Chapter Text
Coen
Getting stuck in his shadowwolf form was not supposed to happen twice.
Coen stood perfectly still in the middle of the forest, staring dumbly down at two enormous black paws planted among the dried pine needles.
For several long moments, he simply stared, eyes narrowed and unblinking, as though glaring at the annoying paws long enough might somehow persuade them to become feet again. He had plenty to say about the situation. Unfortunately, none of it could presently be said without coming out as a pathetic mixture of growls, whines, and whatever other noises this canine body had decided to grant him in place of words.
If he still possessed a human tongue, Coen suspected he would have been cursing up quite the creative storm by now.
His ears flattened against his skull.
This wasn't good. In fact, this was really not good.
Last night had been an accident.
Changing into the shadowwolf had been surprisingly easy. Coen had pictured the body he wanted to enter, reached for that darker part of himself that had become impossible to ignore since his transformation, and allowed his Vrahkir nature to do the rest.
One moment he had been standing on two legs, and the next the forest had looked very different from considerably closer to the ground.
For most of that first night, he had enjoyed himself far more than he cared to admit.
The speed alone had been exhilarating. He had raced through the forest until the trees became dark streaks on either side of him and the cold night air rushed through his fur. Damp earth and old leaves gave beneath his paws without slowing him, while roots and fallen branches that might have tripped him on two legs seemed almost laughably easy to avoid on four. He could run faster and farther than he ever could as a man, even with the unnatural strength his Vrahkir curse had already given him.
His other senses had changed with the body as well.
The forest no longer smelled merely of trees and damp earth. Every breath seemed to separate it into dozens of different scents like wet bark, moss, mushrooms growing beneath rotting logs, rabbits hidden somewhere in the undergrowth, the fading trail of a deer that had passed hours before. Woodsmoke from distant homes drifted between the trees long before Coen could see any sign of habitation, and sounds that once would have disappeared beneath the wind now seemed startlingly close. He could hear small animals scratching beneath dead leaves, the flutter of wings somewhere overhead, even the faint trickle of water over stones far beyond his sight.
It had made him wonder why he hadn't tried the form sooner.
Then he'd reached the outskirts of the village where he intended to wait for dawn, pay for a bed, catch up on some desperately needed sleep, and - God willing - eat something that had been cooked over a fire rather than drained of its blood.
That was when he'd discovered a slight problem…
He couldn't change back.
At first, Coen had assumed he was simply doing something wrong. He had only been a Dawnwalker for a short time, after all, and most of what his new body could do had been learned through an unpleasant mixture of instinct, experimentation, and occasionally nearly getting himself killed.
So he tried again.
And again.
As the remaining hours of darkness crawled past, mild irritation gave way to unease and then to the unpleasant realization that he genuinely had no idea what the hell he was doing. He paced beneath the trees until his paws had worn a path through the damp soil, repeatedly picturing himself as he had been before and trying to force the change in the same way he'd summoned the wolf.
Except nothing worked.
Then dawn came.
And as the first pale light crept through the branches, turning the eastern sky grey, his body blessedly changed with it. The wolf receded as naturally as darkness before sunrise, leaving Coen sprawled rather gracelessly on the forest floor in his human body.
Two arms.
Two legs.
Hands.
Human ears.
No snout.
And, most importantly, absolutely no fucking tail.
Everything was exactly where it belonged.
The problem, Coen had decided, was finally resolved.
Or so he'd told himself.
He spent most of the day convinced that whatever had gone wrong with the transformation had corrected itself at sunrise. Perhaps he simply needed more practice. Preferably somewhere secluded, where no one could witness him pacing in circles on four legs while silently losing his damn mind.
It was something he would worry about if the problem ever happened again.
He had not expected again to mean that very evening.
The sun had slipped beneath the horizon, his Vrahkir nature had awakened with the coming darkness, and instead of returning to the cold body he had expected, Coen had found himself once again staring at the world from uncomfortably closer to the ground.
Which brought him back to his current predicament…
Four legs, black fur, enormous paws, and a tail that seemed to possess a particularly irritating determination to become caught on every bush and low-hanging branch in Vale Sangora.
