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With its teeth bared, it charged me, eyes blazing, and it was only years of training with Barion that gave me the reflexive ability to stay alive. Instinctively, I leaped as high as I could, so the wolf barreled beneath me. It couldn’t keep its footing easily on the stone floor, and attempted to skid to a stop, but its weight and speed had it sliding. I ran after it.
This was my opening. I’d only get one. Be aggressive or be dead.
I launched myself forward off the balls of my feet, not too unlike the wolf itself, and drove my knife hard into its shoulder. I wrenched down, creating a deep gash in the muscle. The wolf howled in agony and thrashed under my hold, but I wrapped my fingers in its rough fur and held on, staying safely behind it as it struggled to throw me off. The gash poured thick, hot blood which steamed in the drafty library, the coppery smell flooding my senses. The gore covered my hand, and as the wolf thrashed, it sprayed flecks onto my face and fine clothes. It wasn’t a killing wound, but it was deep enough to hurt, and the howling and gnashing of teeth made it clear I had hurt this wolf badly.
All I had to do was get away now. If I withdrew the knife, kicked off, I could jump over the railing of the balcony before the wolf could get to its feet. My hands were drenched in its blood, and my grip began to slip on the fur as it thrashed.
Then, a commotion sounded behind me. Before I could turn around, strong arms wrapped tightly around my arms and torso, dragging me bodily off the wolf with a grunt. I swore and thrashed—what the fuck was happening? And only then after I took a breath did I recognize the now-familiar scent of the king behind me. His breath washed over the side of my face as he hauled me back, my knife still in my hand.
Beside us, two immense Nightfall guards shifted into their wolves and rushed toward my attacker. Their bodies shielded the staggered wolf from view, but the thick smell of blood still permeated the atmosphere.
“By the fucking gods,” the king growled. The low tone of his voice sent a shiver down my spine. “There’s always trouble when you’re in the library, isn’t there?”
My chest heaved with exertion, and I struggled in his hold, fruitlessly. He carried me like I weighed nothing, down the stairs and to the back door of the library, into a narrow torch-lit hallway. Outside an unobtrusive door, he finally set me down onto my feet. My knees quivered; he gripped my upper arm hard to hold me up. It wasn’t painful, though, it was steadying.
I didn’t know what I expected when he pushed across the threshold—torture devices? But it certainly wasn’t more shelves of books and maps, scattered carelessly on large, unfinished tables with hard-backed chairs.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“My study,” the king said sharply.
“Then what’s the room upstairs in the library?” I asked.
“My archival study,” he snapped. “Why am I letting you ask questions?”
He guided me to one of the chairs at the table and pushed me down to sit. I swallowed. Goosebumps rose on my arms. I was still riding high from the adrenaline of the fight and reeling from the way the king had carried me—I was offended while my wolf was preening. Right now, I was too tired to untangle those reactions.
He exhaled. “Are you hurt?”
I looked down at my hands. They were covered in blood, sticky and darkening as it dried, and it had reached my clothes as well. Certainly it had flecked my face, too. The same dark blood stained the king’s hands where he had grabbed me.
“I’m fine,” I said. “It’s not my blood.” Suddenly, renewed anger surged through me. “Care to explain why I just got attacked in your library?”
“Attacked?” the king asked.
“Yes, attacked!” I tried to stand up to get in his face, to demand answers, but my knees were still weak and I dropped back down into the chair. That only made me angrier. “I’m supposed to be protected while visiting the Court of Nightfall, am I not? Are all your guests threatened with such savagery? I know the coloring of the Nightfall wolves, and I know that was one of your packmates!”
The king clenched his fists. Then he strode to a basin on a small hutch against the wall and poured water into it from a jug. He rinsed his hands, toweled them, then brought the basin over to me.
“Here,” he said. “Clean up a little.”
“I need to bathe,” I grumbled.
“At least wash your hands.”
I almost said no out of pure contrarianism, but the blood was beginning to dry into a sticky, rancid mess on my hands. I dipped my hands into the basin and carefully scrubbed it off. As I did so, the king reached into the hutch and pulled out a small opaque bottle and two glasses. He poured a small amount of rich brown liquid into each, then walked back toward me with the two glasses easily balanced in one hand and a mildly anguished expression on his face. He set one of the glasses down on the table by the basin and sighed.
I dried my hands then picked it up. “What’s this?” The liquid smelled so strong it made my hair stand on end, and I nearly reeled back.
“Bourbon,” the king said. He took a sip of his own, as casually as if it were a cup of coffee. “And it’s not poisoned. Believe it or not, I don’t want you harmed.”
My wolf trusted him. But still I didn’t touch the alcohol, leaving it in the glass by the basin. I wanted to have my wits about me. The king wouldn’t poison me, though—if he wanted me dead, he could just snap my neck whenever he wanted, just had he had Lord Cazzell. No reason for theatrics. “I must admit, I am finding that a bit hard to believe.”
The king said nothing, just pressed his lips together into a tight line. It was an expression similar to the one he’d worn when he’d showed up at my door, worried that I was sick or injured. There was concern in that expression, but something else, too. Something else I couldn’t quite read.
“But if you didn’t arrange the attack,” I said, “who was that? They obviously knew where to find me. This was planned.”
“She’s been dealt with.” He stepped back over to the hutch and poured another finger of dark brown liquid into the glass.
