Seventeen

Just before dawn, my mother returned to the bakery, her skin pale and drawn, her dress stained with blood. I’d gone to the Pagets’ cottage twice during the night to help with Romy’s wound, but twice she’d sent me home.

The second time, she’d sent Tom with me, with whispered instructions to keep an eye on him and to keep him apart from Jeanne and Sofia. But that proved easier said than done.

As it turned out, the little blond boy who was so calm and docile during the day wanted nothing more than to play—and likely to hunt—in the dark. Which made sense, considering that he and Romy had probably been hunting chickens at night all week.

Max and I had taken turns playing with him, staying well away from his mouth, to keep him occupied and inside the cottage. We couldn’t tell if he was aware at all that Romy had gone chicken hunting without him, and he seemed completely unconcerned by his little friend’s injury.

My mother exhaled as she closed the door, then leaned against it. “Well?” I demanded, standing from the table. “How is Romy?”

“I think she’ll make it. There was a lot of blood, of course. But it’s been hours now, and there’s no sign of fever. Possibly because she’s no longer human. Though her mother is more inclined to attribute that miracle to a higher power.” She took off her cape and hung it on a hook by the door. “The girls?”

“Still asleep, and completely unaware,” Max told her.

My mother sank onto the stool next to his, and I scooped some broth into a bowl for her from the pot I’d hung over the fire an hour before. She blew over the surface of the bowl, then sipped from it. “Romy’s parents are distraught and unclear on exactly what happened, but what I’ve gathered is that Grainger shot Romy, believing her to be a fox, and now he’s accusing her of being a werewolf?”

“He saw her change from wolf form, after she was shot,” Max said in a whisper, with a glance at the back room, where the girls were still asleep.

“The whole thing is unthinkable.” I blinked back tears before they could fall. “I had to lie to protect Romy, and now Grainger hates me.”

My mother sighed. “I know how upsetting that is, but maybe it’s for the—”

“Do not say it’s for the best,” I snapped at her. “You were right, okay? I can’t marry him. But that doesn’t mean I want him to hate me. And now . . .” I sucked in a deep breath. “Now there’s talk of a trial. All because I lied.”

“It seems you had little choice in the matter,” my mother said. And she did look sorry about the turn things had taken. “But it’s a little more serious than that. The Pagets are accusing him of crying witchcraft to cover up his own carelessness, and right now, people seem to believe them. But if Romy transforms again, or if she wakes up and says anything that supports his claim, the Pagets will be condemned as witches, which will unleash a plague of paranoia on the village that will eventually come to roost beneath our roof.”

“I know.” Half the town already thought we were cursed. “That’s why I lied.” Why I’d betrayed the man I’d once intended to marry.

My mother cradled her bowl in both hands. “Can you convince him that he’s wrong about what he saw? That he was dreaming, or that the shadows played tricks on his eyes?”

“I tried, but he doesn’t have any doubt about what happened, and he seems determined to protect the village. Not to mention his own honor.”

“You have to convince him that he was mistaken,” my mother said as she lifted the broth to her mouth for another sip. “And we have to deal with Tom and Romy before they become proof that he wasn’t.” She sighed. “It would have been a bizarre mercy for us all, had Grainger’s aim been truer.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t just finish her off, while you were tending her,” I muttered.

“If I’d had a moment alone with her to give her a peaceful end, I would have.” To my mother’s credit, the confession seemed to weigh heavy on her. “What did your grandmother say about the pups?”

“She agreed with you, that they should be ‘put down’ humanely and quickly, for the good of the village. But that was before Grainger shot Romy. People are paying a bit more attention to the poor girl, now, which will make that more difficult.”

My mother’s brows rose. “And yet, her new injury will make her death easier to believe.”

“There’s no guarantee of that. Let me release them into the dark wood.” I lowered my voice, unsure whether or not Tom would understand what we were saying, should he wake up. “With any luck, people will think they had another nighttime adventure and wandered into the woods.”

“That’s still a death sentence for two small children,” Max insisted. “But instead of giving them a quick, peaceful end, you’d be condemning them to starve to death in the forest—assuming they don’t get eaten.”

I turned on him, anger burning like flames in my chest. “You have no say in this. You have no part in this. You aren’t married to a guardian, and you’re not going to win my hand by default, just because I can’t marry Grainger.”

“Adele!” my mother whispered, horrified.