It flicked behind him now, scattering pine needles.
Fine. He was mature enough to admit that something had clearly gone wrong.
The question was what.
Coen settled back onto his haunches and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the constant flood of information his new senses insisted on providing. Wind whispered through the pine boughs overhead, carrying the smell of damp earth and distant rain. Insects chirped somewhere among the roots. Leaves scratched softly over the ground, and farther away water murmured over stone.
He pushed all of it aside and concentrated on the slow rise and fall of his breathing.
Becoming the shadowwolf had been simple enough. He had reached for the darker part of himself, pictured the body he wished to possess, and allowed his Vrahkir nature to take over. Changing back should have been just as simple.
Except it wasn't.
There was some disconnect between what Coen wanted and whatever part of his new nature was supposed to make it happen, like giving an order in a language he only half understood and receiving nothing but silence in return.
Myself, he thought.
That was what he needed to find.
Me! My true body!
He pictured himself standing where the wolf now sat, two feet planted among the pine needles, two calloused hands at his sides, his own face with every scar and imperfection exactly where it belonged. Dark hair against his shoulders. His own skin rather than fur. Clothes!
Coen reached inward.
The power was there, as it always seemed to be now, lurking somewhere beneath the surface and waiting for him to touch it. He had never decided whether it felt more like a bottomless well or some great serpent sleeping in the dark. Either comparison unsettled him. There were times when that power seemed almost eager to answer him, rising before he had properly called upon it, and worse moments when it seemed to reach back and seize hold of him.
Those were the moments that frightened him most.
Tonight, however, it stirred beneath his touch without resistance. Coen pulled at it and waited for the familiar rush of change.
Nothing happened.
After several seconds, one eye opened to check.
Two black paws remained planted stubbornly in front of him.
Damn.
A low growl rolled from somewhere deep in his chest, far more threatening than the irritated thought that had caused it.
He closed his eye again.
Once more.
This time Coen reached deeper. He felt the power stir, like a stone dropping into the smooth surface of a dark lake, and waited for the ripples to spread outward through his body.
They never came. The surface remained still.
His claws slowly sank through the pine needles and into the earth beneath them.
There were, he supposed, certain individuals who would probably know how to fix this.
Brencis certainly would.
His sire had been Vrahkir for longer than Coen could properly comprehend. There were probably few things about their nature the Knyaz hadn't encountered in all those centuries, and Coen had little doubt that Brencis could take one look at him and know exactly what had gone wrong.
Which immediately removed Brencis from consideration.
Going willingly to the man responsible for turning his life into this nightmare was already unthinkable. Going to him helpless, unable even to speak, and asking for assistance was worse. Brencis rarely seemed to do anything without some larger purpose behind it, and Coen had no desire to discover what helping his troublesome progeny might eventually cost him.
Which left one other possibility.
Ambrus.
Coen's ears lowered.
No.
Absolutely not.
He would rather stay a wolf.
At least Brencis might pretend to preserve some dignity while manipulating him. Ambrus would be insufferable from the moment he laid eyes on him.
Coen could already imagine that smug bastard's delight upon discovering that his ‘troublesome little brother’ had somehow managed to trap himself inside his own transformation. Ambrus would laugh. Then he would help, maybe, if the mood stuck him right, but only after ensuring Coen understood precisely how amusing he found the situation.
And afterward?
Coen would never hear the fucking end of it.
It was bad enough that the blond Vrahkir had already managed - without Coen realizing it at the time - to teach him something useful about shadowstepping. The memory of that particular humiliation still irritated him.
Had Coen's control improved after their encounter on the cliff?
Perhaps.
Had he begun using the shorter, more controlled jumps Ambrus had demonstrated because they conserved his strength and made it considerably less likely that he would fling himself somewhere he hadn't intended?
Possibly.
Had they become useful during his nightly excursions?
That was entirely beside the point.
Ambrus would receive no gratitude for it. No acknowledgement. Not so much as an inkling that Coen had listened to a word he'd said.
