Lord of the Wolfyn - By Jessica Andersen Page 0,57

and spit her out, no detours. This was most definitely a detour.

Stay calm. You can handle this. Making herself breathe evenly, she pictured her apartment kitchen in minute detail, right down to the dishes in the sink and the book on the counter. Then she said her mother’s spell. But instead of her kitchen, she got a man’s voice.

Your work is not yet done.

It sounded in her head, but it came from the fog, from nowhere and everywhere. It chilled her to her marrow, though not because it was a scary; it was deep and well modulated, with an abundance of that formal, faintly stiff tone that crept into Dayn’s—

No. She wasn’t going there. Not when it made her eyes well and her stomach heave, and filled her mind with the squish-crack of a broken neck, the howl of a vicious beast that was part predator, part murderer.

Aware that the voice seemed to be waiting for something, she said softly, “Please let me be done. This isn’t my work. It’s not my fight.”

Are you so certain?

Her mind filled suddenly with horrifying images of stone walls destroyed by dozens of club-wielding ettins, armored guards cut to pieces by giant scorpions with razor-tipped tails and claws, a woman carrying a baby, racing across a flagstone floor only to be snatched up from above by a giant spider.

You are a guardswoman of the blood. You would let this happen?

“What blood? Who are you?” When there was no answer, her voice sharpened. “For God’s sake, what do you want from me? I got him to the arch.” She tried to spin in place, but failed. Her heart was hammered with a mix of fear and frustration. “Will you answer a direct question already, damn it! What do you want me to do?”

Help him reach the castle by tomorrow night. And help him remember his true self or all is lost.

Her stomach twisted at the dread and dismay that came with the thought of following Dayn to Elden. “And then what?”

Go home.

She flashed on the image of a rounded hill very like the one near Dayn’s cottage, though without the stones. The spires of a castle were visible in the near distance beyond some trees, and there was a small shrine off to one side. And damned if it wasn’t carved with a simplified version of the cover of Rutakoppchen: a girl traipsing through the woods while eyes watched from the darkness.

“Do I have a choice?” Her voice cracked miserably and she didn’t care. She was crashing off the wolfs-bene, beat-up, brokenhearted, and didn’t want to have to do this.

There is always a choice, even when there seems not to be.

“Great. A frigging fortune cookie,” she said.

Then she stopped, hearing her own words echo in the fog, realizing that she was snarking off at a spirit voice she strongly suspected was at least the essence of Dayn’s father, the vampire king. More, she was thinking, planning, reacting, having an opinion. She wasn’t paralyzed, wasn’t leaning back into Dayn’s reassuring presence as she had done too many times over the past few days when the going got tough.

She wasn’t freezing. She was dealing. New strength flowed into her at the realization and, with it, came a fierce sort of joy.

You are stronger than you know, Alfreda.

A shiver ran through her. “How did you know my real name?”

Will you help him?

A few days ago, it would have seemed ludicrous for her to think she could help a man like Dayn. Even a few hours ago, blinded by her enthrallment, she wouldn’t have thought he needed her help with anything save for mutual pleasure. Now, though, she was seeing things more clearly. She supposed shock could do that—either numb her out or wake her up. And now she was awake.

With clearer eyes, she realized that Dayn wasn’t as evolved as he wanted to think. He had spent two decades beating himself up for having been distracted by a woman when he should have been focused on his duties the morning of the Blood Sorcerer’s attack, only to fall right back into the same pattern with her. Their…relationship? flameout?—she wasn’t sure what to call it—had been a distraction, a way to keep himself from focusing on the harder things. She didn’t think he had been entirely dishonest with her, either…more that he had lied to himself.

She saw herself differently, too. In the rainbow fog, she suddenly saw a woman who too often waited for other people to take care