Patricia Briggs: Wolfsbane

She tilted her face until her lips met his. “I will.”

She dressed in the dark, not bothering with shoes. Though, after a brief moment of thought, she grabbed her sword to go along with her knives. If she ended up facing an enraged sorcerer, she’d just as soon have Ambris’s help as not.

In the darkness, Wolf said softly, “I love you.”

Aralorn looked back, but the bed was too shadowed. She could distinguish nothing more than the shape of him in it. “I love you, too. See you in a few hours.”

“Yes,” he said.

He waited in the darkness and counted slowly to a hundred before getting to his feet. He dressed with care. He’d done many hard things in his life; in some ways this was not the worst. At least this time it was clearly the best answer for everyone.

He wished that he could postpone it, but he was unlikely to get another such opportunity soon. He’d been cudgeling his brain for a way to keep her away from him for long enough. Trust Aralorn to make things easy for him. He took his knife from his belt and tested it lightly against the ball of his thumb. A drop of dark liquid ran down the edge of his hand, and he licked it clean.

Aralorn was making her way up the stairs when a soft sound alerted her to someone else’s presence. She froze where she was, searching the darkness above her for any hint of movement. At last she saw a flash of lighter color where the minimal light touched the railing to the right of the stairway.

She darted up the stairs, blessing the stone under her feet for its silence—it was far more difficult to sneak up a wooden stairway. If she had been in a hall, she would have found a dark corner to hide in, but the stairway was too narrow for that. The best that she could hope for was to meet them at the top of the stairs.

She told herself that there was no reason to feel nervous about meeting someone walking the halls here, but she had been a spy for too long. Her instincts kept her on edge.

As she rounded the last stair, she came face-to-face with Gerem. He couldn’t have heard her, but he gave no evidence of surprise.

“Gerem?” she asked.

He frowned at her, but vaguely, as if he were concentrating on something else. “What are you doing here?” he asked, but without real interest.

“I was just going to ask you that.” There was something wrong with him, she thought. His words were soft and slurred as if he’d been drinking, though she smelled no alcohol when she leaned closer to him.

“Death walks here tonight,” he said, not at all dramatically, rather as if he were talking about grooming his horse.

An ice-cold chill swept up her spine, as much from his tone as from what he said. “Gerem, why don’t I take you to your room. Wouldn’t you like to go back to sleep?”

He nodded slowly. “I have to sleep.”

He took a step forward, forcing Aralorn down a step from the landing, giving him as much of an advantage in height as Falhart had over her.

Gently she took his arm and tried to turn him, stepping up as she did so. It was a move she often used on stubborn pack animals that refused to go where she wanted them; turning worked much better than pushing or pulling. “Your room is this way, brother mine. You can sleep there.”

He shook his head earnestly. “You don’t understand. I have to go to the stables.”

“The stables? What’s in the stables?”

He stopped tugging against her hold and bent down until his face was level with hers. “I killed Father,” he whispered.

“Stuff and nonsense, Gerem. Father is not dead.” She looked around for the nearest source of help. This wasn’t near anyone’s sleeping chambers—those were a floor above them. No one would hear her . . . But then she remembered that Irrenna had given Kisrah the Lyon’s library to sleep in.

“Kisrah!” she shouted, hoping her voice would penetrate the thick oak door.

“Let me go. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“No more do I,” she muttered.

Gerem pulled a knife with a slow and awkward movement. Once he had it out, he held it as if he didn’t know what to do with it now that it was in his hand.

Misled by that and by his earlier claim of clumsiness, Aralorn tried a simple grab to relieve him of the weapon. She should have realized that the Lyon wouldn’t let any of his sons go without training. As smoothly as he must have done it a hundred times in practice, he caught her hand in his free one and used leverage to twist her around until her back was against him, her arms caught firmly by his off hand, and the cool edge of his knife laid against her throat.

Without the knife, she’d have gotten out of it easily enough—a former thief of the Trader Clans had taught her a number of interesting tricks—but the knife made any movement on her part highly stupid. Half-grown though he was, he was still stronger and bigger than she was—and better trained than she’d thought. She didn’t want him to grow to adulthood knowing that he’d killed his sister, so she remained very still.

“What are you going to do in the stables, Gerem?” she asked as unaggressively as possible. Give him some time to break the hold the dreamwalker has woven, she thought. Keep him talking.

“Sleep.” His arms relaxed a shade but not enough.

“Why do you need to sleep in the stables?” She kept her voice in big-sister-to-little-brother tones, not frightened-victim-with-knife-at-throat. If you reminded someone you were at their mercy too often, they just might decide to kill you and get it over with.

He tightened his grip. “I killed Father. Don’t you understand?”

Abruptly, he twisted, thrusting her at someone who’d been approaching from behind. She knocked the man flat and heard Gerem running down the stairs.

She swore like any guttersnipe and leapt to her feet, noting only peripherally that it was Kisrah she’d landed on.

Though instincts would have sent her tearing off after Gerem, she took the time to change. The goose would be faster gliding down the stairs than the icelynx would be since the stone offered no grip to claws.

“What the—” croaked Kisrah as he sat up in time to witness the last part of the change.

“After him,” she said, and took flight.

By now, Gerem was already down the stairs. He didn’t bother with the more polite methods of getting to the stables but threw the bolts on the shutters of a window and jumped through.

He’s going to break a leg doing that, thought Aralorn. The window might be waist high inside the keep, but it was better than half a story higher on the outside. Closing her wings, she darted through the open window after him.

Hurry, said the wind’s unwelcome voice. Death is waiting.

Let it wait, then, she thought.

She’d overshot Gerem and was close to the stables before she could turn around. Goose wings were meant for great sweeping turns, not falcon-quick maneuvering. Especially a domestic goose that had to work far too hard to fly. She started to turn back when she saw the howlaa.

It waited in front of the stables in the moonlit courtyard, the wind carrying its scent away from the sensitive noses of the horses in the stables. She thought about how unexpectedly the last howlaa had come upon her and wondered if it could control the wind and keep its scent from prey.

The dead one’s mate, said the wind, as clearly as if someone were whispering into her ears. Dream-called and hungry for blood.

Closer, she could see differences between this one and the one she’d killed before. Its mane was longer and darker, with red as well as yellow tints. Its eyes, though, were the same, crystal so deep she could drown in its depths.