Wolf's Cross (14 page)

Her heart raced. Why? Why not her stepmother, her brothers? Why
did
her father give this to her? “Shut up!” she yelled at him.

“You are special, Maria. You’re different from those others, even if you don’t know it. That thing protects
them
, not you. They use those silver chains to drag you down.”

She ran, dodging around him, and he made no move to stop her.

“You’re better than they are,” he called after her. “You must know that. Take it off!”

Y
ou’re better than they are
.

The words echoed strangely in Maria’s head as she lay on her bed. Her brothers snored below, and the moon shone through cracks in the shutters to cast a pale blue light around the cottage.

Do you know what you are?

“What I am?” she whispered to herself. “What am I?”

She compiled a list: woman, Christian, Pole, servant, daughter, sister, virgin, bastard … Did Darien mean any of those things, or none of them?

And why was the cross so important to him? To Josef, too, it seemed. Was such a thing so unusual?

What would happen if she did take it off?

She felt it under her nightclothes, pressing into her skin. She fingered the small piece of metal, sliding it along the chain that looped around her neck.

She’d seen terrified anger in her father’s eyes when he had asked, “Why did you take it off?”

What would happen?

Her heart thudded, accelerating. She had never questioned it, the long habit of wearing this cross. She had never felt it weigh her down.

But she’d never questioned why only she had to wear it.

She pulled the cross out so that it dangled in front of her face. Josef was right. Her father had loved her and wanted her to be safe. The cross protected her.

That thing protects
them.

Darien’s voice was like a worm in her brain.

You are special
.

“I’m not special,” she whispered. “There is not one thing special or unique about me.”

Then why was she the only one who wore this?

Why did God need help to protect her from the Devil?

She closed the cross in her fist and prayed. The prayer was short, almost violent: “Lord, let me know
why
.”

Her heart thudded in her ears, and sweat plastered her bedclothes to her skin. Her breaths came shallow and hot, and her hand squeezed the cross hard enough for the corners to bite into her palm. She slowly sat up in bed, and for a moment the air felt so still that it seemed even to mute her brothers’ snoring.

“God protects me,” she whispered. “Not this.”

She pulled the chain up over her head quickly, as if afraid that she might change her mind. She sat at the edge of her bed, her head a few fingers’ breadths from the rough-hewn rafters supporting the thatch roof.

She froze, waiting for the Devil to come claim her for defying her father. “God,” she whispered, “keep your child safe.”

The cross dangled from her fingers on its silver chain. Her palm stung where sweat seeped into the cuts she’d made by pressing the cross into her palm. The skin of her neck felt strange without the weight of the cross pulling against her. She held it up in front of her and looked at it. A plain silver cross on a plain silver chain.

She wondered if it had belonged to her mother.

Could that be it? Could this cross tie her to some other family, perhaps nobility? Could Darien have meant that when he’d spoken of her being special, better than everyone else?

When the Devil persisted in his nonappearance, she lay back on her bed, still holding up the cross and staring at it, trying to divine its mysteries.

And she fell asleep before she could replace it around her neck.

D
arien ran though the midnight-dark woods, his muzzle pulled back in a snarl of frustration.

She doesn’t know
.

The first time he had found a potential mate, a potential family, and she was so fully corrupted by her human keepers that she wasn’t even aware of what she was. The silver chain around her neck was more limiting than any prison humans might make for his kind.

And more frustrating because it was self-imposed.

He reached the edge of the woods, in sight of the castle where the Germans had retreated. He stood on all fours, panting, tongue lolling. He had run so fast, so intently, that his body had reacted, reducing his hands to forepaws. Right now, should anyone from the fortress walls see him here, they would see only the outline of a wolf. Albeit, a wolf that stood chest-high to a tall man.

He stared up at the hillside and thought of the men inside.

Should I pursue her to the exclusion of my purpose here?

It was the Germans that had brought him here, not Maria. But would revenge have the same meaning if he wasn’t alone? He sucked in the night air and could still smell the burnt flesh of his family.

No, the meaning
had
changed. Vengeance could no longer be the soul of his purpose. Now there was another; there was someone for him to protect.

It was no longer a game. He couldn’t plan how to toy with them, how to hurt them, how to lead them though unfamiliar territory where they could feel the fear he had once known.

His plans had to change.

M
aria panicked when she woke and her cross wasn’t around her neck. She sat up in the predawn darkness, remembering her reflections of the night before. She had fallen asleep with it in her hand, but at some point during the night, she had let go of it. After several moments of panicked searching, she finally spotted it, between the bed and the wall.

