Chapter 46.
881 Words
The moon was a sliver of bone in the sky, casting the Nightshade gardens into a world of deep velvet shadows and silver frost. Rhiannon was alone, seated on a stone bench near the frozen fountain. She had been practicing her with her magic, trying to find that deep, silent peace Fenris had left her with in the courtyard.
The garden was supposed to be a sanctuary, protected by the sheer verticality of the cliffs and the vigilance of the guards. But the air suddenly changed. The static didn't return as a scream, but as a sharp, electric tingle on her skin- the mountain's way of whispering that a foreign thread had been pulled through its tapestry.
A twig snapped. Not the light crunch of a mountain hare, but the heavy, muffled thud of a boot that didn't know the terrain.
Rhiannon stood, her heart accelerating. Through the twisted limbs of a snow-dusted willow, a man emerged. He wasn't a wolf. He was a creature of the South, draped in mud-stained furs and wearing the jagged, cruel smile of a man who thought he had found an unguarded treasure.
"A fairy in a cage," the mercenary rasped, his eyes dragging over her blue hair with a hunger that made Rhiannon’s stomach turn. He unsheathed a rusted iron blade. "They said you’d be beautiful. They didn't say you’d be sitting out here like a gift for the taking."
Rhiannon’s first instinct was the old one: to freeze, to make herself small, to wait for the blow. Her breath caught, and for a second, the garden felt like the brothel, the shadows lengthening into the walls of her old prison.
You are the owner of your own skin.
Fenris’s voice echoed in her mind, a low rumble that steadied her hands. She didn't scream. She didn't run. She shifted her weight, feeling the cold, grounding pressure of the silver hilt against her upper thigh.
"You should leave," Rhiannon said, her voice surprisingly steady. "This mountain doesn't belong to you."
The man laughed, a wet, unpleasant sound. "The mountain doesn't, but you do. There's a someone in the city with a very deep purse who wants his bird back in her cage."
He lunged, his heavy boots churning up the frost. He was fast, but he was clumsy- arrogant in his belief that a "thing" couldn't fight back.
Rhiannon saw the gap.
As he reached for her, his arm outstretched to grab her hair, she didn't pull away. She stepped into his space, ducking beneath his reach just as she had practiced with the wooden trainers. Her hand blurred, the shing of the silver dagger cutting through the silence of the garden.
The mercenary’s eyes went wide. He didn't even see the blade until it was too late.
Rhiannon drove the silver upward, but at the last second, she remembered Sora’s lesson: The bite they won't see coming. She didn't go for his heart. She slashed across his forearm, the silvered steel searing through his leather bracer and flesh like a hot wire.
The man let out a howl of agony, dropping his iron sword as the silver magic in the blade burned into his nerves. He stumbled back, clutching his arm, his face pale with shock.
"You... you little b***h!" he spat, trying to reach for a knife at his belt with his good hand.
Rhiannon didn't give him the chance. She moved with a terrifying, liquid grace she hadn't known she possessed. She swept his legs out from under him, and as he hit the ground, she was over him, the tip of the silver dagger pressed firmly into the hollow of his throat.
"I am not a bird," she whispered, her green eyes glowing with a faint, dangerous neon-green light. "And I am not a prize."
She didn't kill him. She pressed the blade just hard enough to draw a single, bright bead of blood, a warning of the fire she could unleash if she chose.
The sound of crashing brush and a terrifying, guttural roar tore through the garden.
Fenris burst into the clearing, his eyes glowing pure, molten gold, Malphas fully forward and ready to tear the intruder to pieces. He stopped dead, his chest heaving, his gaze darting from the bleeding mercenary on the ground to Rhiannon, who stood over him with her silver blade steady and her head held high.
The mercenary was trembling now, his bravado utterly extinguished under the shadow of the Alpha and the girl who had just broken him.
Fenris looked at the blood on the silver, then back at Rhiannon. The murderous rage in his eyes softened into a profound, shimmering awe. He didn't have to save her.
Rhiannon sheathed her dagger with a crisp, clean motion. She looked at Fenris, her breath steady, her spirit finally aligned with the weight at her side.
"He was trespassing," she said simply.
For the first time, Rhiannon didn't look like a survivor. She looked like a queen of the frost, and the man who had bought her life realized that she had finally started to own it.
- Writer
