Chapter 6- Lena
1514 Words
Nobody told me about the body until I almost walked into it.
I was coming back from the east corridor and I could not sleep. I had not even tried, I had been sitting on the window ledge in my room watching the dark trees and thinking about nothing really useful when I turned the corner and nearly stepped on the man lying face down on the stone floor.
I jumped back. Hit the wall. My heart was somewhere in my throat.
He was not moving.
"Hey! " I bent down, reached for his shoulder, and then I saw the blood pooling under him and I quickly pulled my hand back. "Hey!. Hey!"
I ran as fast as my legs could carry before I realised I had made the decision to run.
Daphen was already in the corridor when I got there.
I do not know how he knew. I did not scream, neither did I make enough noise to wake anyone. But he was there in dark clothes with his jaw set and his eyes doing that black-at-the-edges thing and two of his warriors behind him, and when he saw my face he asked "Where?."
"East corridor. Near the linen room. I think he is dead."
He was already moving.
I followed because standing alone in a corridor at three in the morning felt significantly worse than following a cursed Alpha toward a dead body.
The warrior I did not know his name, I had only been here two days, I did not know any of their names yet… was dead before we got there. Daphen bent beside him the way you bend beside something you already have an answer to. His hand went to the man's throat. His face did not change but something in the set of his shoulders did change.
"Orran," he said quietly.
One of the warriors behind us made a sound.
Daphen stood up. "Get Vera. Do not touch anything. Do not let anyone in this corridor until I say so." He looked at me and said "Go back to your room."
"I found him," I said.
"I am aware."
"So I am not going back to my room."
He looked at me for a moment. The black was still at the edges of his eyes. "You are going to make everything harder, aren't you?"
"Probably," I said. "How did he die?" I asked to satisfy my curiosity.
"I cannot tell yet."
"His throat," I said. "Did you see his throat?"
Daphen went still.
"I saw it when I bent down," I said. "Before I realized what I was looking at. There was something on his neck. A mark. It did not look like a wound."
He turned back to the body. Bent again. Moved the collar of the man's shirt carefully.
The mark was deliberate. Precise. Like something had been pressed into the skin from the outside.
"What is that?," I questioned.
Daphen did not answer immediately. He was looking at the mark with an expression I was starting to understand, not shock, not grief, something colder than both of those. The look of someone who already knew and had been hoping they were wrong.
"Daphen."
"It's a silencing mark," he said. "Old. Pack magic." He stood up. "It means he knew something. And someone made sure he could not say it."
Vera arrived in four minutes looking like she had not been sleeping either.
She took one look at Orran, one look at Daphen, and said — "Who knew he was going to talk?"
"That is the question," Daphen said.
"Talk about what exactly?"
They both looked at me.
"He came to me yesterday," Daphen said. "Said he had something to tell me about the pack. About someone inside it." He paused. "I told him to come to my office this morning."
"He did not make it to morning," I said.
"No."
"So someone knew he was going to talk to you. Someone inside this pack." I looked at the mark on Orran's neck. "And they killed him with something that requires pack magic. Which means it is not a rogue. It is not an outsider."
"It is certainly one of us," Vera said. Flat. Like she has already been thinking about it and hated the shape of it.
The corridor felt different after that. The same stones, the same torches, the same dark. But different.
"I need to check something," Daphen said. He looked at Vera. "Stay with her."
"I do not need…" I started.
"Vera stays with you," he said. Not a request. Not cruel either. Just decided. He looked at me for one second longer than necessary and then he went down the corridor.
Vera looked at me.
I looked at her.
"He does that," she said. "Decides things."
"I noticed," I said.
"Are you going to be a problem?"
"Probably," I said.
Something moved at the corner of her mouth. Not quite a smile. "Good," she said. "He needs more problems. Keeps him from disappearing into his own head."
He came back twenty minutes later.
His face was doing something difficult to understand that he was working very hard to keep from showing.
"The Shaman's room," he said to Vera.
She went immediately.
I waited.
He looked at me and for a second I thought he was going to tell me to go back to my room again. Instead he said "She is gone. Her room is empty. There are signs of a struggle."
"The Shaman," I said.
"Yes."
"Someone took the Shaman on the same night they killed the warrior who was going to tell you something." I stared at him. "That is not two things happening. That is one thing happening in two places."
"Yes," he said.
"Whoever it is, they knew about Orran and they knew about the Shaman. They had access to both of them tonight." I paused. "How many people in this pack knew Orran came to you yesterday?"
Daphen said nothing.
Which was its own answer.
"You think it is your beta," I said.
He still said nothing.
"Daphen."
"I think it is possible," he said. Like the words cost him something real.
I looked at him. At the way he was holding that specific weight of suspecting someone you trusted. I knew that weight. I have been carrying Caden's version of it for four months.
"I am deeply sorry," I said.
He looked at me. Not surprised exactly. It was more like he had not been expecting that specific thing from me.
"You do not have to be," he said.
"I am not being polite. I mean it. Suspecting someone you trusted is awful." I looked at the floor. "I know what that feels like."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then, "Come on. I need to check the east border before dawn."
I followed him.
We went through a side door I had not found yet, out into the cold pre-dawn dark. My breath came out in the clouds. The ground was frozen and hard underfoot and Daphen moved through it like he had done this walk a thousand times because he probably had.
Halfway to the border he stopped.
I nearly walked into his back.
He turned around and held something out without saying anything. His jacket. Dark and heavy and clearly old from how worn the fabric was around the cuffs.
I looked at it.
"You have had your arms crossed since we came outside," he said.
"I am fine."
"I know," he said. "Take it anyway."
I took it. Put it on. The sleeves went past my hands and the hem hit my thighs and it was still warm from him and it smelled like cedar and cold air and something else I did not have a word for yet.
He had already turned back toward the border.
I stood there for a second with my hands inside his sleeves.
Then I followed.
He did not look back to check if I had put it on. He never mentioned it again.
I pulled the front closed with both hands and kept pace beside him.
The trees were black against the grey pre-dawn sky and our breath came out in the same cold air and I thought he noticed I was cold before I said anything.
Caden never noticed things like that.
I did not let myself think about that for too long.
I started to take off the jacket.
"Keep it," he said.
"It is yours."
"Keep it," he said again. And then he was walking away down the corridor before I could argue, his footsteps quiet on the stone, and I stood there holding the front of his jacket closed with both hands.
From the far end of the corridor Vera appeared, moving fast, her face tight.
"Roan's asking to see you," she said to Daphen's retreating back. "Says it is urgent. Says he knows who killed Orran."
Daphen stopped walking.
Turned around slowly.
"Bring him to my office," he said.
He looked at me once.
"You too," he said.
- Writer
