Chapter Three
Screams rent the air. “There's a lightweaver!” someone howled. It sounded like Lars. “One of the slaves must be one!”
“I bet it's that princess. We shoulda killed her!”
“Check the cage! Is she still in there?”
Bethany smiled to herself. But now she had a hard decision to make. One woman against thirty men wasn't good odds. Even if she did have the power to steal light. Making her a light thief.
Well, about time she was useful for something, right? She risked a little light to briefly reveal to her where she needed to go, before extinguishing it.
No, the decision to make was to leave the others behind. She couldn't save the four escorts. Not without getting herself flung back into the cage, with no chance of escape.
And they'd kill her to stop the chaos.
If the invisible flames didn't kill them first.
She felt the creeping of heat on her left side, and used her hand as a barrier of sorts, helping to shield her. Shame she couldn't steal heat, too, but the magic didn't work like that.
But the flames... if they reached the others...
Her heart squeezed, and a sudden wave of guilt hit her. Her impulsive decision, her seizing the opportunity to escape... it might cost the other Fjordans their lives.
No. Don't think like that. It's done. There's nothing you can do. You'll just have to live with the consequences.
Still, hard to realize that she was no better than the men who lived here. People who existed to survive, and do anything to ensure their survival.
Her mind briefly reflected on Yelena and the werewolf, before she shook her head and continued edging towards her exit.
She needed to be fast, before they got the same idea.
She suppressed a cry as she collided with someone.
“Who's there?” he barked.
She didn't have a male voice at all, so no sense trying to impersonate one of his friends. “Yelena,” she spat, trying to imitate the girl's voice. “What in nights is going on? Where's my father?”
“Search me.”
He said nothing else, and she breathed a silent sigh of relief. She used the same excuse on two other people. Lucky Yelena didn't actually talk. Might have been harder if the girl happened to be nearby.
She extinguished more torches. The heat grew stronger. People started screaming. Someone howled about being on fire. The acrid smell of burning flesh carried in the air, on the faint breeze that existed.
Oops.
At last—the exit. She lit her way in brief spurts of light, just enough to see where she walked, upon spongy, soft, sinking ground. She didn't remember the way perfectly. And if she used only the bare minimum of light, she risked dangerous encounters with night horde creatures, of being spotted if she did use light.
A dreadful, snarling noise pierced the air. An inhuman howl. More screams. Such chaos.
Did the noise come from the werewolf? Was he on flames?
She didn't know. She kept creeping forward... right until she saw a torch bobbing in the swamp, along with the glow of two necklaces.
Yelena. The blonde girl froze, yellow eyes startled. “You,” she said. She flinched when she heard screams. “What have you done?”
Bethany grimaced, memorizing the path, even as she said, “I'm so sorry. It's dangerous there.” Barely did she finished speaking before she extinguished all of Yelena's light.
The girl gasped. Just as Bethany dashed through the path she saw between the heavy, tall trees, the light flickered back on. She chanced a look back, and saw Yelena clutching her glow necklaces, puzzled. “I,” she said. “How did I do that?”
Oh, great. An untrained lightweaver. She tried tugging at the light, and found she no longer could. Yelena had a rigid grip on it. A right of way.
“Wait! Wait!” Yelena ran, and Bethany had no choice but to allow her light to burst into life so she could see the path ahead.
The dreadful snarling, rising above the screams of the camp, grew closer and closer. It sent a rabid kind of fear through Bethany, and she ran faster, breath growing ragged in her throat. She needed to get away! She needed—she needed to be free.
Yelena screamed. Bethany couldn't help it. Despite all her instincts telling her to flee, she whirled and saw the girl, pinned against a tree, the light brown, still-muzzled werewolf about to slash at her throat.
“No! Don't hurt her!” The words tore out of Bethany. The werewolf instantly paused and looked towards Bethany.
He freed himself. Turned out he did know how to use a lock pick. He had also clearly understood her pleading. His yellow eyes stared. Yelena let out a shivering whimper, and with a growl, the werewolf tossed her over his shoulder, bounding towards Bethany.
