The Queen of Wolves Read Free

punishment might be, he crawled to the end of the ledge to be farther from me.
    He turned around, pointing an accusing finger at me. “I know why she is here! I know what you will do!”
    “Quiet,” I said, almost softly. I stepped toward him, crouching to be closer to his level.
    “I want it,” he said, glancing about as if afraid someone might hear him.
    “I should never have shown it to you.”
    “It should be for me,” he said. “I could have it. Not her. Not a mortal like her.”
    “It would destroy you,” I said. I reached my hand out to him. He looked at me as if confused by my sudden gentleness. He could be both a tiger and a lamb. When he took my hand, I pulled him closer to me. “You cause me so much pain.”
    “Sons do that, I guess,” he said.
    “Did you intend to kill her?”
    “No,” he whispered. “I swear. She promised me blood. Each dawn.”
    “ Dawn? ”I asked.
    “Before the sun, but after morning’s twilight. When the sun had not quite reached the rift. After you had closed your eyes. She bribed me with her scent. I could not...I could not resist.”
    “You have drunk from her before?”
    “Only a taste,” he said, pitifully. “Before this. Only a drop or two. Her taste is worth many vessels of ordinary blood.”
    “Is this the truth?”
    I felt him shiver as I held his throat in my hands.
    He nodded. “I would not lie. Not to you.”
    “How many days has she had her freedom?”
    His eyes narrowed, and he counted it out on his fingers. “Since her twelfth night here.”
    “Go,” I said, feeling as if I had lost my bearings. Why had she done this? Why had she not obeyed? Why had Daniel betrayed me in this way? I could trust no one, and did not want to risk Natalia’s life to these flying jackals that surrounded me. “Do not touch her again. Do not drink from her, nor make bargains with her, fool. Do not ask about those things you know are not meant for you, Daniel. I will not forgive you if this happens again.”
    I watched as he flew off the ledge, upward toward the great rift in the mountain above, toward the open sky.
    I returned to find Natalia clutching her neck. I took her into my arms, and whispered, “Don’t be afraid.” I touched the wound at her throat, sensing the warmth. “The healing has begun. You will need rest and food, I think, to recover your strength.”
    I managed to close the wound, though two small pinprick marks were left to remind me of Daniel’s betrayal.
    She held out her fist and opened it to reveal the wolf key in her palm.
    “A thief,” I said. “I allow you access to the treasures here. I feed you well. My tribe would rather cut your throat than allow you these freedoms. I punish them for such thoughts. I guard against their worst intentions toward you. Is this how you repay my generosity?”
    Natalia looked up at me, fear in her eyes. “I saw you put it in the urn once. Sometimes you keep it at your waist or at your neck. I was...curious. When I examined it more closely, I noticed a missing part to it, as if it were a puzzle. And this.” She drew the wolf tooth off the key, then set it back, nestling it along the carved ridge of the base of the key. “You had been waiting for me to bring this tooth. It had been put away for...”
    “For centuries.”
    She held the key to her eyes as if trying to read the tiny glyphs scrawled upon it.
    “ Let she who finds, know ,”I said. “It was engraved in the eighteenth century. A master craftsman in Florence who had a special magnifying lens that allowed him to write such tiny words.”
    “Am I the ‘she’?”
    “I can’t answer that for you.”
    “What box does this open?”
    “If I showed you what this key fit, you would not understand. Not yet,” I said.
    “I’m sorry for taking it,” she said. She passed it back to me.
    “As you took a key years ago and found a crushed dried flower and a wolf’s tooth among your mother’s possessions,” I said. I could not help smiling,