A distant sound threaded through the forest. Coen's ears snapped toward it before his thoughts caught up with the movement.
He froze.
There it was again, the low groan of wood under considerable weight, followed by the wet grind of wheels struggling through a muddy road. Horses snorted somewhere beyond the trees, their harnesses jingling whenever they moved, and several human voices carried faintly through the darkness.
Men.
Coen raised his head and listened. He couldn't make out the words from this distance, but he recognized the tone easily enough. Loud, commanding voices belonging to men accustomed to being obeyed.
Then the wind shifted and a dozen smells struck him at once. Mud. Horseflesh. Sweat soaked into wool and leather. Woodsmoke clinging faintly to clothing.
And beneath all of it -
Blood.
Coen inhaled before he could stop himself. The scent spread across his tongue, warm and metallic even from this distance, and something inside him immediately tightened with hunger.
He swallowed hard.
No.
Ignoring the hunger, he concentrated on the sounds instead. There were footsteps mixed among the horses and turning wheels. Several of them, uneven and weary, accompanied by the occasional scrape and rattle of metal.
Chains?
Coen's attention sharpened.
Now that he knew what to listen for, he could hear something else as well. The rapid, heavy rhythm of human hearts laboring beneath fear and exhaustion.
He rose slowly onto all fours and lifted his snout toward the wind. The road lay somewhere beyond the trees to the east.
A prisoner transport. It had to be. The Boyar’s men had been moving captives toward the blood-collection camps just past the swamps, and Coen had already seen enough of those places to know what awaited anyone unfortunate enough to reach one.
It was a dead man's journey.
The prisoners might still be walking now, but most would never walk out of the camp again. They would be stripped, suspended above barrels and drained until there was too little life remaining to be useful. Afterward, their bodies would be thrown into carts and hauled away as though they were slabs of spoiled meat rather than people who had once possessed homes, families, names.
For a moment, Coen remained beneath the trees, his great black body almost disappearing among their shadows while broken moonlight silvered the forest floor beyond him.
He wanted to help them.
The question was whether he could.
He was trapped in the body of a wolf. He couldn't wield his sword. He couldn't speak. He didn't yet know which of his other Vrahkir abilities would even answer him in this body, and he had no idea whether he would regain his usual Vrahkir form at any point before dawn.
He could wait. Dawn would make him human again. It had once already. He could follow the transport from a distance, learn where they were being taken, and attack after sunrise.
It would be safer.
More sensible.
The chains rattled again somewhere beyond the trees.
Coen pictured arriving at the camp in daylight and discovering that he'd waited too long. He had seen what the Vrahkiri left behind - bodies hanging upside down above barrels, throats and wrists opened so not a drop would be wasted, the dead stripped of everything but the indignity of what had been done to them.
His claws pressed into the earth.
No.
He couldn't gamble with other people's lives simply because he would rather face their captors with a sword in his hand.
The prisoners were alive now. And Coen was already here.
That would have to be enough.
He stepped forward on four legs.
Being trapped in this body did not change why he'd come out here in the first place. If anything, the wolf had already proven itself faster and stronger than he expected. He still had teeth and claws, and judging from the previous night's run, he could cross the distance between himself and that wagon before its guards had much chance to wonder what was coming for them.
Perhaps he couldn't fight the way he was accustomed to, but that was fine. He would learn.
His tail snagged on a bramble behind him. Coen stopped and slowly looked back. The branch clung stubbornly to the long black fur. A growl rolled through his chest as he jerked himself free. The tail was going to require more practice and a whole lot of patience to get used to.
It would have to wait though.
Ahead, the groaning wheels and frightened hearts continued toward the swamps.
Coen lowered his body, felt the earth beneath four powerful paws, and slipped silently between the trees.
Ambrus
The first time Boyar Ambrus heard about the wolf, he paid it little mind.
Wolves were hardly uncommon in Vale Sangora, and frightened men had a remarkable talent for making ordinary beasts grow larger with every telling, particularly when some grand tale about a monstrous creature was preferable to admitting that a handful of armed soldiers had failed to deal with it.
