Chapter 6 Empty Eyes

Selene POV

The passage was narrow and black and endless.

Selene ran with one hand on the wall and one hand locked around Isolde's wrist. She could hear her own breathing. Could hear Isolde crying quietly behind her, trying to muffle it with her free hand.

From behind them, from the kitchen, came the sounds of the fight. Alaric's snarls. The crash of soldiers hitting stone. Then a sound she couldn't identify, something heavy and final, and then silence.

She didn't know if that silence meant he had won.

She ran faster.

They came out through the low door at the end into the rose garden and the night air hit them like cold water. Selene dragged in a breath and immediately choked on smoke. The east wing of the manor was on fire. Orange light painted the garden walls. Ash floated down through the dark like gray snow.

"The outer wall." Selene pulled Isolde toward it. "If we can get over the wall we can get to the tree line and—"

The howl stopped her cold.

From inside the manor. From the great hall. Her father's voice.

She knew his wolf's voice. She had heard it at pack ceremonies her whole life, strong and steady and commanding. She knew how it sounded when he was calling the pack together. Knew how it sounded when he was signaling a hunt.

She had never heard it sound like this.

Broken. Ragged. A sound that came from somewhere past pain, past fighting, past anything that had a name.

Selene turned toward the shattered windows of the great hall without deciding to.

Through the smoke and the orange light and the broken glass she could see shapes moving inside. Soldiers. And a wolf. Gray and massive, moving slower now, stumbling.

Her father.

Three soldiers closed around him.

"No," Selene whispered.

One thrust forward. The blade went in deep and her father's howl cracked apart in the middle of it and she felt it in her teeth, in her spine, in the place where her wolf lived behind her ribs.

He fell.

He was still shifting back when he hit the floor, the wolf leaving him as he fell, and by the time he hit the stones he was a man again. Her father. In his dress clothes from the feast except they weren't dress clothes anymore.

The blood spread fast. Too fast.

His head turned.

Through the smoke. Through the distance. Through everything between them his eyes found her. Found her face in the garden like he had known exactly where she was the whole time.

His lips moved.

She couldn't hear the words. She didn't need to.

She knew her father's mouth. Had watched it say her name a thousand times. Had watched it smile and scold and tell stories and sing off-key at harvest celebrations.

She watched it say run.

And then protect.

And then your sister.

And then the light went out of his eyes and he was just a man on the floor of his own great hall and he wasn't her father anymore. Her father was gone. The thing on the floor was just a body.

Selene didn't know she had made a sound until Isolde grabbed her.

"Selene. Selene look at me. Look at me right now."

She couldn't look away from the window.

"SELENE."

She looked at her sister.

Isolde's face was streaked with ash and tears and her yellow dress was ruined and she was seven years old and somehow she was the one holding Selene up.

"He's gone," Isolde said. Her voice was very quiet. Very steady. Like something in her had gone still. "He's gone and Mama went back in there and we don't know and we can't know right now. Right now we have to go over that wall."

Selene opened her mouth.

Nothing came out.

"You told me to be brave," Isolde said. "Remember? You're always telling me to be brave. So be brave. Please. Be brave for me right now."

A hand grabbed Selene's arm from behind.

She spun.

Alaric. Bloody and limping, one arm held slightly wrong, his formal shirt gone entirely. His eyes moved over her face fast, checking something, and then moved to Isolde, checking again.

"We have to move," he said. Low and urgent. "Right now."

"Our father is dead." The words came out flat. Like she was reporting something that had happened to someone else.

"I know." His jaw tightened. "Selene. We have to move right now or we will be too."

She looked at him.

He looked back at her.

And she couldn't move. Couldn't make her legs work. Couldn't make any part of her work because her father was on the floor of the great hall with the light gone from his eyes and she couldn't stop seeing it.

She just could not move.