The Red Winter

"Get up," Anya says. "Get up off the ground. Now."

The old man doesn't move. His head is still bowed. Snow is soaking through the knees of his canvas trousers.

"Princess," he says, without looking at her, "with respect, I've waited twenty-five years to do this. I'll get up when he tells me to."

They both look at you.

You've never told anyone to do anything. You've been told. Your whole life is a list of things other people said: carry, pour, fetch, move, stray.

"Please get up," you say. "You're getting wet."

The old man laughs. It comes out of him like something rusted loose, and he wipes his face with the back of a scarred hand and gets to his feet. Standing, he's as tall as you and twice as wide. His eyes are pale green and wet.

"Your father said please too," he says. "Drove the old guard mad. Idris Malloway. Captain of the King's Guard at Hollowcrown, once. Now I mostly fix fences."

"You were waiting for us," Anya says. Her hand hasn't left the knife at her belt. "On my porch. On my property."

"I was waiting for him." Idris nods at you. "I felt him wake. Last night, ten-oh-four, I was splitting wood forty miles east of here and it went through me like a church bell. Every old Hollowcrown wolf left alive felt it, and there aren't many of us. I followed it. It got stronger up here." He looks at the cabin. "I assumed whoever got him out would bring him somewhere a pack couldn't follow. You did well, Princess."

"Don't tell me I did well."

"Fair." He stoops and picks up the rifle by the barrel and holds it out to her, stock first. "Then hold this while I talk. It'll make you feel better."

Anya takes it. It doesn't seem to make her feel better.

The cabin is one big room: a stone hearth, a kitchen corner, a ladder up to a sleeping loft, bearskin rug, a shelf of paperbacks with cracked spines. It smells like woodsmoke and dust and, faintly, like Anya. You notice that and wish you hadn't.

Idris builds the fire without asking. Anya stands by the window with the rifle. You sit at the table because your legs have decided they're done.

"What do you know about the Lycan Kings?" Idris asks.

"Bedtime stories," you say. "Gitta used to tell them. The Kings on the mountain who could talk to the moon. Every pack bowed to them, and then there weren't any more."

"There weren't any more," Idris repeats. "That's a gentle way of putting it." He sits across from you. "There was a line. Vardane. Older than any pack in these mountains. They lived at Hollowcrown, up past the treeline, and they didn't rule the packs so much as hold them together. Settle disputes. Stop wars. The last one was Aurek Vardane. Thirty-four years old. Married to Maelis, who was thirty-one and the best tracker I ever knew. They had one child. A boy. Born in August."

He's looking at you the whole time.

"Twenty-five years ago this December," Idris says, "on the night of the winter solstice, under a red moon, wolves came up the Hollowcrown pass. Three packs' worth. We had a guard of nine. They came in through the gatehouse at midnight and they didn't stop until morning."

The fire cracks. Nobody moves.

"I was shot twice and left in a snowbank. When I woke up the lodge was burning. I found the King in the great hall." His voice doesn't change but his hands close on the table. "I found the Queen half a mile up the north trail, in the snow. She'd run with the baby. She'd wrapped him in her own fur. The fur was gone. So was he."

"The Red Winter," Anya says from the window. Her voice is cold. "Every pup in these mountains learns it. Rogues came up the pass and killed the royal line. A tragedy. The packs mourned for a year."

"That's what they teach, yes."

"It's what happened."

"Princess." Idris turns in his chair to face her. "Rogues don't come in organized. Rogues don't bring rifles and silver. Rogues don't know which night the King's Guard changes shift." He turns back to you. "Take off your shirt."

"Excuse me?"

"Your left shoulder. Turn around."

You look at Anya. She's watching you with her jaw set. You don't know why you look at her first. You just do.

"Do it, Ethan," she says. "I want to see too."

You pull the wine-stiff shirt over your head.

The cabin's warm now but your skin prickles anyway. You turn in the chair so your back is to the room. You know what he's looking for. You've seen it in Gitta's hand mirror a hundred times as a kid, twisting to look: a small curved mark under your left shoulder blade, darker than the skin around it. Like a fingernail clipping of moon.

You hear Idris breathe out.

"Princess," he says quietly. "Come and look."

Boards creak. You feel her before you see her. That storm-edge smell. The warmth of her standing behind you. Then, very lightly, the tips of two fingers touching the mark.

Your whole body goes still.

It's barely a touch. She's barely touching you. And the fist behind your ribs turns over and stretches toward her like a plant toward a window, and you hear her breath catch, sharp, and know she felt it too.

She takes her hand away fast.

"It's a birthmark," Anya says.

"It's the Vardane crescent," Idris says. "Every child of the line has carried it for four hundred years. His father had it. His grandfather had it. I've seen it in portraits older than your Hall." He sits back. "He's Aurek's son. He's the heir of Hollowcrown. And last night, at twenty-five, on his first blood moon, the line woke up in him."

You pull the shirt back on with hands that won't work properly.

"Then why didn't it wake before?" you ask. "I've seen full moons."

"Not a blood moon. Not since you were a baby." Idris's eyes are bright. "The Lycan wakes under a red moon the first time. It always has. You were hidden on the one night that could have shown you, and you were hidden well. Someone loved you very much, Ethan."

Gitta, you think. In a flour-dusted cardigan, in a storm drain.

And a dead woman you never met. I swore to the Luna.

You look up. Anya has gone back to the window. Her arms are crossed over the rifle, and she's staring out at the ridge, and you can see her reflection in the glass: pale, furious, something underneath it you'd almost call fear.

"You said three packs," she says without turning. "Rogues, you mean. Three packs of rogues."

"No," Idris says. "I mean three packs. Led by three Alphas. Ashthorn came up the pass. Redmire came over the north ridge. And the pass was open that night because the pack that guarded the bottom of it let them through."

Anya turns around.

"Which pack," she says, "guarded the bottom of the Hollowcrown pass?"

She knows. You can see that she knows. She's asking anyway because she needs to hear someone say it.

Idris looks at her with something that isn't cruelty. It's worse than cruelty. It's pity.

"One of them," he says gently, "was your father, Princess."