Lessons
625 Words
Nyx POV (Alpha King’s Sister)
I don’t slam the door.
That would be beneath me.
I close it behind me, instead, keeping my fingers on the hardwood until the sound fades to silence. Control matters. Especially now. It is particularly true on occasions when my temper is tearing at my spine, burning and demanding.
Evelyn.
Those are the wrong names that are in my mouth.
Wolfless.
That’s what she is. This is what she must keep in mind.
I walk all the way across my quarters, my feet beat the Floor in a regular time. The room is odorous with iron and leather and the slight hint of my brother doing the same thing, but instead of possibility, it is authority, dominance, inevitability. All this reminds me of him. Of what belongs to him.
Including her.
He did not do the right thing by selecting her for this mission.
I convinced myself that when he first said it, when he was standing there and that composed, maddening confidence of his voice. We leave tonight. As if it were nothing. Like taking a weight, lifting a burden into the picture of something significant was a wise choice rather than an insult.
She stood there with lowered head, hands gristled, eyes half dead with overmuch submission.
Too quiet.
Such girls manage to stay alive because they are invisible. They are taught how to be small to survive. And men confuse that with power.
It isn’t.
Its weakness was camouflaged as forbearance.
I cease to pace and face the small mirror, which is on the wall. My image looks back at me--shrewd eyes, closed mouth, wolf peeping, and impatient, less than twenty feet under the surface. I look like my brother. Everyone says so. Same steel in the gaze. Same refusal to bend.
He trusts me.
That is why I find this very annoying.
Evelyn does not belong anywhere with him. No place representing us. There is no place for anything but work and silence.
And there she kept safe.
Sheltered by that talkative girl. By a slave who forgot herself. By my brother’s decision.
My jaw tightens.
No.
Assuming that Evelyn will remain in this camp--assuming that she will be brought about on a mission she does not merit--she will know what the want of wolves among rogues is.
I go nearer to the mirror, and my voice is lower, although no one is around.
You do not stand there and play pretend, I say to my reflection. “You don’t get to look capable. You don’t get to be pitied.”
I imagine it clearly. The way I’ll do it.
Not with blows. That would be crude. Obvious. My brother would notice.
No—this will be quieter.
I will ensure that she flunks before him.
I will assign her tasks that she will be unable to accomplish quickly. Contradictory orders. Anticipations that change when she sees them. I will allow other people to be the spectators of her fall, of her apologies, of her demonstrating again and again that she is precisely what she always was.
Useless.
A liability.
A mistake.
“She’ll break,” I murmur.
And when she, my brother will notice it. He’ll see what I’ve always seen. That to make a wolfless choose anything worthwhile, is not mercy--it is preposterity.
I set myself straight, and wipe the back of my hands across my sleeves, and already I feel calm. Purpose does that. Anger is refined to a purpose.
Evelyn believes that it is enough to survive.
She believes that her low profile will help her.
I smile, slow and cold.
Tonight, she learns a lesson.
The way a wolfless must behave in a rogue camp.
And I will be quite thorough.
- Writer