By the time the story reached Ambrus, the animal had become enormous, black as the deepest watering holes in the boglands, and apparently intelligent enough to outwit six trained and armed men.
The bodies told a less imaginative story. Teeth had opened throats, claws had torn through leather and flesh, and one unfortunate man had apparently been struck with enough force to break several ribs. Whatever attacked the patrol had certainly been large and vicious, but Ambrus saw little reason to indulge the survivors' insistence that some legendary beast had descended upon them from the darkness.
A particularly large wolf, perhaps. A hellhound if fortune had decided to make things interesting.
There had been a few peculiar details, though...
The patrol had been escorting prisoners toward one of the draining camps when it was attacked. The captives had escaped during the confusion, yet none appeared to have been injured by the creature. There had been no trail of their blood leading into the forest, nor had the horses been harmed, despite several breaking loose and fleeing among the trees.
Stranger still, the wolf had left the dead where they fell without feeding on the fresh corpses.
Ambrus considered that for all of several seconds before dismissing it. A beast interrupted during an attack might flee before feeding on its kill, and prisoners taking advantage of the chaos required no great intelligence on their part. As for the horses, perhaps the creature simply preferred humans.
Ambrus could hardly fault it for having similar dietary standards, so he thought no more of the matter.
The second report was slightly harder to dismiss.
Another attack came the following night, this time at one of the blood-leech collection sites near the swamps. Five soldiers were dead, three collectors injured, and several crates of leeches had disappeared before reinforcements arrived. The villagers forced to wade through stagnant pools and gather the parasitic creatures had, curiously, been left largely untouched.
A few of the loyal collectors, Ambrus had been informed, had attempted to fight the wolf themselves.
With their baskets.
That particular detail required a moment of silence.
Bloody idiots.
More curious was the fact that the wolf had apparently dragged several crates away from the camp while, once again, leaving perfectly edible corpses behind.
Ambrus listened to the rest of the account, asked where the creature had first appeared, which men it attacked first, and where it disappeared afterward. Once the soldier began repeating himself, Ambrus dismissed him.
He gave the matter a little more consideration after that.
Not much, but more.
Then came the third attack, and Ambrus decided he might genuinely murder the next messenger, servant, or soldier who entered his audience chamber with the word wolf on his tongue.
The large double doors creaked open, spilling a strip of orange torchlight from the passage across the stone floor. A young soldier was roughly ushered through before the doors closed behind him with a heavy thud that echoed through the chamber.
Ambrus took one look at his face and knew.
“Let me guess.” He sighed. “The fucking wolf.”
The boy stopped several paces into the chamber, looking as though he would have preferred to remain on the other side of the doors.
His clothing told nearly as much of the previous night's events as his frightened expression. A woolen gambeson hung awkwardly from narrow shoulders, too broad through the chest and cinched tightly with a worn leather belt to keep it from swallowing him entirely. Mud had dried almost to his knees, cracking in pale brown scales across the coarse wool whenever he moved, and one boot still bore the dark stain of swamp water despite whatever hurried attempt had been made to clean him before presenting him to his Boyar.
The smell had survived as well. Damp wool, old mud, leather, sweat, and the faint metallic trace of blood clung to him beneath the warmer scents of candle wax and burning wood.
Ambrus gave him a leisurely inspection.
“What now? Has it learned the sword? Challenged my men to single combat?” He lifted one hand as though presenting each possibility to an invisible audience. “Perhaps tomorrow it will lay siege to the keep and demand my title.”
“Y-yes, my lord.”
Ambrus had been raising a gold goblet full of blood toward his mouth. He stopped before it touched his scarred lips.
“It demanded my title?”
The boy's eyes widened.
“No! No, my lord. I meant the wolf. It was the wolf, my lord. It didn't demand anything.” Panic briefly overtook good sense. “I don't think it can speak.”
Ambrus gave him a dry look, and the boy seemed to realize that the final clarification had probably been unnecessary.
“Pity,” Ambrus said at last. “That would at least have made this interesting.”
He took a drink, savoring the rich metallic taste as the boy struggled to decide whether he had been mocked, threatened, or somehow given permission to speak.