He understood her. He stopped his advance on Yelena, at her demand. But it was hard not to keep her fear under control when a monstrous, toothy werewolf lunged towards her. His clawed hand reached out. In a second, he had grabbed her and unceremoniously tossed her over his other shoulder, carrying the two women like sacks of potatoes. He continued to run, though his gait wasn't perfect.
In the meanwhile, Bethany heard the screams of the others dancing upon the air, and Yelena's quiet, confused sobs, her breath hitching in fear.
“W-w-what's happening...?”
Obviously, being scooped up by the werewolf they kept in chains for night knew how long might be a little bit of a shock to her. On top of that, people burning in invisible flames, her father caught in the middle of it all, and discovering that she was, in fact, a lightweaver, likely overwhelmed all her senses.
Not to say that Bethany was calm herself. It did take her a moment or two to realize that the werewolf didn't want to kill her. Something to do with the snarling, though he still wore the muzzle. He didn't really have time to take that off, it seemed. Not that he needed the teeth, with those claws and that awesome strength. She felt his muscles ripple under her stomach, and grimaced when he lurched.
Not at full strength, however.
Being tied up for so long, there was no way he could maintain this speed forever. Especially with two grown women weighing him down.
“There may not be a camp anymore,” Bethany said, her voice wobbling with the werewolf's strides. “I tried to escape when they took me to the bathroom. And they set the camp on fire.”
“W-why would they do that?”
“Because I stole the light.”
Yelena fell silent a moment, her face disturbed. “I... I felt something, when I was out hunting.”
“That might have been me,” Bethany confessed, before cursing as she accidentally bit the inside of her cheek. Seriously, she needed to stop biting herself.
Yelena's face went blank as she processed the information. Then, with a strange, high-pitched voice, she asked, “Is my father dead?”
“I don't know,” Bethany said. “I think some people died. But I don't know.”
Yelena fell silent and didn't say anything else on the matter, allowing herself to be carried.
With Yelena's glow necklaces, and the lightweaving that Bethany bound into her clothes, the werewolf saw where he needed to go easily. Though she wondered if he would actually have any trouble at all. Enhanced hearing and smell and all that.
Soon, though, he began to tire. Bethany didn't know how long he'd been running for, but they no longer heard the screams at least. The werewolf staggered, before squelching onto his knees and dropping the girls. His clawed hands pressed into the soft, muddy earth. His chest heaved up and down, trembling from exhaustion.
Then, his form dissolved. The muzzle became loose and slipped off, as the werewolf shrank into a human form.
Bethany gaped, as the man emerged from the monster, his arms shaking, his tattered noble's clothes appearing as if they had been on his body for years.
Yellow eyes focused on her. Behind that wild, unkempt appearance, that shaggy, dark blond hair, beard, and mustache, lay a kind of face that Bethany believed must have been exceedingly handsome. Probably still was. If slightly buried under hair.
“Thaankss...” His voice came out cracked, raspy, like the grinding of cogs together. “T-tired...”
Yelena clapped a hand to her mouth. “No,” she said.
Bethany had no idea where the no had come from, but Yelena stared at the werewolf as if her entire world was crumbling to pieces.
In a way, it was.
“You... you're human?”
The werewolf shook his head. After a few heavy breaths, he said, “Ronan.”
“What?”
“My name.”
“Oh.” Bethany stared at the werewolf. Yelena, meanwhile, had curled up into a ball, rocking back and forth slightly. She kept repeating the same word. No.
Ronan rested for about five minutes. Trying to gather what little strength remained. “Been too long,” he said. “Too long. I don't know what... what year it is.”
“Six-two-eight,” Bethany replied. Ronan's bushy blond eyebrows scrunched up.
“Th-three years,” he finally managed. “I've been missing three years.”
Three years? Of torture? Bethany's eyes trailed over the scars. Some of them criss-crossed over his arms. Others appeared on his collarbone, exposed from the rags that he wore. “Who were you?”
