Throwing the Gauntlet

Chapter 6

“s**t, s**t, shit.” Frey whizzed around the corner, clutching the book to his chest as he waited. Please don’t come this way, please don’t come this way, he thought desperately. He was not in the mood to talk to his father or Lady Clarissa. He almost snorted but stopped himself in time, remembering at the last second, that he needed to be quiet.

Once he heard the footsteps moving away, the voices becoming distant, he breathed a sigh of relief and headed back in the direction he had originally been going.

He waltzed into the wolf’s room, barely glancing at the figure chained to the wall. The food he had ordered had already been left there and he picked through it, making sure it was as he had instructed. It smelled…well, very garlicy. A good thing that the whole theory that vampires were hurt by garlic was complete and utter bullshit. Sunlight could indeed roast them to a crisp, but garlic? Seriously? Sometime he wondered what he people back then had been like. Idiots, clearly, though their technology era had been quite interesting. Mobile phones were still used among the rich, and those moving things, cars? But a lot of it was obsolete now and power was a precious commodity worth fighting over. Frey had never really looked into what the people were like, though.

“Do the servants speak to you when they come in?” Frey asked. He hadn’t expected an answer but he still couldn’t contain his disappointment when none was forthcoming. “They’re not supposed to so if they do I would appreciate you telling me.”

Frey rolled his eyes when the wolf said nothing. “Anyway, I arranged for the steak to be cooked differently tonight. I found a recipe book and it said that a mushroom garlic sauté steak was supposed to be good. And roasted vegetables. Are you hungry?”

The wolf didn’t even give him a facial gesture this time. He merely stared at Frey, almost as though he were confused.

Well, that made two of them, Frey thought. One-sided conversations were nothing if not a mire of assumptions that he knew were most likely completely wrong.

“What? Do I have something on my face?” Frey frowned. Wait…he turned back to the food. “I only feed you once a day. That’s not enough, is it?” He moved the corner of the book back and forth against his lip. He knew he’d f****d something up. One meal of a few pieces of steak a day and he had thought that would be enough for him? “I’ll have to make sure I’m here for meal times… how many times do you need to feed a day? Do you want different meals?”

There was no way he would allow anyone else to feed him. He had spent two weeks working to get that privilege and f**k if he was going to just hand it off to someone else. Though he wasn’t sure the wolf would take it from anyone else anyway.

Frey sighed and leaned his hip against the trolley holding the food – one that thankfully held his weight. “Things are going to get weird if you don’t start talking to me. How do I know you even like this food? If you’re going to hate me I’d rather it be for a good reason, and not because I fed you something you hate eating. That’s how eating works, isn’t it? I only drink blood but I certainly wouldn’t enjoy it if I was forced to consume something I find appalling.”

Frey tapped his fingers on the edge of the trolley. “What if I asked yes or no questions? Then you’d just have to nod or shake your head. Easy, right?”

Nothing, no response whatsoever. Frey wanted to bang his head against the wall. He’d probably get more results that way.

“All right, whatever. Let’s eat and then I can get on with some reading.” He held up the book he had. “I brought something new, and a bit different tonight. If you don’t like it, tough.”

Frey had to admit that looking after the wolf wasn’t as bad as he had thought it would be. He wasn’t taming it like he should have, a fact he was sure his father would have a field day with, but he didn’t mind cutting the food and feeding him, and reading to him until Frey either fell asleep on the floor or he had somewhere else he needed to be. It wasn’t any less torturous than the training Lain put him through and the lectures his father forced him to endure.

It had been almost five weeks since the wolf had been brought to this room and while they were no closer to having an actual conversation, Frey had become familiar with his presence in a way that was comfortable.

--

Frey’s head shot up from the art he was working on as Lain came barging into his room. She opened her mouth but didn’t say a word as she saw what Frey was drawing.

He tried to hide it but she grabbed the back of his shirt to stop him from moving. Her brows shut up as comprehension kicked in. “Uh…Frey, that’s…”

“Shut up,” Frey grumbled. “And it’s just a sketch, I can’t seem to get the eyes right.”

“Why are you painting it?”

Frey shrugged and moved the easel to the side of the room. “Did you need something?” His training wasn’t for a little while; he was almost one-hundred percent sure he wasn’t late.

Lain didn’t answer, still studying the drawing. “Frey, can I ask you something without you getting defensive about it?”

“What kind of opening is that? That automatically makes me feel like I need to be defensive about it.” Frey pushed his hair out of his face with the back of his hand, not wanting to get the charcoal from his fingers in his face, or across his cheek.

“Never mind,” Lain said. Her eyes flicked to his. “I think you need to go check on your wolf.”

“What? Why?”

“Just some things I heard in the throne room.” She had turned back to studying the picture. “And I think you want to keep him safe, right?”

Frey narrowed his eyes and wondered if that was a trick question. Was she asking if he was getting attached to it? Because he wasn’t. That was just absurd. “I guess I have time to go check on him. Do I still have training in an hour?”

“No. Come find me when you’re done with your wolf.”

“Uh…okay?” Frey felt extremely confused but shoved his shoes on and headed down to the dungeon as instructed. He was too well trained to take her orders after all these years to even consider telling her no. 

--

It took him a few precious moments to work out what was happening right in front of him.

Clarissa was strutting in front of the wolf and the wolf…he was dripping blood from multiple lacerations on his body, and his face was pained, sweat dripping from his bleeding body.

