FOUR

~Calla~

We left Crescent Hollow before the sun had fully risen, and I did not look back.

The carriage was black and lined with dark red velvet, and it smelled of cedar and leather. Kaius rode outside with his men. I sat alone with my bag in my lap and my mother's letter in my pocket, and I did not open it. I told myself I was waiting until I was far enough away, but the truth was I was afraid of what it would say.

The bond hurts less with every mile. By noon I could breathe without wincing. By evening I could eat the bread that a young guard named Brin brought to my window, along with a flask of water and an awkward smile.

"Her Highness should drink something," he said, and then went red to the ears. "I mean... miss. Lady. I don't know what to call you."

"Calla is fine."

"Calla." He tried it out, grinned, and rode away, still pink.

The Lycan soldiers did not smile at me. They looked, and they whispered, and I caught the word wolfless twice in the first hour. I tried not to listen. I kept my back straight and my hands folded, the way Maeve had taught me, and I watched the pale forest slide by the window.

On the second day, the road narrowed into the Tarn Gorge.

It was a deep cut through the mountains, with sheer gray walls on either side and a river rushing along the bottom. The carriage slowed. The riders drew closer together. Kaius moved up beside my window, and I saw his eyes go to the cliffs above us, narrowing.

"Stay inside," he said.

"What is it?"

"Too quiet."

The first arrow struck the carriage door before he had finished speaking.

The gorge exploded with noise. Horses screamed, and men shouted, and something heavy landed on the roof of the carriage. Through the window I saw dark figures pouring down the rock face on ropes, wearing black masks and carrying crossbows and long knives. There were at least thirty of them.

I have never been brave. But I had been told to stay put for most of my life, and I had had enough. I threw the door open and jumped out.

"Calla!" Kaius roared from somewhere to my left.

I didn't listen. Ten feet from me, Brin had fallen from his horse with a crossbow bolt buried in his chest. He lay on his back in the dust, his hands scrabbling at the shaft, and blood was bubbling at the corner of his mouth.

I dropped to my knees beside him. "Brin. Brin, look at me."

"Hurts," he gasped. "Lady, it hurts."

I had no healing training. Maeve had taught me how to bind a cut and how to boil willow bark for fever. I had no idea what to do with a hole in a man's lung. But I pressed my hands flat against his chest anyway, on either side of the bolt, and I said the only thing that came into my head.

"Please. Please don't die."

Heat rushed down my arms. A pale silver glow poured out of my palms and sank into Brin's chest, and I felt it, a pulling, tearing sensation, as though something inside me were being drawn out through my skin. The bolt slid free of his flesh on its own. The wound closed. A moment later, Brin sat up, wide-eyed, and touched his own chest.

"I'm not hurt," he said faintly.

I stared at my hands. They were still glowing.

A howl split the air, and it was not a wolf's howl. It was deeper than that, and cruder, and it shook the rocks. I looked up.

Kaius was standing in the middle of the road with half his face transformed. His eyes had gone completely red, and his hands ended in claws, and the black cloak hung in tatters from shoulders that were far too wide. The three rogues in front of him were not standing for long. He moved so fast I could hardly follow it, and when he threw one man into the cliff with a casual swing of his arm, the sound the body made was one I will not forget.

He wasn't fighting anymore. He was killing. And he wasn't stopping.

"Majesty!" Thane shouted from across the road. "Kaius! They're running! Kaius!"

He didn't hear. He had lifted another rogue by the throat, and the red in his eyes burned like a coal. I understood at that moment, with perfect clarity, that if no one stopped him he would keep going until nothing was left standing.

I don't know why I walked toward him. It was the stupidest thing I have ever done. I only knew that the new bond in my chest was pulling me forward like a hook, and I could feel the wild, furious agony coming off him in waves.

"Kaius," I said.

He turned his head.

I reached up and laid my palm against his cheek. My hand was still glowing, and where it touched his skin, the silver light spread out in a thin web across his face. He drew a long, shuddering breath. The red bled out of his eyes. The claws receded. He dropped the rogue, who scrambled away, coughing, and Kaius stood very still with my hand on his face, breathing like a man who had just run a hundred miles.

"What did you do?" he whispered.

"I don't know," I said.

The rogues were fleeing up the cliffs, dragging their wounded. One of them did not make it. He lay at the edge of the road, with a Lycan arrow in his back, and General Thane crouched beside him and pulled the mask away.

"Gray," Thane said, grimly. He peeled back the collar of the dead man's black tunic. Underneath it was a gray coat with a small embroidered mark on the collar. A closed iron fist. "Marlowe colors, Majesty."

Kaius's face went hard. "Orsen sent them after me?"

The dying rogue coughed. Blood ran from the corner of his mouth, and his eyes found mine, and he smiled a terrible, red smile.

"Not the king," he whispered. "Orders were... take the Omega alive."

He died with that smile still on his face.