Ambrus rather enjoyed leaving the question unanswered.
Unlike the mud-spattered whelp standing before him, he had dressed for neither road nor battle that evening. A dark, finely cut doublet fitted close over a pale linen shirt, its collar open comfortably at his throat, while subtle gold embroidery caught the candlelight whenever he moved. His boots had been polished recently enough to reflect the flames around the chamber, and not so much as a speck of blood marred them.
Yet.
His hair, at least, remained exactly as it ought to be. Long blond strands fell neatly around his shoulders, brushed free of every knot and indignity the outside world seemed so determined to inflict upon them.
The boy's attention, however, had found somewhere else to settle. Only for a heartbeat, his hazel eyes flicked across the old burns along the Boyar's cheeks and jaw before dropping hastily toward the floor.
Ambrus noticed. He always did. They all looked eventually, no matter their rank.
“Something caught your interest?”
The boy went rigid. “N-no, my lord.”
Ambrus's expression barely changed. “No?”
That single word did more damage than anger might have. The boy's pulse quickened, and his eyes remained fixed somewhere around Ambrus's polished boots.
“I-I didn't mean to stare, my lord.”
“There.” Ambrus spread his free hand in a small gesture of approval. “That wasn't so difficult, was it?”
“Forgive me...”
Ambrus regarded him for another moment, letting the boy wonder precisely how much forgiveness was required.
“Next time, try not to be caught.”
“Y-yes, my lord.”
Color had climbed well into the boy's face by then, and Ambrus decided he had suffered enough. Well, for the moment.
He flicked two fingers toward him. “Go on, then. Astonish me. What magnificent feat has our four-legged insurgent accomplished this time?”
The young soldier drew a careful breath.
“It came out of the trees sometime after midnight, my lord. We didn't see it until it had already taken down the Uriashi. Biggest soldier in our patrol, too.” His eyes shifted briefly toward the hearth. “It hit him so hard I thought something had struck us from horseback. Then I saw it.”
His voice had changed. The nervous stammer remained around the edges, but the memory beneath it was real enough to strip some of the awkwardness away.
“It was enormous. Bigger than any wolf I've ever seen. Black all over, except for the eyes.”
“So I have repeatedly been told.”
Ambrus made a loose circling motion with one hand, urging him past the description. He had heard enough unimaginative variations of enormous and black to last several lifetimes.
“We thought it wanted the horses at first,” the boy continued. “They were panicking before we even knew where it was. Then I thought it might be after the wounded prisoners. There were two in the wagon who'd been bleeding most of the evening. But it didn't touch them. That's the strange part, my lord. It could have taken any of them. The horses were pulling against their traces, the prisoners couldn't defend themselves, and there was blood everywhere by then, but it kept coming back to us.”
Ambrus's hand stilled.
The first transport had followed much the same pattern. Each detail had been easy enough to explain on its own, but repeated together, they became harder to dismiss.
“So this enormous, murderous creature had your patrolmates, frightened horses, and bloody, wounded prisoners laid out before it like a fucking banquet.” Ambrus leaned forward, resting his forearms against his knees. His voice dropped into exaggerated confidence, as though he were about to reveal the solution to some great mystery. “And the beast still decided you looked the most appetizing.”
The boy's mouth opened, but Ambrus lifted a claw-tipped finger before he could speak.
“Your patrol collectively. Don't flatter yourself.”
A startled breath escaped the boy before he could stop it. It might almost have been a laugh if terror had not strangled it halfway out.
“No, my lord. I mean, yes. It only attacked the patrol.”
“How discerning.”
Ambrus rose from his chair, making the boy stiffen again, and crossed toward the large table where a map of the surrounding countryside lay spread beneath several wooden markers. His boots struck the stone in an easy rhythm, and candlelight moved over the gold stitching of his doublet as he passed.
He placed the goblet beside the map. “What happened to the prisoners?”
“They ran once the fighting started. Those who could, anyway. Some of the wounded had to crawl, but the wolf didn't go after them. One ran almost straight past it and it just... let him.”