“I’m sorry.” I shoved hair back from my face and exhaled. “It’s just that a month ago, I thought my future was going to include Grainger and our children, and a little cottage on the edge of Oakvale. Instead, I got a hatchet and a crossbow, and nights spent hunting monsters, followed by mornings when I can hardly keep my eyes open. And that’s fine. At least, it was fine, when I thought that would all be for the good of the village. And that I could perform this new duty and still have my marriage and my little cottage next door to Elena. But now . . . Now my duty has led me to betray Grainger in front of the whole village, and Max seems to think he can just step into his place. What was the point of ruining everything with Grainger—of turning the entire village against him—if Romy and Tom are still going to die? I sacrificed Grainger for nothing.”

“No.” My mother took my hand and refused to let me pull away. “You were protecting the rest of the Pagets. And us. If people think some malevolent force has been at work in the village, how long do you think it would take their suspicion to land on us? And if they turn against us and we have to flee Oakvale, there will be no one left to protect this village from its own superstitions. Much less from the dark wood.”

“And, if it makes you feel any better, I never intended to just step into Grainger’s place,” Max added. “I want my own place in your life. Not his.”

“I know. I’m sorry.” And yet despite their obvious sympathy for the position I’d been put in, neither of them had changed their minds about the children. “Mama, please let me take the kids into the forest tonight.”

She shook her head slowly. “We’re supposed to be culling the population of the dark wood, not adding to it.”

Max nodded. “The safest thing is to deal with them now, once and for all. Otherwise, the blood of anyone they grow up to kill is on our hands.”

I bristled. “On my hands, you mean?”

He exhaled slowly. “Yes.”

“Adele, they have to be dealt with . . . permanently.”

“I know. But if they both die here in the village, their deaths won’t seem natural,” I pointed out as rationally as I knew how. “Especially considering that Tom isn’t sick or injured. However, if they wander into the dark wood, when they already have a history of roaming at night? No one will question that. So let me do it. I’ll take them into the woods tonight. And I will do my duty.”

My mother frowned. “You want to—”

“No, I don’t want to. But it’s as much my responsibility as it is yours, now, and I’m offering to . . . handle it. Permanently.” My way. “Away from the village, where none of us will come under suspicion.”

She studied my face, trying to understand why I would make such an offer, when I’d been trying to save the children from the beginning.

I shrugged. “I’m a guardian now, and I have to start making difficult choices. Isn’t that what you both said?”

Finally, she nodded. “Okay. You can take them into the woods tonight. But take Max with you.”

“Fine.” That didn’t fit into my plan, but I could work around it.

“You’re doing the right thing, Adele,” he said softly.

“I know.” That much, at least, was the absolute truth.

My mother stood with her empty bowl. “I’m going to go sit with Romy, to relieve her mother. You two need to get some rest. You can sleep in shifts, with one of you watching Tom at all times. Do not let him play with the girls. And, Max, stay away from his mouth.”

“I’ll watch him. You sleep.”

Max’s insistence felt like an apology for disagreeing with me, yet he did not actually apologize. Not that I expected him to. He and my mother were right about what Oakvale needed. But I was right, that Tom and Romy deserved to grow up. The hard truth was that there was no good option for what to do with the pups. All of our choices were horrible.

Letting them believe I’d come around to their perspective was the only way to keep my mother from killing poor little Romy in her sleep.

Yet somehow I felt worse about lying to Max than about lying to my mother. Despite what I’d said, I knew he had no intention of simply stepping into Grainger’s place in my life. He didn’t want to disagree with me. In fact, he probably wanted to tell me that I’d never made a mistake in my entire life. The fact that he’d spoken his mind, even knowing I’d be mad at him, told me I would always be able to trust him to tell me the truth, even when that wasn’t what I wanted to hear.

So I gave him a sad smile, to let him know things were okay between us. Then I headed into the back room and settled onto my mother’s bed, where I’d just fallen asleep—at least, that’s what it felt like—when Sofia pounced on me.

“Oof!” My eyes flew open, and I found myself staring up at my little sister, her red hair wild from slumber. “What’s this?”

“Wake up, sleepyhead! Can we have honey with our bread? And milk?”

“Only if there is milk. Go tend to the cow.” I sat up, running one hand through my own tangled hair. “And take Jeanne with you.”

“I’ll take Tom too.”

