goodnight, Mara."

The door closed. Three sets of footsteps faded down the stairs, and I heard the unmistakable sound of three boys deciding, without discussing it, to sleep in the corridor.

I locked the door. Then I stood in the middle of a room that was mine for one night, and for the first time since I was six years old, I had no one to carry anything for.

I didn't know what to do with my hands.

I couldn't sleep.

I lay in a bed that smelled of lavender and clean wool, under a quilt that someone had stitched by hand, and stared at the ceiling. The fire popped. The wind pressed against the glass. Somewhere far below, the academy slept uneasily, the way a wounded animal sleeps.

You're thinking too loud, my wolf murmured.

I'm not thinking.

You are. You're thinking about the howl.

I rolled onto my side. You said you knew it.

Yes.

How?

A long silence. The fire shifted. When she spoke again, her voice was so soft I had to hold my breath to hear.

Because someone used to sing it to me.

My eyes opened.

That's impossible. You didn't exist until my birthday.

I existed, she said. I was just asleep. I was asleep for a very long time, in a very dark place, and sometimes, I heard it. Through the walls. Through the years. A pause. A woman's voice. A lullaby. Low and sweet and sad.

My heart began to beat in slow, heavy strokes.

Mara, said my wolf. That howl tonight was the same tune.

I sat up.

Outside the window, in the black, windless dark, someone was singing.

It was very faint. It came from far away, from beyond the gate, beyond the wall, beyond the edge of the trees. A woman's voice, low and sweet and unbearably sad, rising and falling in a tune I had never heard in my life.

And yet, God help me, I knew every single note.

I was halfway to the window before I realized I'd moved.

Because I knew what came next. I knew the next line before it was sung. And as the voice sank into the final, aching phrase of the lullaby, I heard my own mouth whisper the words along with it, words in a language I didn't speak, in a voice I hadn't known I had.

The song ended.

In the silence after, three heavy fists began pounding on my door.

"MARA!"

I turned. My hand was pressed flat against the cold glass. And on the pane, where my palm had been, a pale, silvery pattern was spreading outward like frost.

A crescent moon, inside a ring of wolves.