63

“He came at the duchess’ request, as soon Efra got word of the fighting in Shianga. He raised some… concerns.”

“Is a king no longer allowed to expression emotion?” I asked sharply. “He’d just lost members of his pack, and I—I wasn’t there--” I swallowed around the sudden knot in my throat. “He’ll be fine once I find him. I’ll find him.”

“You might think that, but Duke Rodthar doesn’t,” Kodan said. “He likened it to what happened to Elias’ father. The duchess didn’t like hearing that, of course, and the court doesn’t like being reminded of it, but—”

“What happened?” I asked. “What would that have to do with Elias?”

Kodan’s face paled. “You don’t know,” she said, like she was just figuring something out. “Forget I said anything. The point is, the court installed the duchess and your father as the queen and king.”

“What happened?” I asked. I couldn’t even wrap my head around what Kodan had said—my father, installed as King of Frasia? “Why would they do that? What don’t I know?”

“Here,” Kodan said. She turned to her cot and began to rifle through her things. “I’ll get you something clean and dry to wear, that cloak smells like wet wolf.”

“Kodan.” I stood up and set my coffee on the table. I grabbed her shoulder, and she stiffened under my touch. “Just tell me. I’m so sick of being the last to know things. Please, if this will help me understand what’s happening, how to make this right, just tell me.”

Kodan sighed, then straightened up and turned around. She handed me a thick quilted shirt and a pair of trousers. “Fine,” she said, like it pained her to agree. “If you’ll put these on.”

I did so, shucking off the cloak and replacing it with the thick pants and shirt. I was grateful for the cleanliness and the warmth, and I sat back down by the fire, resting my heels on the hearth. The warmth melted away some of the pain from the hours and hours of travel. Kodan sat across from me and poured herself a cup of coffee.

“I shouldn’t be the one to tell you this,” Kodan said.

“There are a lot of things that haven’t gone the way they should recently,” I said.

She smiled weakly. “Well, that much is true.”

She stared into the fire, then took a sip of her coffee. The silence that hung between us was tense—heavy with the promise that whatever Kodan had to tell me might change everything.

“There’s something strange that runs in Elias’ family’s blood,” she said. “Some people in the old days says it was a curse. I don’t know what it is. They’re… Close to the moon.” She sucked her teeth. “Elias’ father, Drogo, was a strong leader. A vicious leader. He took Efra from Constantine of Daybreak by brute force alone, leading in his wolf shape. And what a wolf he was. Pelt as dark as night, eyes like lava, nearly the size of a horse.”

She took another sip of her coffee.

“He was always more comfortable in his wolf shape. As things settled down in Efra, and his kingly duties became the day-to-day duties of the court, he grew frustrated. Bored. He cast the leadership duties off to his wife, our duchess, more and more. He spent all of his time on the grounds, in the woods, running and hunting and conditioning the soldiers. All in his wolf form.” She pushed her hands through her hair. “And one day, he couldn’t change back.”

“The sickness,” I said.

Kodan nodded.

“I didn’t think it was real,” I said quietly. “My tutors used to tell me stories about it to scare me, back in Daybreak. They said if I shifted too often, or for too long, one day I’d be stuck a wolf forever.”

“It’s exceedingly rare,” Kodan said. “Part of me wonders if Drogo wanted to go crazy. He’d done what he needed to do—he’d secured a good, safe place to for his pack to live and thrive. But he was always a warrior. He was never cut out for a life inside, running the daily affairs of a city. Maybe he just liked things as an animal more.” Again she sighed and stared into the fire. “But I’ll never know. I only know how it ended.”

I said nothing. I only waited.

“He went crazy,” she said. “Simple as that. He entered the manor in the dead of night, under the full moon. Broke into rooms. Murdered court members. He was making his way to the duchess’ chambers when Elias intercepted him. Killed him where he stood.”

Simple as that. Killed him where he stood. My hands trembled around my mug.

“He did it as a man, too,” Kodan said. “Not as a wolf. A knife in his hand outside his mother’s bedroom door.”

I closed my eyes.

Draunar’s cruel voice echoed in my memory. Does the wolf know how you took the throne?

“Quite a way to start your time on the throne,” she said. “And he was young. Barely seventeen summers.”

“So when my father heard that he had shifted and run off…”

“He compared it to Drogo,” Kodan said, confirming my suspicions. “That the stress of the battle, the loss, and your…” She trailed off, grimacing as she searched for the right word.

“My betrayal,” I said dully. “You can say it.”

“Your decision,” Kodan said. “He suggested those things might trigger the wolf craziness. That it runs in his family’s blood.”

“That’s nonsense,” I said.

I was gripped by the urge to take off into the woods myself. To shift into my wolf, put my nose to the ground, catch his scent and find him. He needed me, now more than ever. I’d sent him to this brink, and now I had to bring him back. This story about wolf craziness was nonsense—unless it wasn’t.

“I’ll go.” I stood up. “I’ll find him. This is all my fault—my father cannot be on the throne. This is what he wanted all along. I won’t let him slip through the cracks like the snake he is.”