Her breath caught: the chain had hung up on a peg projecting from the bed frame, and that had kept it from sliding down a crack between the floor of the loft and the wall. It would have been so easy to dislodge it and send it into the hole, where she would never be able to extract it.

She reached for it carefully, thanking God that it hadn’t been lost in the crevice. Her fingers brushed the chain, and it came free of the peg instantly. She didn’t expect it, and her hand snapped shut.

She caught it before it fell.

She pulled it free and replaced it around her neck. Her meeting with Darien had the hazy aspect of a half-remembered dream, and she wondered why she had been so driven to tempt fate. Even Josef had told her to keep wearing this …

And even if the Devil wasn’t literally going to pounce on her the moment she removed it, that didn’t mean it was wise to lose
it. Not to mention the disrespect it would show to her father’s spirit.

She sucked in a breath and told herself it was over. She had chores to do.

B
y the time she was performing her duties at Gród Narew, the wound on her palm ached badly enough that she had to tie a dressing around it.

It was a constant reminder of a night she was trying to forget. Her frustration must have shown on her face. It seemed every time she caught someone’s attention, they looked at her strangely. The first few times, she wiped her face, expecting to find a streak of grease or dirt.

It wasn’t until she brought Josef his morning meal that she understood what everyone seemed to be noticing. When she set the bowl down by his bed, he sat up with more vigor than she would have given him credit for. “Maria, your face.”

She sighed and pulled a cleaning rag from where she stuffed them inside her surcote. She wiped her face with it and asked, “Have I gotten it now?”

His face had gone pale and, for the briefest moment, she thought she saw an echo of her father’s fear in his eyes. “Your bruise.”

She froze as she realized that, again, she had unwittingly done something bad. Her hand stopped moving as she felt the fear infecting her. Then, with the rag pressed into her face, she realized something.

Her cheek didn’t ache. She didn’t feel the tight swelling of flesh under her eye. Her fingers didn’t touch the rough pepper of dried blood dusting the wound on her cheek. She lowered the rag and said, as calmly as she could manage, “My bruise?”

“It’s gone.”

That was what everyone had been staring at. They didn’t care to mention it when it suddenly appeared, but if it disappears …

Maria shook her head. “It has been days since I fell. It’s just been healing.”

“You had a shadow as dark as pitch beneath that eye—”

“You exaggerate.”

“—and now it is completely gone.”

She tried to hide her fear and confusion. “It just healed, that’s all. It wasn’t as bad as you remember it.”

He stared into her face, as if looking for any sign of her injury. His expression frightened her, almost as if he was looking past her, to something else. She was afraid he was looking at the same thing her father had been the night he died.

She couldn’t keep her hand from reaching for her face again.

“What happened to your hand?” he asked.

She shook her head and held up her bandaged palm. “I cut it last night, by accident. It isn’t worrisome.”

His eyes narrowed with a hint of unaccountable suspicion. “May I look at it?”

“It’s nothing.”

“I allow you to see my scar on a daily basis.”

Maria sighed and held out her hand. “The battles I fight are not nearly as epic as yours. I do not think I am in danger from this.”

He unwrapped the dressing and looked down into her palm. The two points where the cross had dug in were barely scabbed over. One small wound cut painfully into one of the creases in her palm, and wept watery blood when she forced her hand flat.

He stared at it for a long time. And, strangely, the tension seemed to leak out of him.

“Might I have my hand back?”

“Yes.” As he wrapped the dressing back around it, he whispered, “Forgive me,” as if apologizing for something much more grave than holding her hand for a moment too long.

When he returned her hand, he asked, “You have lived here, next to this fortress, all your life?”

Even though his character had returned to normal, Maria thought that his question resonated with Darien’s speech from last night. Not in its sense, perhaps, but in its tone. As if Josef, as well as Darien, knew something about her past that she did not. She took her bandaged hand away and said, “You know I have. I told you all there is to know about me.”

“Did your father ever warn you of anything to beware of, in the woods here?”

Is that the fear you shared with my father?

“In the woods?” she responded, thinking of Darien. Who
was
he? What was it he presumed to know about her? “He lived here all his life as a woodsman and a farmer. Of course he warned me about all kinds of things—wild animals, deadfalls, toxic plants, berries, mushrooms—. Is there something you’re concerned about?” She paused, then asked, “Some
one
?”

Josef looked uncomfortable and said, “I am concerned for your safety, Maria. You shouldn’t be traveling in the darkness.”

“What is it that frightens you? Is it what attacked you?”

“Forgive me. I’m not permitted to speak of it.”

“Why?”

“I’ve told you, I’m sworn to obey my superiors in the Order.”