“A diplomat,” he said. “I come from Kanthus. But lived in Golubria for some time. Trying... trying to forge an alliance. It didn't really work out.” His voice became clearer, stronger, as he worked his throat, getting used to producing sounds again. And had that been a stab at humor?
“I'm surprised no one looked for you.”
“Hard to know where to look,” he replied. “I imagine people believed I was still in Golubria, or dead in the catacombs.”
Bethany remembered the Golubrian rumor that they all lived underground, supported, like every other society, by the lightweavers. No one knew too much about them in Fjordan, however. Same as no one really knew about Kanthus.
Yelena by now had stopped rocking back and forth to listen, though there were tear streaks swelling up her cheeks, reddening her eyes.
“Thanks for the lock pick, by the way,” he said then, giving her a tentative smile. “When I realized what you'd done... I remembered how to hope again. Feeling that little thing under my foot. It was beautiful.” Actual tears swam in his eyes, along with that desperate, quavering hope and appreciation. It was as if she'd just seen him naked. People didn't show those kinds of emotions. Men didn't show that kind of emotion. And surely one that happened to shapeshift into a werewolf counted in the same category as well.
Ronan. His name emanated in her brain, threading within her a familiarity that she didn't understand. As if somewhere, she did know his name, and when he said it to her for the first time, she felt like she had just remembered it.
Did a name have that kind of power? It didn't make sense to her. Not really. Ronan.
It fit, somehow. Same with his eyes. When she met those eyes of his, she felt... strings converging together. Tightening. Connecting. Like she knew those eyes.
A friend she hadn't met yet.
Even as her brain stumbled on this strange introspection, Yelena let out a long, groaning gasp, prompting Ronan and Bethany to look at her.
“Right. Yelena. Um... sorry?” Bethany didn't really think any apology could fix this. Yelena to her was a loose bolt in the works. A dangerous element, with a high chance of anger and grief, and a fear from understanding that she had effectively been kidnapped.
Stolen, after almost getting killed by Ronan. And in that same breath of finding out that she could lightweave, hearing that a fire burned her home. A fire that she couldn't see, only heard and smelled, with heat and smoke roasting the air in the darkness.
“Shall we leave you behind?” Ronan sat up straighter, squinting at the woman. Bethany felt a strange lurch in her heart. Already, Ronan saw them as we. Excluding Yelena. He somehow saw Bethany as his rescuer. The deliverer of hope.
Yelena turned red-rimmed eyes to Ronan, and there was both hate and confusion in them. Her fingers trembled, along with her bottom lip.
“We can leave a light source for you, so you can find your way back. We just needed to escape,” Bethany offered. “There's nothing else we can do for you. I'm sorry. I... we can't apologize for this.”
Yelena rubbed at her face furiously. Then, with words tainted with venom, she hissed, “I can't go back. I'll come with you.”
Well. That was unexpected. Yelena coughed up more phlegm—her swamp fever acting up. Did she know she had it? Did she just ignore it? It seemed like that, if she went hunting. She should have been resting in one of those huts. For a brief second, Bethany imagined that instead of Yelena, she looked at her sister instead. Kiara sitting there, infected with swamp fever. Already the words sprang into her mind. You idiot. You should be resting! Climbing up trees again?
“Why?” Now Ronan spoke, suspicious. “We're responsible for what happened to your camp. With those bastards, who hurt me.” Bethany caught a faint trace of and I don't care if everyone in it dies, because there was a harsh edge. A bitter tone.
Yelena looked as if she wanted to be sick, as she opened her mouth, and whispered, “My father lied.”
She refused to say anything more on the matter, despite prompting.
Ronan sighed, scratching at his beard. “Okay, I have enough energy to move some again. But not for long. I'll carry you both. It'll be faster.”
Neither woman argued, though Yelena flinched, stricken, as he morphed back into that towering werewolf, no longer wearing the muzzle. His fierce yellow eyes settled on Yelena first, and he scooped her up without effort, before doing the same to Bethany.
Then he ran, leaving the chaos behind. Leaving their prison, carrying a stony-faced blonde and a speechless princess.