“What the f**k is going on?” Frey demanded.

Clarissa wrapped the small whip she was holding, around her hand. “I heard you had a pet, and I wanted to see for myself. He is certainly fascinating. We’ve been having a lot of fun, I think I’ll come down here often.”

Frey’s hands clenched into fists, and he wished he had brought his sword so he could severe her head from her body. “You have absolutely no right to be in here without my permission.”

Clarissa laughed and the shrill tone cut straight into his brain like a disease. “Soon we’ll be equals and we’ll be sharing everything. What’s the problem?”

“Get out.”

Clarissa stopped, and frowned at him. “Excuse me?”

“Are you f*****g deaf? Get the f**k out. Now.”

“Do not speak to me like that!”

“If you don’t leave in the next five seconds I’m going to take that whip and I’m going to use it to shred every inch of your face.”

“How dare you! I will be speaking to your father about this abhorrent behaviour! That is not how you speak to your future wife!”

“Yeah, whatever,” Frey said. “Now f*****g get out.”

She left, her head held high, the door slamming in her wake. Frey knew he was going to be hearing about that in the not too distant future. Right now he couldn’t give a flying f**k; he had more pressing issues.

He moved to the wolfs side and lifted his head, checking his face. Clarissa had clearly decided to leave his face alone and Frey wasn’t sure why he felt relieved about that.

“Where are you hurt? Is there anything hurt inside?” he asked.

The wolf jerked his head from Frey’s grip and turned away from him.

Frey couldn’t explain the way that made him feel. All he knew was that he didn’t like it. The entire time he had had the wolf here he had never once turned from Frey, instead choosing to follow his every movement like a hunter watching his prey. It had been unnerving, still was if Frey was honest with himself, but this…this felt worse.

“Are you bleeding internally?”

The wolf didn’t respond, didn’t look at him, didn’t do anything. Even his body hung from the chains like he couldn’t hold himself up anymore. That unspoken pride in the way he held himself even in the chains was just…gone.

What the hell had Clarissa said to him? This couldn't have been caused from just the whipping. The wolf had struck him as stronger than that. 

Fuck Clarissa, Frey thought savagely. f**k her and his father all to hell.

He desperately pulled at the latches holding the steel shield that was curved in front of the wolfs chest to stop him from trying to move too far away from the wall; it would burn through his flesh if he pushed against it too hard. It took Frey a few minutes but he eventually managed to yank it off the wall. He threw it so hard it hit the opposite wall with a clang.

Frey moved away from the wolf only long enough to order the guard on the outside of the door to fetch first aid items. “I’m going to take your shirt off, okay?” he said, knowing he would get no answer. He didn’t have anything to use to cut the shirt but it had enough holes in it that it was easy to pull at them and rip the shirt in half and throw it away.

He cringed at the mass of criss-cross cuts all over his chest and stomach. They weren’t deep enough to cause permanent damage but they looked red, angry and painful, and the blood was still dripping down his body.

Frey hesitated when he heard the knock on the door. He felt reluctant to leave his wolf’s side, which he knew was borderline irrational. Nothing was happening to him while he was in the room. He wasn’t strong or particularly talented but his position allowed him some semblance of control and protection.

Once he had gathered the items from the guard he kicked the door shut with his heel and laid them out on the floor at the wolf’s feet. A bottle of saline water, a bag of clean white cloths, gauze, disinfectant. It would work better if he could get him under running water but even looking as docile as he did Frey couldn’t risk letting him free.

He dabbed one of the cloths with the saline water and began dabbing at the wounds on the wolf’s chest.

The wolf hissed and moved away from the movement.

“I’m sorry,” Frey said, “but I need to clean them. Tell me if it’s too much.” Not that the stupid thing would actually deign to speak to him. Right now it wouldn’t even look at him.

He silently and methodically cleaned each wound, wiping away as much of the blood as he could. Once he was done he was sure a few hours had passed, and more than a dozen cloths lay discarded on the floor covered in sweat and blood.

Frey was sweating, and his arm was getting sore but he refused to stop until he had cleaned everything. He began to wrap the gauze gently around the wolf, trying to be gentle but keep it tight at the same time. He ignored how warm the skin beneath his fingertips was. It seemed like such a stupid thing for him to notice. Of course his skin was warmer than Frey’s since Frey didn’t have any body warmth at all. It didn’t mean anything; he was sensitive of how it felt since he wanted to make sure the wolf was okay.

“Did you-are there any under your pants?” Frey asked. He couldn’t see any new splits or holes on the ratty pants but he wanted to be sure and he didn’t think the wolf would appreciate if he just ripped those off the same way he had the shirt.

When he didn’t get an answer Frey sighed and wiped his forehead. He had to just assume that there wasn’t. He couldn’t see any blood.

“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice quiet. Frey rocked back onto his heels, feeling like he had just aged another hundred years.

He was sorry. He wasn’t sure if he had ever been sincerer about anything in his life. The wolf wasn’t here because he wanted to be, and Frey understood that; he was supposed to be turning it into a tool for the vampire community. But he wasn’t into pain for the sake of pain, or dealing pain without just cause. He was not the monster his father was and for whatever f****d up reason, he didn’t want this wolf to think he was.

The wolf’s body jerked but his head didn’t turn.

Frey sighed and stood. “Let me get some food organised for you.”