GUTTING REVENGE

9 years later

Lyra's POV

When I promised to take revenge for my father, I swore it with the hollowness of my chest and the metal in my bones. The vow had lain under my skin like a second heartbeat,persistent, cold, and unyielding. It had nourished me for years.

They looked upon me now as they'd looked upon a girl who'd come back from a bad dream: too much sympathy and too little respect. Most of them'd been out the night the Blue Moon fell. Those sitting in the hall of size were either survivors of that load of smoke and blood, or newly arrived strangers stitched into roles the world had forced upon them. Either way, their verdicts for me were superficial and pure, like knives to clean a wound.

Emma had told them. She had spoken the words in my absence.”He's going to Black Crest. He plans to go in as a servant. He intends to kill their Alpha”.

You will not proceed to enemy territories," one of the elders said, his voice as dry as paper. He said it as if it were a pronouncement.

My mother was sitting beside him. She had attended this gathering, though she would not look at any of us. Her presence was there, yes, but her inside had been drained. She'd gone silent a day after my father's funeral and hadn't uttered a word since. Her eyes were a soft, lost fog that looked but did not perceive. When the elders asked her to step down from playing Luna and let the pack rest in the elders' hands until I was ready, she nodded like a specter agreeing to keep spinning the world.

My wolf growled deep inside me — short, staccato, all teeth. Images flashed with it: my father's fur, wet and ripped, the splintered boards of the yard, how the lance of the arrow had felled my mother. The urge was a slow animal heartbeat. Time to hunt.

"You can't stop me," I stated, and I did not whisper. I could sense each head turn around to regard me as if hearing itself would be painful. "My choice is made. I won't sit here doing nothing."

They objected. The elders bartered explanations like currency -- duty, tradition, danger of bringing a young wolf to an enemy den. They told me I would jeopardize family lineage. They told me I was still dripping with boyish fury and vengeance was a sullied heritage. They did not speak what I overheard: they were scared on their own account. Scared of what purging our lands of corruption would demand of them.

I departed as their words clung to my back. I could have stayed to listen to their counsel, and perhaps I wanted to. But the memory of the yard—my yard—spurred me forward. I owed my father justice, certainly, but more than that I owed him the knowledge someone remembered what he learned: that mercy in the absence of power is a feast for wolves with nastier teeth. I would push a knife into that foe's throat and say a silent prayer over the wreckage. It would be in payment, and it would be enough.

Jennifer knocked on my door a couple of minutes later.

She had been my father's closest friend the night it happened. She'd been the one who had held me by the shoulders and shoved me, protests notwithstanding, down into the secret cellar as the world above burned. She'd hugged me as the fires breaking up the sky. They probably meant to kill me too. She'd chosen a different Fate.

I had opened to her before she entered. Her eyes first fell on the rucksack jammed into position by my bed. She gazed at me afterwards. The scowl came as a reflex  not cruelty, but concern of an older person sharpened into a frown.

"You don't have to tell me," she said in a low tone. "But you think you can go into their den and get out the same?"

"I won't be the same either," I said. "And yes. I will compete. I won't be rowdy. I'll be small. I'll be a servant. I'll read him. Then I'll perform."

Jennifer's jaw shifted. To take a deep breath, she simply regarded me, her eyes scanning the face that was once rent with grief and now is as rigid as iron. Then she did something I wasn't expecting. Her lips eased.

"Do you recall what your father did that night?" she inquired, and there was an undertone to the question that had nothing at all to do with curiosity.

I nodded. My throat tightened.

"He was in the middle of that yard," she explained to them, "and he struggled while he insisted we get out. He bled, yes—he bled for us—but he kept struggling until there was nothing left to struggle with. Not because he wanted glory. Because he thought we could make it through his fighting. He gave himself like that."

Her hands encircled the strap of the rucksack and held it once, as if testing that weight. "Your dad was brave. He was stubborn and kind and bloody in a way that I still cannot pardon his enemies for. If you are going, go with that memory. Not to burn. Not to be full of blind hatred. Be someone who understands why he fights."

I almost laughed. Of all the stories she could tell, she’d chosen the one that would not soothe me. She chose the ember that would turn into the very flame I’d been feeding for years. But her words steadied the edge. They were an ugly sort of blessing — not the soft one my mother would have given, but a practical one: go, do it fast, do it right.

"Rapidly," she told me, fierce and afraid. "In and out. Don't flash teeth until you need to." She stopped and talked again, "And Lyra ? be careful."

She pulled me into a hug, dragging the smell of smoke and withered herbs with her. I could feel her ribs vibrating. "This is from your mother," she told me, and I detected the lie in the smoothness of the words. Jennifer had taken me in when my mom couldn't. She had taken me through the worse of that night's blood and had rescued me by strength, not by feeling. That hug had been given because she was a sentimental creature with a love for my father's child, because she had nowhere else to place what she'd experienced then.

I did not tell her that I had realized it was only my mother's blessing. I let the comfort settle anyhow. It was exactly what I needed.

I tied the straps of the rucksack tight at that point. The items inside were deliberate and few: a maidservant's cloak, self-made pockets, some cloth to use as a gag, a knife with a black handle shaped like my own hand. A small tin of bitter powder to use for runny eyes. A name on the lining, the inflection of a voice I had practiced until it was no longer mine.

"Blend in," Jennifer said, stepping back. "Let them not know you are there."

"I will," I said. My voice was gentle, and the wolf snuggled close against me, pleased at the promise. It wanted more than blending  in. It wanted the kill, the scent, the proof. I kept that hunger in the chest where it could not lead.

Jennifer clucked her tongue softly, like a reprimand or a blessing. “You owe your father something,” she said. “But remember you’re still a girl who laugh-cried over small foolish things. Don’t let the hunt take the rest of you.”

Don't worry," I said to her. I said it more than I meant. I wanted her to worry because it was a human anchor. An anchor that reminded her I was not merely the shadow of a massacre. I was a person who still got to feel the small hard happiness of a birthday lit by lanterns.

I walked her to the door. Her hand swept down my arm, fast and tentative. "Come back," she urged, and that plea — silly, absurd, human — lodged in my throat.

"I will," I lied. It was the sort of lie that kept people going.

Outside, the moon was high and cold. The elders' house was quiet. Emma had already left before daylight with the elders; she'd done what she could—warned them; tried to hold me back. I knew that she was afraid for me. She was little and bright and attached to all the life I still had.

I set out on the road to Black Crest. The house was in my wake as a black gash in the sky, crowded with the ones who would wait for the river and plant seeds and make tales until I returned. In front of me was a way with the taste of iron and winter.

My wolf sang low. Approval, hunger, something like joy. I cinched the rucksack strap and allowed myself space. Blend. Wait. Find the slot. Strike. Leave.

Tomorrow I would be small. Tomorrow I would be sharp. Tomorrow I would begin to impose the justice that had gnawed at my skin my entire life.