The Bride with Two Wolves

Elara

At 2:14 in the morning, something moved inside Elara Vale's chest that was not her heartbeat.

"Elara," it said, in her sister's voice.

She rose up instantly, the blanket tangling around her knees. The room was dark and silent. The window was closed and there was nobody standing by the bed.

"Serena?"

But no one answered. She only felt the cold, strange sense of someone breathing inside her ribs.

Elara pressed a hand to her chest. Her heart was racing, but underneath it ran a second pulse, slower and heavier, like a drum being struck in another room.

Then the smell hit her.

It smelled like copper. Hot and wet and unmistakable. She looked down at her hands and found them clean, the nails had been bitten ragged and there was a smear of ink on one thumb. It wasn't coming from her, but the smell clung to her skin as if she had been kneeling in it.

Blood. Her sister's blood.

Cold, the voice said. It was smaller now, scraped thin. Cold. Empty. Where.

"Look, this isn't funny," Elara whispered. Her voice came out cracked. "If you're doing this on purpose, stop or I'll kill you."

Serena had left for the shrine at dusk, last night, with two guards and a basket of white flowers, to pray before the wedding and she would not be back until morning. The shrine was two valleys away so there was no way she could be inside this room.

But twins born under the Silver Eclipse could sometimes feel each other across any distance. Elara and Serena had learned to ignore it as children: sometimes a flicker of someone else's headache, or a phantom taste of someone else's supper. But there had never been a case of hearing voices or smelling blood.

Elara reached for Wren, the small, shy wolf who had lived in her chest all her life.

Wren was there, a tiny warm weight curled as far back as she could go. She didn't answer and she didn’t move, but she was shaking.

Wren was shaking like a wolf who had seen something enormous walk into the room.

Wren had heard the voice too and it knew who the voice belonged to. Elara felt the recognition ripple through her, small and sad. The shaking stopped, and the little wolf pressed toward the sound instead of away.

Where, the second voice said again, and a wave of grief rolled through Elara's body. It was so much, it made her gasp.

She stumbled out of bed. The floorboards were icy under her bare feet. She crossed to the mirror on the wall, meaning to splash water on her face, to wake up properly and to prove this was all a dream.

But when she saw her face, gold eyes were staring back at her. They were not her eyes. Hers were brown and plain as river mud, a color her mother called unremarkable. But these were bright and molten and hard. They were the eyes of a wolf looking out from a human face.

Elara had seen those eyes before. On the night of her sister's naming ceremony, in the carved portrait of Silvermoon's founding Luna.

But she had seen it on Serena.

Suddenly, heat rolled up her spine. Her bones ached, a deep, grinding hurt, as if something inside them wanted to come out. Her fingers curled and the nails sharpened. A growl scraped up her throat that she had never made in her life.

She was going to shift. Here, in her bedroom, with no warning and no control.

"No," she hissed. "No, no, no."

She grabbed the bedpost to anchor herself. Wood groaned in her grip. She stared in horror as a crack ran up the carved oak, splintering from her knuckles to the ceiling.

Before now, Elara Vale could not lift a full water pail without spilling it.

She forced herself to breathe the way Rowan had taught her during his worst coughing fits. In for four. Hold for four. Out for four. Count. Don't think. Count.

The heat slowly subsided and the gold dimmed to a glitter at the edge of her vision. The claws shrank back into ordinary, bitten nails.

The second voice went quiet, but it did not leave. She could feel it settled there in her ribs, patient and aching, a presence that had nowhere else to go.

Her door pushed opened and her mother stood on the threshold. She was fully dressed. Her gray gown was buttoned to the throat and her hair was pinned flat, not a strand out of place. A lamp burned in her hand, steady as a candle at a funeral. Nobody had called for her. Well, nobody could have called for her, not at this hour, and not so fast.

She had walked through the dark house and arrived before the noise had even faded.

"Elara." Mother's voice was low and level. "Move away from the mirror. Come here."

"Something's wrong with Serena." Elara's own voice shook. "I heard her. I can smell her blood. Mother, something has happened."

"Sit."

It was not a request. Mother crossed the room, set the lamp on the dresser, and took Elara's wrist in cool, dry fingers. Then she turned Elara’s face toward the light, studied her eyes for a long moment, and let go.

Elara noticed that she did not gasp, she didn't ask what was wrong and she didn't ask who Elara had heard.

Instead, she reached past her and drew the curtains tight.

From the hall came the low murmur of men's voices, her father's and at least two others. Elara knew the third. Elder Lucian's smooth, patient tone drifted through the wood, warm as always, steady as a hand on a shoulder. Why was the council in her house at two in the morning?

"Father," she called. "What's going on?"

The voices stopped but nobody answered.

Elara sat on the edge of the bed, because her legs had stopped holding her, and looked at the cracked bedpost. She tucked her hands between her knees so no one would see them tremble.

A knock sounded at the front of the house. It was a sharp and urgent pounding.

Her father's footsteps crossed the hall and the door opened. Cold air rolled up the stairs and into the room. Then a young man's voice, breathless, cracking at the edges.

"Alpha's emissary. I'm sorry for the hour. There's been an accident on the shrine road."

Elara was on her feet before she knew she had moved.

She went down the stairs barefoot, with Mother's hand closing too late around her sleeve. The messenger stood in the hall, mud to the knees, his chest heaving. Her father stood in front of him with one hand braced against the wall.

"It was a rockslide," the messenger said. "At the bend by the old well. It took the lower trail just after midnight. The guards were thrown clear and Lady Serena was caught under it."

The world tilted.

"Is she alive?" Elara's voice came from very far away.

"The healers pulled her out. She's breathing. But she won't wake." The young man swallowed. "They tried everything. She's not responding to anything. They're carrying her to the healing wing now."

Inside Elara's chest, the second voice cried out, one long, soundless note of loss.

She pressed a hand over her mouth.

The messenger was still talking and Elder Lucian had stepped forward to take the report, calm and kind, murmuring thanks. Her father had sunk onto the hall bench with his head in his hands.

And Mother, Elara realized, had not even made a sound.

Rather, she stood very straight at the foot of the stairs with her lamp held steady in front of her. Her face was composed. Her eyes were not on the messenger, or on Lucian, or on her husband.

They were on Elara.

When the messenger had been sent away with a cup of tea and a blanket, and the door had been closed on the night, Mother crossed the hall and took Elara's chin in her fingers. Her voice dropped to something quiet and very precise.

"Who else saw you?"

"What?"

"Your eyes." Mother's grip tightened. "Before I came in. Did anyone see your eyes?"

Mother did not ask what voice she had heard. She asked how many people had seen her eyes.