David woke up with a headache. There was a bruise on the back of his head, too, a large, painful welt. The light was too bright, as if he’d been drinking—he was fairly sure he hadn’t been, but he didn’t know where he was, either. He appeared to be lying on the floor. A cold and dusty floor at that.

There were bars right in front of his face. Steel bars, as thick around as a broom handle.

He was inside a cage. Inside one of the cages that General Clermont had had set up for the werewolves.

On the other side of the bars lay what remained of the camp. Soldiers in yellow uniforms—Valoisian uniforms—were busy setting up a large tent right across from him, digging latrines, and generally settling in.

David grimaced softly and suppressed a groan as the memory of their defeat slowly returned.

Alvin was dead. Lenny was dead. The moon alone knew how many more werewolves had died.

And he had been captured.

He also had a concussion, if he wasn’t very much mistaken. When David carefully reached out to touch the bruise on his head, someone moved behind him.

“Lord Feleke?”

The voice was familiar, but David couldn’t place it. When he tried to roll over to see who he shared his prison with, his stomach heaved. He swallowed reflexively, lying on his back like a turtle, eyes pressed shut.

Mithras’s flaming torch, his head hurt.

“Lord Feleke, you’re alive!”

“Afraid so,” David muttered. He didn’t exactly look forward to whatever the Valoise had planned for him. Them.

When he slowly opened his eyes again, he saw Marquess deBurg kneeling over him, the young Pettau hovering behind.

“Thank the Sun. I thought you were dead.”

“How long was I out?” David asked, his voice barely more than a rasp.

“A few hours,” deBurg said.

David closed his eyes again. Even lying flat on his back, the world swam around him. But he had to see… He raised his right arm over his face. The arm where his blood had mixed with Alvin’s. He needed to see how much shit he was in.

His palms and his lower arm were itching. He had expected pain. A lot of pain. He knew hunters who had cut off their own limbs when they got werewolf-blood under their skin. It was an intensely magical substance, and it usually turned to Rot if it came in contact with something as mundane as human blood.

David took another deep breath and opened his eyes again. Then he blinked. The wounds looked nothing like he had expected. He had expected grey lines creeping up his arm, poisoning him, or even for the flesh to be eaten away the way Nathan’s food had been eaten—but all there was, were a few faint silver lines. They glowed in the dark, like the fire Lenny had burned out in.

He didn’t know what this faint itching meant.

He couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was watching him. As if there was someone standing right behind him. It reminded him a little bit of Morgulon’s presence, yet fainter, less sharp and pronounced.

Which brought up another thought. “Did I get bitten?”

DeBurg and Pettau moved away from him at once, but the Marquess said: “Not that I could tell.”

“You?”

“Me? No!”

“Why the cage then?”

“Oh. I believe that it was simply convenient.”

“I see.”

David tried to wet his lips, find some moisture in his mouth. Before he could ask for water, he heard some more movements, and something cold pressed against his lips. He almost choked on the drink Pettau offered him.

At least they weren’t being starved.

“How bad?” he finally asked.

There was no answer, just more scraping on the wood. When David opened his eyes again, deBurg had sat down, leaning against the bar, his back to the camp. He shrugged when he noticed that David was looking.

“Hard to imagine how things could be worse,” he said. “We’ve failed to take the harbour, the army’s been routed, General Clermont is dead, and so are at least half the soldiers. Human and otherwise. The Valoise are disembarking their army as we speak. And we’re getting to enjoy his majesty’s hospitality.”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

“Clermont is dead?”

DeBurg massaged his eyebrow, then nodded silently, face grim.

“I’m sorry,” David said.

“He should have stayed retired,” the Marquess muttered. “Enjoy his time with his dogs. I don’t know why he even agreed to take this position. We should have all just—stayed home.”

David didn’t say anything to that. Let the man grieve in peace while he could.

Instead, he watched the preparations of the enemy. Still pitching tents, orderly rows of them. Fires were turning the night into day. The smell of food made him both hungry and nauseous at the same time. A cheer went up as a group of soldiers rolled a couple of barrels down from the city. Rum rations, David guessed, and probably more than usual. After all, they had just won an important battle.

He tried to remind himself that it wasn’t the first battle that mattered but the last, but he still felt a sickness that didn’t just stem from his head wound. So many Loegrian soldiers, so many werewolves dead, and for what?

And what was going on at Deva right now? Was there even still any point to fighting this war? Had it really been death cap?

“I could use a drink of that,” de Burg muttered as a couple of pisscoats walked right past their cage, cups swinging wildly.

“Don’t think I could keep it down,” David muttered, feeling at the welt on his head. “And I bet they’d spit into it, anyway.”

DeBurg chuckled darkly. “Who do you think is the traitor?” de Burg asked suddeny.