“No!” I grabbed her arm before she could make it off the bed. “I have another job for him.” I followed her into the front of the cottage, where Tom was stacking split logs against the wall near the hearth.

“We kept ourselves busy,” Max said, looking very proud of himself. “And the girls have already fed the chickens and fetched fresh water.”

“Thank you. I . . . Do you want to sleep?” I asked. “I can watch them.”

Instead of answering, Max studied my face. “It’s okay. Go see him,” he finally said.

“Who?”

“Grainger.” He stepped closer, lowering his voice. “As little as I care for him, I know what he still means to you. And I know how difficult it was for you to do what you did last night.” His voice was disarmingly kind, after the argument we’d had a couple of hours before.

He seemed sincere.

“What did she do last night?” Sofia asked.

I spun to find her watching us from the doorway into the back room. “Go milk the cow!”

“I’m going!” she shouted. “But what did you do to Grainger?”

“Nothing. Go milk the cow.”

“Then why is he locked up?”

I glanced at my sister, then turned back to Max, my stomach pitching. “He’s locked up?”

Max nodded. “He spent the night under guard in the shed behind the church. Madame Gosse came by while you were sleeping, with her jaw flapping faster than a bird’s wings. She said his father took him into custody, and he was shouting about Romy being a wolf and you being a liar.”

I groaned.

“Madame Gosse says he’s lost his senses,” Sofia offered sagely, as Jeanne joined her in the doorway. “What happened?”

I closed my eyes for a second, trying to decide whether or not to tell her. Then, with a sigh, I sank into a chair at the table and I waved my sister and her friend forward. They were going to hear it from someone; best it came from me.

“Grainger shot Romy with an arrow last night. It was an accident,” I added, when Sofia’s eyes widened, and Jeanne’s filled with tears. “And Mama thinks Romy’s going to be fine, chère. There’s no sign of another fever.”

Yet as true as that was, it felt like a lie; Romy would not, ultimately, be fine.

“Why did he shoot her?” Jeanne asked.

“He was aiming for the wolf that stole Madame Rousseau’s hen,” Max explained. “But it was dark out and difficult to see.”

“Is that what happened to our hen?” Sofia asked. “It wasn’t a fox?”

“That’s likely.” I exhaled slowly and brushed a wild crimson lock back from her face.

Jeanne frowned. “Then why is Grainger in jail, if it was an accident?”

Sofia suddenly looked worried. “What’s going to happen to him?”

“I don’t know,” I told her. “But I’m going to go talk to him and see how he’s doing. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then I put on my everyday cloak and headed out the door.

The village was buzzing with a tense energy, despite the fact that most of us had gotten little sleep. Madame Gosse and several other women were gathered in the village square, gossiping, and based on what little I caught as I pointedly passed by them without a word, the story was growing with every retelling.

To my relief, there were no guards at our makeshift jail when I arrived. It was a small two-room shed, one room of which had been fitted with a lock by the blacksmith long before I was born.

Outside of the cell there stood only a single stool and a key hanging on the wall. Through the window cut into the door, I could see Grainger lying on a straw floor that badly needed freshening.

I cleared my throat, and he opened his eyes. When he saw me, he sat up, scowling, but he made no move to stand. “Have you come to damn me with more lies?” His voice was hoarse from the cold air, his gaze hard.

Grainger had never looked at me with anything other than kindness shining in his eyes. For years, he’d made me feel safe and loved, and this change in him left me aching. Struggling to breathe through a suffocating cloud of guilt and regret.

I deserved his anger. But wallowing in my own guilt wouldn’t solve anything, and admitting that I’d lied would only make it harder for me to convince him to change his story. To save himself.

“Grainger, I’m so sorry,” I said at last. “But I can’t say I saw something I didn’t.”

Finally, he stood. “You saw it.”

“I saw an injured little girl,” I insisted, determined to help him—to atone for what I’d done to him—even if he couldn’t see that’s what I was doing.

“I know you saw it, Adele.” His intimate focus pierced me, a blade drawing fresh blood. “You know Romy Paget isn’t human.”

“What I know is that you didn’t mean to hurt a child, and I will go to my grave telling people that.” I took a deep breath and met his gaze, steeling myself for yet another lie. “But the wolf got away, Grainger. You shot a little girl, and whatever you think you saw was simply a trick of the shadows. It was exhaustion playing with your mind. You’d been up all day and all night, out in the cold on patrol. If you tell them it was an accident, you might be forgiven—”

“I can’t do that. I can’t lie and ignore such a grave threat to our village. To our home.”

