Chapter 9.
1244 Words
The mountain was a beautiful monster, and its teeth were made of ice. For Rhiannon, the transition from the humid, stagnant rot of the city to the thin, biting air of the Nightshade peaks was too much for a body held together by little more than spite and stardust.
On her fourth night, the warmth of the bath and the richness of the venison were no longer enough. A deep, bone-shaking chill settled into her marrow, followed by a heat so fierce it felt as though her fairy blood was trying to boil beneath her skin. She managed to lock the iron bolt before her legs gave out, collapsing onto the bear-pelts in a tangle of blue hair and sweat-soaked linen.
The fever took her back.
"No, please," she moaned into the darkness of the room, her voice a cracked reed. "Not the iron. It’s too cold. The shears... they’re too big for me."
Outside, in the stone corridor, a heavy thud echoed against the wood of her door. Fenris was there. He had heard her fall.
"Rhiannon?" His voice was a low, urgent vibration that cut through the haze of her delirium. "Rhiannon, open the door. You’re burning up. I can smell the fever through the oak. Let me in."
"Stay back!" she shrieked, though it came out as a pathetic wheeze. She was back in the Whispering Woods, an eight-year-old girl surrounded by the Elder Council. She could see the moonlight reflecting off the massive iron shears, the tool meant for trimming ancient oaks now repurposed for her delicate, iridescent blue wings. "I don't know what I did! Don't take them!"
"Rhiannon, it’s Fenris. You’re safe. You’re in the mountains."
But she couldn't hear him. She was feeling the jagged, soul-tearing agony of the shears severing her connection to the sky. She felt the rough hands of the guards snatching the rowan-wood wand from her fingers- the wand that felt like an extension of her own heartbeat.
"My wand," she sobbed, clawing at the quilts. "It’s crying. I can hear it crying in the dark. Why did they take it? I was just a child. I was just a child..."
In the hallway, Fenris flinched as if the words were physical blows. His knuckles whitened as he gripped the doorframe. He was an Alpha; he could shatter the oak door with a single kick. He could reach in, grab her, and force the medicine down her throat. His wolf was screaming at him to do exactly that- to break the barrier and protect.
But he remembered the look in her eyes when she spoke of the lock. He remembered her demand for the rules of her cage. If he broke that door, he would be just another Master. Another violator of her space.
So, he sat.
The Great Alpha of the Nightshade Pack dropped to the cold stone floor, his back against the wood of her door.
"I’m here, Rhiannon," he said, his voice dropping to a steady, grounding rumble. "I’m right on the other side. I’m not going anywhere. Listen to my voice. The shears are gone. The men are gone. It’s just the mountain now."
For two days, the fever raged. Rhiannon drifted in and out of a terrifying landscape of memory. She spoke of the abandoned forest perimeter, of the taste of mud and blackberries, and the oily scent of Gorgon’s breath. She screamed about the "clipping," describing the sound of her own cartilage snapping in a way that made the hair on Fenris’s arms stand up.
And through it all, Fenris talked. He told her about the way the snow looked when it first hit the pines. He told her about the history of his pack, of his own days as a nameless stray fighting for scraps in the gutter. He told her stories of the stars, anything to keep her tethered to the present, to the "now" where he was the shield between her and the world.
On the dawn of the third day, the fire in Rhiannon’s blood finally flickered out.
She woke to a room flooded with soft, grey morning light. Her body felt like it had been trampled by a carriage, and her throat was a desert, but the clarity had returned. The screaming in her head had subsided into a dull, rhythmic thrumming.
The lock.
She remembered the fever. She remembered the voice- the deep, tireless anchor that had pulled her back from the edge of the shears every time the dream got too dark.
Wobbling on legs that felt like water, Rhiannon crawled to the door. Her fingers were weak, shaking as she reached for the iron bolt. It took three tries to gather the strength to slide it back. The metal shrieked- a sound of release.
She pulled the door open.
She expected to see the empty, cold gallery. Instead, she found a mountain of a man slumped against the frame.
Fenris was fast asleep. His head was tilted back against the stone, his jaw shadowed with several days of dark stubble. The "Ruthless Alpha" looked haggard; there were deep bruised circles under his eyes, and his clothes were rumpled and dusty. His massive hands, capable of crushing windpipes, were relaxed in his lap, palms up in a gesture of absolute vulnerability.
He had stayed. He hadn't broken the door. He had simply waited in the cold for her to choose to open it.
Rhiannon stared down at him, her dark green eyes welling with a sensation she didn't recognize. It wasn't the wary gratitude she’d felt before. It was something sharper, something that pierced through the layers of "dirt" Gorgon had left on her soul.
She reached out, her tiny, pale hand hovering over his shoulder. She hesitated, her mind screaming that touch was a trap, but then she let her fingers settle on the heavy wool of his tunic.
Fenris’s eyes snapped open instantly- the instinct of a predator. His hand flew up, catching her wrist in a lightning-fast grip.
Rhiannon didn't flinch. She looked him dead in the eye as goosebumps rippled through her body like chill.
"You're still here," she whispered, her voice a mere whisper of a sound.
Fenris realized who he was holding, and his grip immediately softened, his hand sliding down to just barely cup her fingers. He looked up at her, his blue-gold eyes clearing of sleep, filled with a raw, exhausted relief that made him look human.
"I told you," he rasped, his voice thick from disuse. "I'm the outside. You're the inside. I don't leave my post."
Rhiannon looked at the man who had spent two days on a stone floor for a girl he barely knew. For the first time since she was eight years old, the "angry" trees outside didn't seem to be shouting. They were quiet, as if they, too, were waiting to see what she would do next.
"You look terrible, Fenris," she said, and though her lips didn't quite form a smile, the permanent frown had finally, mercifully, vanished.
Fenris let out a huff of a laugh, leaning his head back against the wall. "And you look like you might actually survive the week. I'd say that's a fair trade."
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