“No way to tell, is there?” David said.

“Then guess, man!”

David blinked slowly at him. DeBurg’s tone made him want to yell back, but on the other hand, he was curious about what the marquess would think of his suspicions.

“Marquesses Picot or Pettau, Count Carter, or on an outside chance, Bishop Larssen.”

DeBurg sputtered. “Bishop—”

“My father would never—”

“Why these names?” deBurg asked. “They have no connection to anything? Picot is part of the war council, sure, but so am I.”

David sighed and gently rolled his head until he found a position that allowed him to look at the other two without lying on the injury. Then he told them about the man Greg had caught searching his office and who he had met at the casino afterwards. The dead spy. About his own conversation with deVale after their duell.

“Not my father,” Pettau muttered softly when David had finished.

“I’ll bet two silvers on Picot.” David yawned, which sent a new wave of hurt through his skull. “Do we have any idea where deVale is? Did he fall, too?”

“I think I saw him escape on the back of one of the werewolves,” deBurg said slowly. “But I also thought the werewolf had blue light burning in its fur. So maybe I imagined that.”

“Must’ve been Ragna or Rust,” David muttered. “And they made it out?”

“I think so.” DeBurg fiddled with the hemline of his uniform. “I thought I saw them race straight past the traitors firing line. I could have sworn three volleys aimed at them, but no bullet struck. But that can’t be, can it? Maybe the werewolf just didn’t lose its stride?”

“What traitors?” David asked.

“There was at least one battalion,” deBurg said. “Maybe two. Of our own people. Must’ve marched up from the defected southern provinces. At least same time, the defenders sailed from the castle, and the mariners came up from the harbour. It was all surprisingly well orchestrated. No way it was coincidence.”

“Explains why they fought us the way they did,” David muttered. “The civilians, I mean. I thought they just hated the werewolves.”

“Feared them, more likely,” deBurg said. “You know it’s said that they have no souls, right? No afterlife at all for them.”

“Sounds peaceful,” David said. “Better than going to the frozen hells for sure.”

He ignored deBurg’s and Pettaus shocked faces. DeVale had escaped. With one of the elders. How many other werewolves had gotten away? How many of the unsettled ones?

Maybe it was a good thing they were stuck inside this cage. Provided they didn’t get kicked out right before full moon.

David’s right hand itched again. He tried to be surreptitious when he rubbed it, so as not to draw attention to the wound—or rather, the scars. The deep cuts in his palm and wrist were just a few hours old, yet all that remained were a few thin, blueish-white lines, stark against his brown skin.

Something was happening to his arm, but he couldn’t quite summon the energy to freak out about it.

***

David groaned when deBurg shook him awake. His head still ached and he growled a “what?” at the Marques.

“Look!” deBurg hissed back. It was still dark, so his face was hidden in shadows, but David thought the man looked scared. Pettau stood pressed up against the bars as if he thought he could push himself through them.

“What is that?” the Marques whispered, pointing at a corner of the cage.

David blinked and looked around wearily. He couldn’t see anything to warrant waking him up. Outside their prison, the Valoisian war camp bustled about. Inside, there was just the bucket they had been so generously granted.

“You’ve got to look at it from the right angle,” deBurg said, before Dvid could complain. “Step over here!”

David groaned, but the urgency in the older man’s voice made him roll around and push himself into a sitting position. He still couldn’t see anything in the corner which deBurg was staring at.

Or couldn’t he?

“Tell me that’s one of your tricks!” deBurg hissed into his ear, clearly scared, and clearly trying not to alert the Valoise. Pettau didn’t move, either.

David blinked. In the shadows of the cage’s wooden back, he saw a faint glow—a sort of outline. It was quite large, and when he blinked again, he realised that it reached all the way to his legs. The barely visible, hazy front paw of a young werewolf disappeared into his boots.

“Alvin,” David whispered.

There was no reaction. No sign the apparition had heard him. If it weren’t for Pettau, frozen stiff, and deBurg, kneeling behind him, his grip painful on David’s shoulder, he would have been sure it was just a trick of the light, a figment of his imagination, brought forth by his grief.

He reached out with his hand, tried to touch—but his hand went right through the apparition.

“Alvin,” he repeated, a little louder. He tried to bring forth a spark of magic into his fingers, but it didn’t do anything, either. He should have been able to smell the wolf, this close. Still, every sense but his eyes told him that there was nothing there at all.

He tried to swallow a sob, but it was too big to keep down.

When the tears started flowing, the faintly glowing shape shifted around, shaking itself before turning in a tight circle and settling down again. By a sliver of moonlight, David could see the faintest hint of markings on the shade’s fur. It was Alvin’s werewolf shape—but the boy wasn’t there.

Just the wolf.