Filed to story: My Kidnapper Is the Wolf King
A version of my voice whispers through the foliage, stirring the leaves.
Your mother was a sinner.
The High Priest’s voice echoes around the church.
And you are a sinner too. Do you want the Sun Goddess to be angered?
What of my anger?
For so many years, I had thought I deserved it. I thought I was a sinner. I thought it was my fault that I was beaten. It was not my fault. Men wielded their power over me because it made them feel big, when I was so small. That was their choice, not mine.
The whip cracks down, and dark laughter fills the air.
I raise my chin, defiant.
I yank my arms toward me, and the vines fall to my feet. They uncurl from my ankles, and wither and decay until they’re pools of thick darkness. I clench my fist, and sap runs between my fingers. The tiles crack and crumble around me. I raise my head to the glass dome.
Enough.
I’m falling once more.
I land. My skin pulls taut on my arms, and there are hundreds of hooks piercing me and holding me upright. I try to scream, but my mouth is sewn shut. I’ve been here before, in the palace’s throne room. Once again, I’m a marionette, controlled by a hand I can’t see. My father’s golden throne looms over me on the dais ahead.
The invisible puppeteer is using the control handle as usual, and I begin to spin.
But I’m not a puppet. I’m not a pawn in the games of kings. I’m not someone to be controlled by others, to marry cruel lords for my father’s gain. I can pull strings, too. I see them now, threads of power that glow like moonlight. They reach outward from my chest.
I pull my arms free, and the hooks tear through my skin and turn my white dress crimson. I pull the strings from my legs and my feet. The music grinds to a halt. Blood drips down my body. When it hits the floor, the puddle grows and creeps through the room.
I rip my sewn-up lips apart.
The wooden cross-brace hurtles from the ceiling, and the courtiers scream and scatter as it crashes onto the tiles before me. The floor shakes, then crumbles.
“Enough.
“
I fall.
I land in a heap on the grass. The moon is full in the cloudless sky. It paints the lake by the nearby cabin silver. There are two figures sitting at the bank. A woman and a small child, around three years old, nestled into her side. Both have long red hair that brushes the ground behind them. My heart clenches. I push myself up and walk toward them. Unable to stop myself, I run. The grass tickles my bare feet and dandelions whisper between my toes.
“Mother?” I say.
“The moon is beautiful, isn’t she, little one?” she says, and something erupts in my chest. It aches, yet it’s warm. Tears spring into my eyes. I had forgotten what her voice sounded like, the musical cadence, the lilt of the Snowlands.
“Yes,” I say, at the same time as the small child beside her.
My heart cracks, because it’s not the adult version of me she speaks to. I don’t think she can hear me. I try to walk around her. I try to see her face, but the scenery turns, and I end up facing her back once more.
My mother sighs. “There is so much I need to tell you. So much you’ll need to know when you grow up. Yet I’m running out of time.” She leans back on her hands, and her hair tickles the grass. The small version of me snuggles into her side. “I hope you remember these times, and you remember me fondly.”
The small girl yawns. My mother hums the same haunting melody I hummed to Blake when he was in need of comfort, and the young version of me begins to gently snore.
“The Snowlands were at war when I was promised to your father. An alpha known as the Shadow Wolf had gained a loyal following. He devoted his life to the God of Night, and he was looking for the key to Night’s prison to free his master. My grandmother-the alpha of our pack-could not risk him finding me.”
“Why?” I breathe.
She looks down at the small sleeping babe at her side, almost as if she spoke. “It’s in our blood, little one. Passed from generation to generation down the female line, getting stronger as each branch of our family tree grows.
“My grandmother believed that the next generation would be powerful enough to either release the God of Night or to defeat him. She feared the alpha would force a child upon me, and then sacrifice her to free his master.” She shakes her head as darkness spreads its roots through my veins. “So my grandmother struck a deal with your father. Your father would support us in our fight against the Shadow Wolf, my grandmother would provide Wolves to help him fight his war in the kingdom of Rema, and I would be his wife to secure the alliance. Your father seemed kind, when she met him to discuss the terms. She thought I would be safe. I thought I would be safe.”
“You were not.”
Her breath is a whisper on the summer-scented breeze. “I was not. Your father. . . I loved him, at first. I was young, only eighteen years old. He showered me with affection. He bought me gifts. He made me his queen. He was handsome when we met, and I thought myself the luckiest wolf in the Snowlands to have escaped the war, and to have met such a man.” I hear the sad smile in her voice as the moonlit water ripples before her, and I wish that she would look at me.
