Her Wolf King

Their saviour’s living quarters consisted of a hollowed-out redwood tree: enormous, circular, and marked with rings on the curved surface. It was part of a larger forest on the edges of the Court of Curses, untouched by its creeping tendrils of darkness. Though their saviour was plenty dark: a nymph of nighttime, with stars in her hair and tattoos on her arms of the moon, waxing and waning. Her name, as she’d told them, was Nyx, which seemed a bit on the nose to him.

It also surprised him that a nymph of the darkness would live in a redwood tree, which seemed more suited to a forest sprite. Something about their rescuer didn’t quite sit well with him.

A shudder rippled down his spine as he stared at the wooden walls, relaxing his grip on Lenore’s hand only when she gave a yelp of pain. This day certainly wasn’t going the way he’d thought it would when he’d woken up to find his wife not in any of her usual places: the library, dining room, or her bedchamber. Having followed her scent down to the cellar, he had hardly anticipated finding the two of them in such trouble.

Part of him felt like he ought to protect her, to lock her away in a tower and keep her safe.

Another part of him was reminded that he was not the prince, or the golden knight riding in on a white horse. No, he was a wolf. And that part of him wanted nothing more than to get into all sorts of scrapes with her.

“I will confess that I did not have entirely altruistic motives in rescuing the two of you, Wolf,” Nyx said, clearing her throat as she perched on her black velvet settee. Its carved legs bore intricate inscriptions of constellations, as did the mosaic tiles beneath his feet. “I require a favour.”

“What is it?” Lenore asked warily, leaning into his side. Her hair tickled his nose.

“I would like for someone to be killed,” Nyx admitted. “Preferably tonight.”

He eyed the petite nymph, whose array of curved swords hung from a glittering silver belt around her hips. “You seem perfectly capable of doing so yourself, Nyx. Unless those deadly weapons are only for display?”

“If I could do it myself without risking my life, I would,” Nyx said vaguely.

“So, you wish for us to do it and put ourselves in danger?” asked Lenore. “How kind of you to rescue us from one certain death to another.”

He couldn’t help but admire his wife’s wit and cunning, even if her sharp tongue could be getting them into no small amount of trouble.

“Who do you need to be killed?” Everett said, drumming his fingers on his knees.

Lenore gaped at him. “You can’t seriously be thinking of--”

He put a hand on her arm. “I am. The name of the target, Nyx.”

Years ago, he’d been a soldier in the army. He knew what it was to kill, and he knew what it was to make one’s first kill. He could remember the rush of adrenaline, the sword in his hands, the taste of blood in his mouth. Everett did not want that for his wife.

“The Queen’s right-hand man, Gabriel Armand. He knows too much about me... yet if I were to kill him, I would be executed,” Nyx said.

“And what would become of us, your prospective assassins for hire?” Everett said.

“I would find you a way out,” Nyx said, black eyes gleaming. “I did it once, didn’t I?”

“Let us discuss this before we make any decisions,” he said.

“You have until the clock strikes midnight.” With that, she vanished in a swirl of black smoke.

“You have placed us in the most abominable of circumstances,” Lenore snapped the moment that Nyx vanished. “You expect us to kill someone?”

“No,” he ground out between his teeth. “I will be killing the target.”

“I’m sure I am capable as well.” She folded her arms across her chest, glaring up at him.

“Have you ever seen the man’s life drain out of him, and known it was caused by your hands? Have you ever seen the blood pool beneath a man, his body slowly cooling, knowing that you were the one to plunge in the knife?” he said, his green eyes fixed on her blue ones.

She lifted her chin. “No.”

The quiver in her voice broke the confident facade she must have wanted to portray.

“And would you like to?” he said lowly.

“Perhaps.” She swallowed, and her slender throat bobbed. His fingers curled into fists at his sides and he wanted--wanted what? They were in the middle of a crisis, and he was thinking of his mouth on hers, the soft, pliant feel of her body beneath his. “Perhaps I would like to.”

“You would?” he said, one brow raising. “Then do it. Now.”

He pressed his dagger into her small hands. She stared down at it like a decaying flower: something delicate and on the verge of crumbling to dust.

“So to prove my tolerance for killing a man, I must kill my husband?”

“We barely know one another, girl. It should be the same as killing any other man.” The corner of his mouth quirked up.

“You are hardly any other man.” She flipped the dagger between her hands, the blade looking heavy and ugly against her soft skin. “You are... The night we met, you were injured.”

“Quite a subject change. And yes, I was.”

“Why? How?”

“To get you to help me, I fell on my own sword.”

“You are lying, aren’t you?” She pointed the blade at him, the tip inches from his throat.

He seized the blade, his fingers skimming hers, and he took it back. “You think too much of me.”

“You are a scoundrel.”

He bit back a laugh. “A scoundrel? Is this a ballroom, and am I a man who has just ruined your reputation?”

