Chapter 5: Two Voices

Elara

"Posture," said the voice in Elara's head.

"I'm sitting on a bed," Elara muttered. "Nobody is looking at me."

A Luna sits as though the room belongs to her. Shoulders back. Chin level. Hands in your lap, not strangling the blanket.

"I'm not a Luna."

You will be, in three weeks.

Elara dropped her hands into her lap and glared at the ceiling. It was just the second night since the incident but she had already lost three arguments to a wolf.

The council had taken her condition without a murmur. Lucian had inclined his head and said that it was a reasonable request, and within the hour a rider had gone north with a letter. The answer came by evening. Alpha Blackthorn would meet her at a neutral hunting lodge on the border, three days from now, alone. There would be no escort inside the walls and there would be no witnesses.

Now she had three nights to learn how to carry two wolves without anyone seeing.

Mother had given the rules before the rider was even out of the gate. Hood up in the house. Eyes down when anyone was near. No visits to Rowan after dusk and no walks outside the walls. Elara was to take her meals in her room and speak to the servants only when spoken to, and that was as little as possible.

The door had been locked again that night. This time it wasn't surprising.

She lay back on the bed, letting the dark settle over her, as she tried to sort out who was talking. It was harder than it sounded. There were two voices and they could not have been more different.

Vesper was the clear and formal one, who sounded utterly sure of herself, a voice that gave instructions the way other people breathed. She had opinions about posture, diction, how Elara held a teacup and the correct pause before answering a council elder. She remembered everything. Every lesson Serena had ever taken, every dance step, every polite phrase. And she offered it all up unasked, in a steady stream of corrections. She would go on and on, until all Elara wanted to do was to scream really loud about how she didn't care.

Wren was the other one.

Wren spoke so softly that Elara sometimes mistook her for her own thoughts. She never gave orders. She said things like ‘take it slow’ and ‘here’ and ‘it's all right’, in a small, shy voice that seemed afraid of being too loud. She hid whenever Vesper got too bright. But sometimes, late at night, Elara could feel the little wolf curl against her ribs like a cat on a windowsill, but it was the only thing that made her feel less alone.

You are slouching again, said Vesper.

"I'm going to put a pillow over my face and pretend you don't exist."

Suffocation would not make me exist less, Vesper replied.

Elara bit back a laugh, and it came out as a strangled snort. Wren stirred, a warm little tick of amusement. Even Vesper seemed to loosen for half a heartbeat.

Then the grief came back, and it was heavier than any of them.

On the third night, Elara escaped through her window.

It was a short drop onto the kitchen roof, a skill she had mastered at twelve and never lost. The air was cold and smelled of frost and rosemary. The moon hung low and fat above the walled garden, flooding the paths with silver.

She landed in the herb beds and crouched in the dark, listening.

The house slept and somewhere, an owl called.

This is unwise, Vesper said.

"You're the one who said I have three nights."

I said you must learn to hold your form. I did not say you must do it in a garden, at midnight, all alone.

"Well, where else would I do it?"

Vesper had no answer for that.

Elara crossed to the old stone bench at the far end of the garden, where the rosemary grew thick and no window faced. She stood in front of it, closed her eyes and breathed.

Begin with the ground, Vesper said. Feel your feet. Your weight. Do not reach for me. Allow me to come to the surface, and then, meet me there.

Elara tried.

Heat rose in her chest, slow at first, then fast. The second pulse thudded against her ribs, and her spine began to hum. She felt Vesper's strength gather beneath her skin, a great clean current, enormous and eager, rushing toward some door that had always been shut.

"Wait," she gasped. "Wait, too much."

Hold the breath. Not the ground.

"I am holding..."

You are fighting. Stop fighting and release.

The gold flooded her vision. Her hands tingled and curled. The skin over her knuckles tightened, and the world sharpened until she could hear every beetle in the soil and smell the rotting apples beyond the wall. She felt like a glass of liquid filled past the brim.

Slow, Wren whispered, thin as a thread. Slow, slow.

Elara dragged in a breath. The current wavered but for one clean second she held it, the two wolves moving inside her like a single tide, and she thought, I can do this.

Then Vesper said, very softly, This is where he stood.

Elara's concentration shattered.

"What?"

The Moon Rite. This is where Serena stood. Three years ago. This is how it felt.

The memory came before she could stop it.

A shrine of white stone, ringed with candles. A night so still that the flames stood straight as needles. Serena stood at the altar in a pale gown, her hair unbound, her chin lifted with the calm, practiced grace Elara had spent her whole life envying. Across from her stood a tall man in black, severe and shadowed, his face carved from composure.

Alpha Darius Blackthorn.

He looked at Serena the way a man looks at a duty he has agreed to carry. Not unkind but not warm either. He inclined his head and she saw as Serena smiled.

It was a lovely smile. It was the smile that had hung in the great hall for years in a portrait. But behind her back, where no one could see, Serena's left hand was clenched so tight that her nails had cut her palm.

Elara felt the memory with Vesper's senses: the sting of the little cuts, the thud of a frightened heart beneath the calm. And beneath it, Serena's thought, quick and quiet, a thing she had never said to anyone.

What if I'm not enough?

Elara staggered back. The gold flared, the heat burst out of her control, and without thinking she slammed her hand down on the stone bench.

The crack split the night like a branch breaking.

She stared at her hand.

The bench had split clean down the middle. A jagged line ran from her knuckles to the far end of the seat, and a chunk the size of a loaf of bread had fallen onto the gravel. Her palm stung and there was a fine layer of stone dust over her skin, but not a single scratch.

Elara had never been strong in her life. She had never lifted anything heavier than a water pail without a struggle. She had spent twenty-two years being the weak one, the clumsy one, the one who dropped the tray.

She stood very still in the moonlight with her heart thundering, and understood for the first time how much this wolf could do.

Then a prickle ran down the back of her neck.

She turned.

Her father stood at his study window on the second floor, a pale shape behind the glass, one hand resting against the pane. He was fully dressed. A single candle burned behind him. He must have been standing there for a long time.

Elara waited for him to shout. To open the window, to call her inside, to demand an explanation.

He did not move. He looked at her, and at the broken bench, and at the gold fading from her eyes. His face was gray and tired and unreadable.

Then he lowered the curtain.

Elara stood in the cold with stone dust on her hands.

He saw, Wren whispered.

"I know."

He did nothing.

"I know."

She did not know whether that was better or worse.

She wiped her palms on her skirt and looked down at the ruined bench. She thought of the lodge, and of the man who would be waiting there in three days. She thought of the stone shrine and the candles and the small, scared fist behind a calm back.

She thought of his face.

"He's going to know," she said quietly. "Isn't he? The moment I walk in. He'll know something's wrong."

The garden was silent. Even the owl had stopped. For a long time there was only the cold and the dark and the slow, steady beating of two hearts inside her ribs.

Then Vesper said, in her sister's exact voice, "He will smell me on you."