“I took the wolfsbane willingly at first. Just a small dose every day. He told me it was for my own good, to keep my wolf at bay. No one would love a queen with my affliction, he told me. His council would murder me, our people would turn on me, and he could not be with me. . . I had to keep that side of myself hidden at all times. He said the wolf was an illness, and the wolfsbane was the medicine. It would make me better. I took it for him. I tried to be ‘better’ for him. It was, of course, unnecessary. I don’t have to shift on the nights of the full moon, because of the blood that runs in my veins.”
She tips her head back to the moon, which is full in the clear night sky.
“I needed him to think that it was the ‘medicine’ that kept it at bay, not the power in my bloodline, though it pained me to take it. Because I knew that if I had a daughter, and the secret came out, she would be killed by your father’s council because of what she represented to the Wolves.”
She exhales. “He changed after Philip was born, now he had his heir. Or perhaps he was a monster all along, and I had chosen not to see it. Perhaps forcing me to hide a part of myself, perhaps making me feel shame for who I was, perhaps showing disgust if I ever slipped. . . perhaps that was abuse all along.
“When you were born, he started making me take larger doses of my ‘medicine’. He told me he would take you and Philip from me if I did not. I can withstand it better than most, but I’m not impervious to its effects.
“I tried to escape with you and Philip, once. He caught me, and I was punished for it. This. . . this is the second and last time I will try to get you out of the kingdom.”
The temperature cools, and a shadow passes over the moon. The water of the lake becomes agitated, and my mother’s voice becomes harder.
“The next day at dawn, I tried to send you away with my lady-in-waiting. I instructed her to take you to the port at the White Cliff, and get passage on a ship to the Snowlands. There, I thought you would be safe. But your father’s men came in the night, and took us back.”
My heart stops. She is not talking to the sleeping child. She is talking to me.
“He locked me in my chambers, and made me take more and more of my medicine as punishment. He told me he would kill you, if I did not.”
My breath mists in front of my face, and the soft grass hardens beneath my feet. A crack fills the air as the lake freezes, and snow falls from the sky. I knew he had killed her, had taken her from me, but the knowledge of how long his abuse lasted, and that my mother knew she was being poisoned. . . I cannot bear it.
“So I took it. I got weaker, day by day. I let him kill me, because I was afraid. Afraid of him, afraid he would harm you. And because I was afraid he would find out the truth.”
Tears slide down my cheeks, hot in the winter air. My throat is tight. “What truth?” I whisper.
“Ghealach did not rip out her heart so the Elderwolf could be close to her power. She sent him her daughter, so that he would protect her. The power the Wolves seek. . . it was never a rock, or a relic, or a tool to be used. It was a person, and then a bloodline. We are descended from
Ghealach and the Elderwolf, little one. You are the Heart of the Moon.”
My heart shatters into a thousand jagged pieces. My fists clench, and my fingernails bite into my palms. The ice thaws, and the snow stops falling. The shadows shift, and the moon lights the lake once more. The summer breeze makes the green trees rustle. She kisses the small version of me on the head, then lays her down in the grass.
My mother stands up and looks out onto the water.
“What do I do now?” I ask her.
“Whatever you want to do.”
Slowly, she turns. My heart almost bursts when I look upon her face. I had forgotten how blue her eyes were, and the way she wore kohl to underline them. I had lost count of the freckles that covered her nose, and I misremembered the warmth of her smile. I forgot how she smelt like lavender and snow and horses. And how that scent made me feel warm and safe and like no one could harm me.
Facing her as an adult, there are things I don’t think I even recognized as a child. Like the grit in her stance and the steel in her gaze. My mother, I realize, was a warrior. She did not fight her battles in the field with swords and shields, but she was a warrior nonetheless. She fought every day to protect my brother and me, to keep us safe from the man who would harm us.
“First,” she says, “you must fight.”
“I miss you so much.”
She touches my cheek. Her hands are delicate yet calloused. Warm. I had forgotten. “I’m so proud of the woman you have become.”
A tear slides down my cheek. Her face starts to fade. The warmth of her touch disappears. The sounds of the summer become distant. Panic swells within me.
“Don’t go,” I plead. “I’m not ready. Don’t go.”