“My reputation is ruined.” She glanced down at the knife in his hand. “You carried me off from a church on the day of my wedding.”

He tipped her chin up with the flat of the blade. She sucked in a sharp breath, her chest rising and falling rapidly. “You are not ruined.”

“No?” she said. “I can never go back.”

“I don’t think you want to.” He tucked the blade away, but her eyes remained on his. “I’m still killing whoever this right-hand man is. You will not go near him.”

“You don’t trust me?” she said, her voice sounding a tad more vulnerable than he had heard before.

“I trust you as far as I can throw you, girl.” His voice was hoarse, gritty. “Any woman who could trust a wolf, however, is on the verge of insanity.”

“Maybe I trust you as far as I can throw you,” she said caustically. “Which is hardly two steps.”

“I’m killing the right-hand man and getting you out of here,”

“Just me? Surely, you don’t mean for me to leave alone.” She gazed up at him a question in her eyes, a taunt on her lips.

“We leave together, or not at all.”

-

The queen had befriended death long ago.

It must have been her only reason for the expansion of her tyrannical rule. Everett couldn’t fathom any other reason as to why no one had killed Marya or her henchman, Gabriel.

Surely, she had scads of enemies lying in wait to ambush her, or ... pits of vipers about to sink their venomous fangs into her ankles. This Nyx, this goddess of night, could not be alone in her hatred for Marya. For where there was one rebellious voice, there were always ten more too frightened to speak up.

Yet as he scanned the well-stocked weapons rack with Lenore making playful jibes that didn’t quite disguise the undercurrent of fear in her voice, Everett wondered if he was making a mistake. If so many wanted her dead, why hadn’t they done it yet? If the Court of Night had its own failed assassins, how could one wolf - one man - take on the Queen of Curses?

“Would you like a broad sword?” Lenore said, breaking into his reverie as she traced a finger over the black gems embedded into the ivory hilt.

“I’d prefer a dagger,” he said, playing along.

She laughed. “These are all made of obsidian. They would shatter the moment you attempted to hit bone.”

“A bow and arrow, then.”

His wife gave him a wan smile. “Shooting from a distance? “Somehow, I think it would have been better to find your former wives dead in your cellar.”

He rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Bluebeard was a pirate, wasn’t he?”

“That was Blackbeard.”

“I might simply rip out Gabriel’s throat with my teeth,” he said suddenly.

Lenore stiffened, almost slicing her finger open on a throwing star. “It is your choice... wolf.”

It sounded better on her lips than it ever had on his.

“Let us go, then, wife.”

Ten minutes later, they were back in the Court of Curses, and he was a wolf once again. Under the cover of darkness, thanks to Nyx, they crept into the domed roof of Gabriel’s canvas tent. For an evil henchman, Everett thought, the man certainly didn’t live in luxurious surroundings. The cloth flaps tired in the faint breeze of the man’s snoring, which seemed far too thunderous for his slight frame. Gabriel lay on a cotton bedroll, each wispy blond hair of his beard visible to Everett’s keen wolf eyes. He padded over to the man, his jaw hovering above the circlet of thorns around Gabriel’s collarbone. Ready to snap his mouth open and go through with the act.

It should have been easy. He knew nothing about this man save his association with Marya. He was at risk of being killed if he did not kill the man. So why was he hesitating?

Lenore’s hand rested on his fur, her footsteps silent as she came closer.

“You don’t need to...”

I have to, he wanted to tell her. I have to.

He looked once more at Gabriel, at the crown of thorns - no, the collar of thorns - and thought about breaking it. Then he sank his teeth in and tore out his jugular.

Lenore, to her credit, did not scream, though her fingers dug into his fur as blood sprayed over his face and muzzle and the skirt of her dress. He blinked and was human again, looking down at the destruction he’d caused. The carnage he’d created. Everett was - well, he wanted to be - a protector, not an executioner. Yet he’d killed a man in his sleep, the coward’s way out.

“You did it to spare me,” Lenore said softly, as if reading his mind. Her fingers rested in the crook of his arm, her head on his shoulder. “Isn’t that worth something?”

She was worth it. Worth more than one gruesome death, but he had no idea how to tell her that. “Of course.”

They watched as Gabriel’s body grew cold, the thorns around his neck snapped and clattered about the ground. Black tattoos twirled around his arms, with the same insignia of thorns, but now they were fading, charcoal ink leaching to pale grey.

Everett tasted blood, the iron, metallic tang with a trace of salt but something else was in the air. The scent of magic: decaying roses and sugar, too sweet to the point of cloying. “We need to leave before anyone sees us.”

His gruff tone seemed to startle Lenore from a stupor. “Yes,” she said, her body jolting. “Please, let us vacate this court before someone else dies.”

He could have laughed. Only with her, could the darkest of moments seem light.