That brought Ambrus's eyes up from the map. “Let him?”
“I suppose I can't know that's what it meant to do, my lord, but it saw him. It had to.”
Now that was more useful.
Ambrus moved one of the wooden markers along the road with the tip of a claw, considering what the boy had told him. The horses had been ignored. The prisoners had escaped unharmed. Fresh corpses had been abandoned without so much as a bite taken from them, while the armed men surrounding all three had been torn apart.
What had begun as an amusing furry inconvenience was now developing principles. How tiresome of it to do.
Ambrus nudged the nearest candle farther from the map. The humans might require its light. He did not, and the glare had begun to irritate him.
One attack could be chance. Two might still be coincidence, though any soldier with sense learned quickly not to place much faith in coincidence.
Three deserved attention...
“So how did you survive?”
The question changed the boy. His shoulders drew inward slightly, and for the first time since entering the chamber, his embarrassment disappeared beneath something quieter.
“I got knocked down. One of the others fell against me when the wolf hit him. I landed badly and hurt my leg, then he came down on top of me.” The boy glanced toward his thigh and rubbed a palm against it, perhaps without realizing he was doing so. “I couldn't move him. I tried, but he was too heavy.”
Only then did Ambrus properly notice the leg the boy had been favoring.
Fifteen, perhaps. Sixteen if fortune had simply been unkind to his face. His gambeson hung from shoulders that had not yet grown broad enough to fill it, and despite his effort to stand properly before his Boyar, most of his weight remained on the other leg.
Ambrus himself had taken up the sword young. There was little remarkable in that. What was remarkable was that the boy had survived when the rest of his patrol had not.
“I could hear the others screaming,” the boy continued, his voice dropping until the crackle of the hearth nearly swallowed it. “The prisoners were running into the trees, and I kept trying to push him off me, but I couldn't get enough leverage. Then the screaming stopped.”
A log collapsed in the hearth with a sudden crack and a shower of orange sparks, making the boy flinch.
Ambrus did not so much as blink.
“The wolf found me.”
The chamber seemed quieter after that.
“It came over slowly. There was blood all around its mouth, and I could hear it breathing before it reached me.” The boy swallowed hard. “It was growling. I couldn't reach my sword properly, and even if I could have, I don't think it would have mattered. I thought I was dead.”
Ambrus rested one hand against the edge of the table and waited.
“It stopped right in front of me. The growling died in its throat, and then it just stood there staring.” The boy's eyes had lost their focus on the chamber. For the moment he was somewhere else entirely, pinned beneath a dead man on a dark road with something enormous breathing above him. “It felt like forever.”
His heart had begun hammering again.
Ambrus heard it distinctly. The sound reached him with uncomfortable ease, each rapid contraction pushing living blood through the boy's body. Warm blood. Frightened blood. The pulse fluttered visibly beneath the thin skin of his throat, quick enough that Ambrus could almost imagine the heat of it against his tongue.
His attention lingered there a fraction too long, and the boy noticed. His heartbeat stumbled as Ambrus's eyes lifted to meet his.
For one wicked instant, amusement nearly won. He could bare a fang, lean closer, and ask whether something was wrong, but the boy was already frightened enough to scent the room with it, sharp beneath the damp wool and old mud. Deliberately making matters worse would only prolong the report.
Ambrus gave him a faint, knowing smile instead.
That proved worse.
The boy swallowed, but before Ambrus could amuse himself further, he hurried on.
“I-I don't know how to explain what happened next. At first it looked furious. There was blood all over its muzzle, and it came toward me growling like it had the others. Then it got close enough to see me properly, and it just... changed.”
He frowned, frustrated by his own explanation, and tugged absently at the front of his oversized gambeson.
“Not the wolf itself. Just the way it looked at me.” He swallowed, struggling for the words. “Before, it was looking at me the same way it looked at the others. Then it got close and... I don't know. It was different. Like it wasn't angry anymore.”
Ambrus's amusement faded. That was considerably more intriguing.
“So it took one good look at you and what? Changed its mind?”
