Caught in the shadows

Esme 

The moment in the great hall stays under my skin through the rest of the day. I keep my head down and keep moving, but the pull from that single look will not let me return to the quiet I had before his arrival. It sits low in my chest like a live thread, tugging whenever I try to think of anything else. When I breathe, it tightens and when I blink, it hums. Something answers it from deeper than bone inside me.

Something stirs.

It is not a voice, not yet. It is a pressure against the place in me that has always been empty. A slow push upward that makes my ribs feel tight and my breath feel shallow as I steady my hands over the basin and reach for the next pan.

Marek keeps the lines strict after the council session and orders move in a clean sequence. He does not ask me questions and he does not allow others to ask them either. When Marla sidles close, he redirects her to the scullery with a tilt of his chin. When Kai tries to slide a joke under the noise to see if he can lift my mouth into a smile, Marek calls him back to the ovens. I am grateful for the structure because without it I would fray.

By dusk the rush loosens and the air cools enough to feel the difference between steam and night wind through the service door. I wipe the last board and carry the bucket to the drain. Marek nods once, the same way he did yesterday and the day before, and tells the night crew to check the doors twice. He dismisses those of us not on rotation with a final sweep of his attention that makes certain no one is pretending to linger for gossip.

In the dormitory, Marla throws herself onto her bed and groans into her blanket as if that will clean the day from her body faster. Kai stretches his arms overhead until his shoulders pop and grins at the ceiling like the boards told him a joke and Hannah counts out the next day’s pins and sets them in a neat line at the edge of her shelf. I sit, unlace my shoes, and lean forward until my back loosens. My hands will not stop shaking so I tuck them under my knees where no one will see.

“Esme.” Marla’s voice is muffled by fabric. “Tell me a story about a village where the heads of kitchens are made of chocolate and the pots wash themselves.”

Kai laughs. “He would still find a way to stare.”

I make a sound that could be a tired breath. I do not trust my voice with anything else because if I speak, I might say the wrong thing. If I speak, I might say mate and undo myself in front of three people who do not owe me anything but work. I can’t have a mate when I’m wolfless. Can I? Maybe she is just dormant? I want to scream my frustration out, but that won’t help a thing. 

Lights go down one by one and the dormitory settles. When breathing evens and blankets shift into the steady rhythm of sleep, I swing my legs back to the floor and stand. Every board in the corridor has a personality, so I pick the steps I learned on my first night and let my weight sit where the wood accepts it silently.

The service door opens to colder air as night folds along the long passage between kitchen and lower hall. I hold to the shadow on the wall and begin.

This is what I know how to do. Count, measure and remember. I follow the routes I watched over the last days with trays in my hands, turning without thought at the places where light changes, slowing at the turns where a guard might have a habit of leaning. I count patrols, I count the doors that open toward me and the ones that open away. Every handle becomes an instruction and every hinge becomes a clock.

I tell myself this is training, I tell myself I have done worse under my father’s hand and I tell myself the difference is not important. The difference is important because I have never done this with so many wolves close enough to scent me if I lose control of my breath.

Something presses again when I think of the word scent. It is not heat, not cold, not pain. It is a presence and it meets the pull I felt in the great hall and the two pressures lean into each other until my knees threaten to go weak. I flatten my palms to the wall and wait until my breath smooths.

Every door feels like a threat if I let it so of course I refuse to let it. I mark the first guard route and the second. I learn that one hums without knowing and one drags his left foot on the turn because the boot has a seam where it should not. I learn the length of torchlight along the western stretch and the depth of shadow at the corner where the herb shed enters the yard. And lastly I learn the way the floor tightens where old stone meets new wood near the corridor that leads toward the council rooms.

Voices carry from the stair above the laundry, two guards changing watch, the quiet murmur that says nothing is wrong and everything is awake. I stop where the wall meets a pillar and wedge myself into the angle until my shoulder no longer feels exposed. Their words move past and down, nothing more urgent than a complaint about the taste of the late pot stew. When they are gone, I slide along the pillar and ease forward.

My heartbeat is loud in my ears so I force it to slow. The guard on this level has a torch and the habit of lifting it when he walks so I back two paces into a recess and hold. The heat reaches my cheek first. The light slides along the edge of the wall and across the back of my hand and I hold my breath until my chest burns. He turns and continues, flame drifting away down the hall.

When the heat is gone, I move. My body trembles but I place each foot the way I would place a blade. I keep to the narrow, darker band that runs along the left side where fewer soles have polished the stone. My mouth is dry and my tongue feels heavy against my palate. I swallow and the sound seems loud to me, though the corridor does not change.

There is a service turn by the carved screen where the light throws lattice across the floor during the day but at night it is a dark strip of wall with a memory of shapes. I press myself to it, count to fifty, then to a hundred, and start again. The next watch passes at the far end and I feel the movement rather than see it. My arms throb from holding myself tense.

Then something shifts behind me.

It is not the slow drag of a servant with a load or the steady tread of two guards who know their route and It is not the swerve and click of a steward with a ring of keys. The air changes in that precise way I learned to recognize when an animal pauses to take stock of what else shares a path.

I turn my head just enough to see.

Gold finds me from the dark, the color carries across the short space as if the light were its own. My chest stutters, heat climbs the back of my neck. He stands at a pace beyond the corner and he has not lifted the torch from the bracket on the wall, he does not need it. His presence fills the stretch of corridor the way cold fills a bucket and the line that hooked into me in the hall draws tight enough to hurt.

I stand as still as I possibly ever learned in training, knowing it will not be enough. He has seen me, and probably sensed me by now. He doesn’t move at first, and I try to stay small against the wall, not gaining more attention than I already have. The thing in my chest and mind moves again under his heated gaze, wanting to will me forward, but I stay put. 

Then he moves. Five large strides and he is just in front of me. I swallow, cursing myself. This is what I have been drilled to not let happen, and yet here I am. 

“You are far from bed, little one.” He murmurs, knowing how far a voice will travel in the halls at this hour of day. 

“I must have gone down the wrong corridor, Majesty. Please excuse me.” I turn, but he grabs my arm. Not hard, but enough to apply pressure and heat. It travels up my arm and settles around my heart. The feeling from before becoming almost unbearably intense. 

“Be careful, little one, someone could think you were up to something.” He says in my ear, his mouth barely moving. His finger finds my chin. “Do not be seen another time, Esme. The wrong people would not be so understanding. The castle can be a dangerous place.” His golden eyes darken a shade, showing the presence of his wolf. I nod, not lowering my eyes for him this time. 

He grunts and lets me go. Then he turns away, striding down the hallway opposite where I came from. I exhale, and lean against the wall for support. 

He caught me and he chose to turn.

The corridor feels longer on the way back and every corner holds a memory of golden eyes at the edge of darkness. When I ease the dormitory door open and slip inside, the air smells of soap, old wool, and the faintest trace of flour that follows Kai even when he is asleep. My hands will not be still so I tuck them under the blanket and lie on my side with my face to the wall. The mattress holds the day’s heat and the room settles into the deep quiet of a late hour.

He caught me and left me standing, but if he turns again, I will not be ready enough for the consequences, and he is the very target I am trying to get close to.