Wystwood

63. Tale of the wolf

The night was at its darkest hour. Ada withdrew into the alcove, the city below soon smothered in a black so consuming that dawn seemed a lifetime away. Behind Ada was the clock, twice her height but simply fashioned from copper and stone. Its hands moved slowly yet decidedly, powered by a hundred cogs that each promised sunrise would surely come.

"I don't want to go back down there," Ada said, thinking of the Stone Circle's endless tunnels that had never been warmed by sunlight. "If I stay in the city, we can find Solen together. Find the name of the Saltsworn, and then..."

Raeph still sat on the alcove's edge. He didn't turn around, but his face was tilted to one side so that Ada could see the outline of his long nose and tensed jaw. He stared across the city like a sentry of the night.

"You can't stay with me," he finally replied.

Ada realised what he was looking at; the tower of Wysthaven, the only building taller than their perch, its windows climbing towards the sight of stars. A wind whistled between the stones, and Ada felt the cold pass through her.

"Is she the reason?" she asked. "This Lady of Wysthaven?"

"She's the reason I'm alive," Raeph said, and his voice was low, as if speaking of a god.

Ada's heart stuttered a beat. The Lady of Wysthaven. The Saltsworn. No matter what she had been called, Ada had never heard the city's sovereign spoken of with anything but distaste. Apart from by the Hounds. The very thing Raeph had been accused of time and again.

Raeph turned towards her, but without the moon to illuminate his face, his eyes were lost in shadows. "I have hurt you in the past, Ada, and for that, I can only beg for your forgiveness. But I know your name, and you have shown me your family." There was a moment of silence, as if the city below had been swallowed or suffocated. "Now, I will tell you of my family."

No. Ada didn't want to hear it. After everything that she had been through with the bandits, and sweet Min, all of them working against Wysthaven's tyranny, Ada couldn't hear Raeph talk about the Lady in such a way. She didn't think her heart could handle any more cracks unless she wished it to shatter right there. But before she could speak, Raeph went on.

"My family—my blood family—were fae of the free folk. Myself, my brother, father, and mother, we roamed the hills and lived far from Wysthaven's shadow. We could practice magic as we wished, without rulings and without fear of punishment. I was never any good at it, but my brother, he was the most gifted Caster I have ever seen. We both trained under my mother's tutelage, but whilst I was still prodding plants around in puddles, Samael could draw gold from mountains with only a touch of a finger.

"We kept abreast with word from Wysthaven, and heard about the cruelty enacted on those who still used magic within the city by its Lady. My mother was most struck by the stories, and upon receiving whispers of the Stone Circle, she decided to seek them out and provide them with what she could from outside of the city. She left on a night clearer than any I've seen before or since, promising to return by the following sunset, even though my father begged her not to go. We watched all day from the edge of the Wystwood, so we saw the moment her dead body was dragged to the edge of Wysthaven's tower and strung up by the iron necklace."

Ada was shivering, unsure whether the cold or Raeph's tale was the source.

"After that, my father refused to sleep or eat, growing sicker by the day. But Samael was worse by far. He spent all his time Casting, or gathering plants and wood that he could Cast on later. It became an obsession, and without my mother there to guide him, and my father too ill to stop him, he began to walk a path that would have no return. First, he made an iron dagger, and a wystwood sheath to keep it from burning him. It was the cruellest weapon I had ever seen, and he meant to use it to kill the Lady of Wysthaven.