“I...” The boy hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, my lord. I think that's what I'm trying to say.”
Now there was an interesting distinction for an animal to make. The boy had carried the same sword, worn the same colors, and stood among the same men the creature had been so determined to slaughter. Yet once it came close enough to get a proper look at him, its behavior had changed.
Unless, of course, there was rather more going on behind those eyes than a wolf had any business possessing.
“And what did our suddenly discerning beast do once it decided you weren't worth killing?”
The boy's ears reddened. “I fainted.”
For a moment, Ambrus simply looked at him.
“You fainted.”
“I thought it was going to tear my throat out, my lord.”
“Yes, that generally improves one's motivation to remain conscious.”
The boy looked down, apparently wishing the floor would swallow him.
“If anyone else asks, I strongly recommend improving that part of the story.” Ambrus regarded him with weary disappointment. “Tell them you made a valiant last stand. That you suffered a grievous wound and fought until your strength abandoned you. Gods, boy, tell them the beast struck you senseless if you must. Anything would be preferable to admitting you simply fainted.”
“I was injured, my lord.”
“There, you see?” Ambrus spread one hand in approval. “Already an improvement.”
The boy blinked. “That isn't exactly what happened.”
“No, but now people might enjoy hearing it.”
A crease appeared between the boy's brows as he tried to decide whether that had been advice or mockery. Ambrus left him to struggle with the distinction.
“I suppose.” The boy glanced down, but his embarrassment didn't last. “There was something strange when I woke up, though. The body wasn't on me anymore.”
That caught Ambrus's attention.
“The man who fell on me,” the boy continued. “Someone had dragged him a few feet away, far enough that I could get up. I thought maybe one of the prisoners came back for me after the wolf left, but...” His certainty faltered as he heard his own explanation aloud. “There wasn't anyone around.”
Ambrus stared at him.
“Yes. I'm sure a man fleeing a draining camp stopped halfway to freedom, reconsidered his priorities, and returned through a field of corpses to rescue one of the armed soldiers who had been taking him there.”
The boy's mouth tightened. “It seemed possible at the time…”
“I'm sure many things did after you regained consciousness beneath a dead man.”
Ambrus turned toward the table, but the humor had already left his voice. The boy had been trapped beneath a corpse when the wolf found him, yet the creature had passed up an easy kill and apparently gone to the trouble of freeing him instead.
A prisoner returning was possible, if one possessed an extraordinary devotion to poor decisions.
The wolf was far more likely.
Ambrus rested his fingertips against the edge of the map table, studying the wooden markers scattered across the roads and camps. There had been easier things to kill at every attack. Easier things to eat. Yet the creature had consistently chosen his men.
His claws went still.
There it was.
This wasn't a predator choosing prey.
It was choosing targets.
And there was something irritatingly familiar about the choices it had made.
Not the method, certainly. His most persistent nuisance generally carried a sword, possessed considerably fewer legs, and wore his dark hair tied half-up in that ridiculous little knot.
The choices, however...
Ambrus studied the map more carefully, his gaze moving between the markers representing prisoner transports, blood-collection sites, and the roads patrolled by his soldiers.
He knew someone else with precisely the same list of grievances.
For the past several nights, there had been no sabotaged outposts, no ruined supplies, and no suspiciously well-timed disappearances of prisoners. In short, no sign of the irritating young Vrahkir who made a habit of appearing wherever he had absolutely no fucking business being.
Coen caused trouble during daylight when he could, certainly, but nighttime was when the little shit became particularly difficult to contain. Darkness gave him access to abilities his human body lacked, and he had become increasingly fond of turning every new discovery against anything bearing Brencis's authority.
Coen of Laslea had been conspicuously quiet at night, however, while an enormous black wolf had apparently taken up precisely the same fucking hobby.
Ambrus turned sharply from the map, the sudden movement stirring the air enough to send the nearest candle flames fluttering.
“When was Coen of Laslea last seen?”
The abrupt change of subject caught the boy unprepared. “I... I don't know, my lord. I haven't seen him.”
