The wolf in my father’s arms whined at him, and Da bent his head. “It will be well,” he murmured. He looked at the cottage and the corners of his mouth whitened.
My mother’s voice whispered in my ears. Look now to your da. If you’ve never seen rage on his face, you have now. Those old fools won’t know what hit them.
I couldn’t remember what long-ago conflict she’d been talking about, but I knew that she’d been right. Then. But this was a fight he could not win, and we all knew it. I began changing back to wolf. There was nothing more to do for Adda that my da wouldn’t do, and I would be more use to him in my wolf form than as a weak human.
Dafydd made a soft sound, as gentle as I’d ever heard out of his mouth. The rest of the wolves hovered uncertainly.
“And a fat lot of help you have been,” snarled my father at Dafydd. “He is your son, and you watch as she kills him.”
Though Dafydd had always been quick to punish any sign of disrespect before, this time he didn’t take any action at all. I couldn’t read his emotions—of all the wolves, Dafydd was the most difficult to read. It was as though the only thing he ever felt was anger or fear of the witch, nothing else.
Adda woofed, catching Da’s attention.
“I,” my father said, “am through watching.” He kissed Adda on the forehead, then broke the wolf’s neck with a quick jerk of his hands.
It was so fast. One moment Adda had been panting in pain and the next he was gone.
That was when Dafydd finally growled, and the heat of his anger swept through the air.
Da stood up, let the dead wolf roll off his lap and onto the ground. He started the change that would turn him back to wolf. Dafydd and my da had disagreed before, even fought a time or two—and Da had always backed down before matters grew serious. But in my da’s eyes, I could tell that he’d reached his breaking point. He was done.
I stepped between them, so Dafydd could not attack Da until Da was fully wolf. I didn’t think it would happen, Dafydd was usually fair. But I stepped in anyway, just in case I was wrong.
A horn blew in the distance, a clear soft note that wrapped itself around my throat and tugged. The forest lord’s call was more than any of us could resist, and I found myself running beside Dafydd, shoulder to shoulder. Da finished his change while we ran.
We would answer the fae’s call and do his bidding if he could control us, and kill him if he couldn’t—and I didn’t much care which. When we were finished, there would be a reckoning either for my father’s defiance or for Dafydd’s complicity. The battle had only been delayed, not halted. Dafydd was huge and violent—only a little smaller than I was. My da was a little less than three-quarters of Dafydd’s weight, but he was canny, my da. I did not know who would win.
I’d expected a short run to the fae, but it turned out to be a fair distance and I revised my estimates of his power—the chances of avoiding doing whatever he asked of us went down with each mile. It didn’t bother me much. What could he ask that we had not already done for my grandmother? Any pretense of goodness that I ever claimed was spent long ago. The only thing that mattered to me was Da.
We topped a rise, and there was a small clearing laid out before our eyes. The fae lord was there, the bandage on his right arm red with his blood. He was less human-seeming out here in his woods. Antlers rose from his head and spread the width of his shoulders and more—and he was huge. He blew on his horn again, and it called songs from our throats.
We half slid, half ran down the backside of the rise and leaped over the creek on the bottom. Once across the water, Dafydd slowed to a cautious dogtrot, and the rest of us followed his lead into the meadow where the forest lord waited.
SEVEN
Haida
“My hand?” the forest lord said, raising the stump of his arm. “This is the price I paid for what you have done to me.” He threw the artifact Haida’s lady had made at a tree. It hit and tore bark from the trunk, leaving a weeping wound. The little silver bird dropped to the ground out of sight.
He waited, but her lady was not such a fool as to say anything with her father in a towering rage. Not that her silence was likely to buy her safety in the long run. Haida understood that the lady had known that, really, since she made the decision to make sure that her little bird would never serve his purposes.
Haida said, her voice stinging with contempt, trying to draw his attention away from her lady, “You went to the crone by the white spring. To a witch. A human.”
The forest lord hissed, his deerlike ears flattening with ire. He flung a hand out toward Haida, and the little hobgoblin stiffened her spine and prepared to accept the poison she’d spun.
But her lady stepped to the side and took the blow of magic herself. Haida wailed and started forward as the pain dropped her lady to her knees. The hobgoblin touched her lady’s shoulder, trying to dilute the effect of the forest lord’s anger.
“Go,” said her lady with power in her voice. “Leave me. Hide.” And such was the strength of the lady, even diminished as she was, that Haida could only follow her orders.
The forest lord, rage forcing a bellow like one of the great deer in rut out of his throat, threw another bolt of pain into his daughter. Hating herself for her inability to defend Ariana, Haida found a place under some bushes, where she could at least bear witness and give what aid she could.
The lord took the horn he wore on a thong around his chest and blew again, summoning his hounds.
The sound did what the pain had not. When Ariana raised her head, it was the beast who looked out of her eyes. The beast’s lips curled back from white teeth, and it started to get to its feet. Haida felt a breathless instant of hope. The beast was more powerful in its way than her lady was. Haida could feel the power of the beast’s magic, full and strong. Proof, if she’d needed it, that the beast and her lady were truly different from each other. Had the beast had more time, even a moment, it might have destroyed the forest lord—but the howls that answered the great horn caused the beast to freeze, and fear robbed it of its power. The beast rolled into a ball on the ground and waited for what would come.
The animals responding to the forest lord didn’t sound like his hounds. Evidently the fae lord felt the same, for he paused, taking his attention off his daughter for a moment. If only her lady hadn’t sent her away, Haida might have managed to make use of the momentary lapse, but she was too far away to do anything but watch.