Anwen
I stare at Estrella for a long moment, my blood boiling in my veins. She doesn't flinch, doesn't release the door.
"If you're not careful, you're going to end up your father's daughter." I storm out and slam the door behind me.
Does she think I'm fucking stupid? Wolfsbane isn't a mystery to me. I slam my fist into the wall, and my knuckles burn. I crossed the line for her, because I fucking had to, and because it fucking worked. Goddess, it was like she didn't even hear the part where I caught her father's killer. I do everything she fucking asks me to, and still, she kicks me out in the middle of the night like I'm some kind of monster.
The strong lead, Father says in my memory, the weak judge.
He was fucking right about that too. And I'm getting tired of pretending he was never right. I know he did horrible things. I sided against him that night, and I'd do it again. But dammit, we didn't bury his every teaching in his empty grave.
The castle walls start to close in on me. My skin itches. I need to fucking run.
Tonight, I don't waste my time with secret passages and hiding from guards. I'm the crown fucking prince, if anybody even remembers. I stride through the halls with my chin high and my knuckles weeping blood.
The first step I take out into the night, I throw myself into a shift. My wolf swallows me whole. Insects hum their evening symphony, too quiet for human ears to hear with winter on the horizon. Nocturnal animals rustle through the brush, tempting but always too small. All beyond the gate.
'Release me,' I yell at the guards manning the mechanism.
Finally, someone fucking listens. The gate opens smoothly, and I launch myself out. Rotting leaves crunch under my paw pads. The wind tears at my fur as I push myself fast, faster. My heartbeat hammers in my ears, nearly blotting out the other smells.
Maybe I can go fast enough that shit starts making sense again.
Trees whip past me. I don't pay attention to them. I don't want to see the spot we shared during the Haze. I don't want to know if it still smells like her, if I can even pick it out. I just need to run.
A smell catches my nose. Another wolf, this one familiar. Grit underpins moss. Kieran.
'What the fuck are you doing out here?' I ask over the mind-link.
'Clearing my head,' he replies. 'You learn anything?'
'Don't ask me that.'
He lopes over to my side, his silver wolf a hand and a half taller than me. Just like Father. I would tell him to fuck off, but he doesn't ask any more questions. If he just wants to run, fine. I dash off, daring him to keep up.
Kieran's never been one to back down from a challenge, but he doesn't stand a chance against me at the moment. We whip through the forest, past boulders, streams, and ponds without a glance. When we were younger, we used to do this all the time. And every time, the rules were the same: first to the Goddess' Fist wins. It was the only time I ever beat him at anything, but I beat him every time. I didn't mean to run toward the old spot, but when I see the rock formation through the trees and realize my veins are finally more full of adrenaline than anger, I know what to do.
I touch the fist-shaped boulder with my nose then shift and collapse onto my back. Kieran rushes up a few moments later and shifts as well.
"Someday, I'll beat you," he says.
"You'd have to play dirty." I roll onto my stomach and look at him, leaning against the base of the rock. He seems tired. Then, his eyebrows lift.
"Your back," he says simply.
I start to twist to see what he's looking at before I remember. The fucking bite. The one I completely forgot about before going bare-ass naked in front of my brother, the king. I grimace.
"It's her, isn't it?" he asks.
"You're right, Nessa is actually my mate, and I was too embarrassed to tell anyone." I smirk.
"Don't be a dick." Kieran rolls his eyes. "Does she have anything to do with your midnight run?"
A ghost of my rage flickers back through my veins, but mostly, I can feel the eating-me-from-the-inside burn of the wolfsbane. My stomach churns.
"Did Father ever take you to the dungeons?" I ask. "When he was... working?"
"I had to stay until I puked." He sighs. "Did the guards-"
"I did it myself," I say.
Kieran exhales slowly. "Fuck, An."
"Do you even want to know if it worked?" I meet his gaze. "Nobody seems to give a fuck that it worked. That Father might not have been all wrong."
He doesn't flinch. He better not. Everybody walking around accusing me of being my father's son seems to have forgotten that Kieran used to run this place with an iron fist, that he used to get complimented for how like Father he was.
"A lot of Father's methods worked," Kieran says.
That knocks the wind out of me. I sit up and put my back to the rock as well, so I don't have to look at him.
"Then why are they so bad?" I ask quietly.
"That's not what you want to ask," he replies.
I shake my head. "Then why was he so bad? Why won't anyone even say his name anymore without insult?"
"Because he took the easy way."
I blink. "Have you seen someone under the effect of his truth serum? It seemed pretty damn hard."
"For them," Kieran says. "For you, it was fast. Simple. Painless." He cuts his eyes at me. "Maybe you even liked it."
I swallow. Estrella's words ring in my ears. I definitely didn't mind it by the end.
"Father's methods work because they put all the work, all the pain, on other people." Kieran tilts his head back and stares up at the night sky. "Just like poisoning Escuro instead of going to war like an honorable king. They're the cheap way out. You may need a little smarts, but you don't have to put anything on the line."
"How else was I supposed to get answers?" I whisper.
"With time," he replies. "By trying to connect with the assassin, make your arguments make sense to him."
And instead, I chose the option that asked the least of me. Isn't that what Estrella's been accusing me of all along? Of being too scared or selfish to choose anything but my own convenience? I close my eyes and lean my head back against the cold stone.
"How the fuck did you figure all this out?" I ask.
"Raven."
I scoff. He punches me in the shoulder.
"I thought we talked about you being a dick."
"Fine, fine." I hold up my hands. "Tell me your precious sister-love's words of wisdom."
"It's not like that." He sighs, obviously starting to get bored of my antics. "It's that our lives were fucking easy, An, and hers was fucking hard, but she kept trying."
"Your life was easy," I mutter.
'Look at me,' he says.
I open my eyes and meet his gaze. "What?"
"Our lives were easy," he repeats.
"Tell that to a lifetime of doors in my face." I shut my eyes again. "I had to work. I know every secret the castle has, and I found them out for myself."
"Fine. Why did you do that?" he asks.
"Because...." I shake my head. "Because it made me valuable." And if I was valuable, Father might let me into all those lessons he kept me away from.
"And you expected a reward for that."
"Fine, yes!" I explode. "I wanted to be just as important as you. Is that so bad?"
Kieran stares back at me evenly. "No, but expecting it is. Because he trained both of us-all of us to want the easiest path. To choose it whenever we could."
"How can you talk about him like that?" My chest hurts. "He raised us."
"Because I have to." He runs a hand through his hair. "Fuck, do you think I don't miss him? It's eating me alive. I killed him, An. But it's so damned easy to become him. That's the hard fight you have to choose if you want to be better."
I slump back against the rock. My eyes sting with tears. No one else has said that yet. Father's "funeral" was a couple muttered prayers around an empty mausoleum already dedicated in his name. No one cried, and no one's said a kind word about him since.
"I thought it was just me."
Kieran pats my shoulder. "That's the other thing. We've gotta talk to each other, too. Because we're nowhere near as special as we think, good or bad."
"Dickhead." I smile.