“Yes, thank you. I had gathered the two of you weren't close acquaintances.” Ambrus rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “I am asking when he was last seen. A sighting. A report. Surely someone in this miserable province has managed to keep track of one insufferable little traitor without requiring me to explain the meaning of the word.” His patience finally snapped. “Oh, for fuck's sake. Find me someone who knows where the pest has been!”
“Yes, my lord!”
The relief on the boy's face was so immediate that Ambrus almost took offense.
He bowed quickly and made for the doors with considerably more enthusiasm than he had shown entering them. One hand had already reached for the cold iron latch when he stopped.
“My lord?”
Oh, for the love of…
Ambrus closed his eyes. When he looked back, the boy was still standing at the door, though every instinct in him appeared to be arguing that he should have kept walking.
“I remembered something else. About the wolf.”
Ambrus swept one hand outward with theatrical resignation. “By all means. You've survived the wolf, the destruction of your patrol, and an audience with me. It would be tragic to lose your nerve when you're this fucking close to escape.”
The boy's gaze darted briefly toward the door. “The eyes, my lord. They shone in the dark. I know animals' eyes can do that, but these were different. Brighter. Almost like they had their own light.”
He hesitated. Then, displaying either admirable courage or a catastrophic lack of self-preservation, he looked directly at Ambrus.
“Not unlike yours.”
For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Ambrus watched the realization arrive, the boy's face slowly losing what little color it had regained.
“Not that you look like the wolf, my lord,” he added hastily. “I only meant that its eyes reminded me of yours!”
Ambrus let him flounder for another heartbeat. “Yes. I gathered that before you started digging yourself any deeper.”
The boy wisely stopped.
Hm, there might be hope for him yet.
Ambrus turned back toward the map, considering what the boy had said. The eyes mattered.
Every Vrahkir could shift into the shape of a wolf. There was nothing remarkable about the ability itself. A Vrahkir choosing Brencis's operations with suspicious care, freeing prisoners, sparing forced laborers, and deciding that a terrified boy wasn't worth killing was another matter entirely.
Especially when one particular Vrahkir fledgling had disappeared at precisely the same time.
Coen knowing how to assume the shape interested Ambrus for a different reason.
He certainly hadn't taught him.
Had Brencis?
Perhaps, though Ambrus suspected his sire would have found some infuriatingly cryptic way of mentioning that their youngest progeny had begun experimenting with his other forms.
Which left a much more entertaining possibility.
Coen had figured it out himself.
Recently turned and still stumbling through abilities most Vrahkiri learned with time and instruction, the tactless little fool had somehow discovered how to reshape himself into a shadowwolf without either his sire or his elder brother there to show him how.
Ambrus looked back at the map and, for a moment, merely pictured it.
Coen, who already possessed an astonishing talent for putting himself where he was least wanted, now enormous, furry, four-legged, and apparently no less determined to interfere with Brencis's affairs.
A laugh escaped him.
It began quietly, but the image only became funnier the longer he entertained it. Ambrus braced one hand against the table and bowed his head as his laughter deepened, carefully arranged blond hair slipping forward over one shoulder.
Of fucking course.
Behind him, the young soldier remained frozen beside the door, so quiet that Ambrus had almost forgotten he was still there.
“Oh, dear brother.” He looked down at the markers, grinning now. “What have you done?”
The boy said nothing, and Ambrus glanced toward him. Frightened as he was, the lad at least possessed the good sense to recognize when silence served him better than speech.
He straightened and swept his hair back into place, still thoroughly entertained by the thought of his little brother somehow learning to shapeshift.
More importantly, Coen had apparently decided that possessing four legs, a muzzle, and no ability to hold a sword was no impediment whatsoever to continuing his personal holy campaign against Brencis.
Ambrus almost admired the dedication.
There was only one detail that refused to sit right with him.
Learning to assume another shape was one thing. Learning to control it was quite another, particularly for a young Vrahkir who had barely begun to understand the powers he'd been given.
And if Coen had truly attempted the former without anyone bothering to explain the latter...
A slow smile pulled at Ambrus's scarred face.
Oh, this he simply had to see for himself.