“—but if you keep telling this story, they’re going to think you’re mad. Or that you’re covering up your own negligence. Which might lead the tribunal to decide you’re a danger to the village.”

“I’m the danger?” Fury reddened his face, and my heart ached for him. For us. For what could never be. If I hadn’t told a lie about him now, he would have told a truth about me later, and I’d be the one in that locked room, awaiting trial. Understanding the inevitability of this moment—of this cell door between us—didn’t make it any easier to accept.

“That child is a beast concealed in the body of a little girl, Adele. She’s brought evil from the dark wood directly into our village, and the only way to protect Oakvale from such a corrupting influence is to purify her soul by fire. And if you can’t admit what you saw—what she is—that can only be because the devil has gotten to you too.”

“Grainger—”

“Maybe Lucas and Noah Thayer are right about you,” he spat, and my face flamed as if he’d slapped me. “Maybe you’re protecting this devil-child because you’re just like her. And the timing of these revelations is no coincidence.”

Oh no. I backed away from the bars, my heart pounding. “Tom has nothing—”

“Tom?” He shook his head, frowning. “I’m talking about Maxime Bernard. Everything was fine in Oakvale before he arrived. That isn’t chance, Adele. He’s a stranger and we know nothing about him. He must have brought this evil—”

“Max has nothing to do with this,” I snapped, as fresh fear swelled in the pit of my stomach. Like a disease, suspicion was a threat to anyone it landed upon, and strangers were especially susceptible. I’d heard tales of accusations being passed from neighbor to neighbor around small villages, the accused each heaping blame onto someone else in their own defense, until no one could be trusted. Until the entire town fell into chaos and violence. That could not happen in Oakvale. “And Romy—” I bit off my own words, before I could say too much—before I could admit that Tom had likely killed my hen the night before Max had arrived—because there was no need to tell him more than he already knew. “I’m trying to help you, Grainger. I—”

“Help me by telling the truth. You and Maxime saw the same thing I did. Why would you hold your tongue in the presence of such evil?”

“Mademoiselle Duval!” A deep voice barked my name and I spun to find Grainger’s father standing in the open doorway, his sword at his hip. Seeing him sent a fresh ache throughout my bones.

I’d thought he would be my father-in-law. I’d thought I would live on his land. That he would bounce my children on his knee.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I . . . I’m trying to help him, Monsieur.”

His expression softened. “There is little you can do for him, child, and I’m afraid that association with him will do you no favors.”

“Adele.” Grainger’s voice cracked halfway through my name, and when I turned, I found him staring out at me from the window in the door. “Please tell the truth. Don’t do this to me.”

Tears filled my eyes, blurring his face.

“You should go,” Monsieur Colbert said. “My son is not well. He is incapable of listening to reason and advice.” The fatigue in his voice said that he had made his own exhaustive efforts in that regard.

“What’s going to happen to him?” I asked as I reluctantly followed Monsieur Colbert out of the building.

“I’m meeting with Father Jacque and Baron Carre’s estate manager at noon, since the baron is not here to complete the tribunal in person. The charge from the Pagets is the attempted murder of a child, and for a crime that serious, the village is not willing to wait for the thaw, to take him to court. We will decide his fate today.”

“He wasn’t trying to kill her, Monsieur Colbert.” I grabbed the watchman’s arm, and with it, I captured his full attention. “I swear it on my life. He just . . . missed.”

“I believe you.” The pain on Monsieur Colbert’s face broke my heart. “But if he won’t say that in his own defense, I’m afraid there is little hope for him.”

“How is he?” Max asked the moment I stepped into my home.

Instead of answering, I glanced around the front room, pleased to see that there were several fresh loaves of bread in the oven. My mother had obviously been home. In fact, it seemed I’d just missed her.

Tom was curled up on his pallet again, sleeping, as he often seemed to do during the day.

“Where are Jeanne and Sofia?”

“Playing in the bean field on the edge of town. I reminded them not to go near the trees.”

Such a reminder shouldn’t have been necessary. We all grew up with the threat of the dark wood hovering at the edge of every thought. Every action. But now that I knew the woods held a special draw for future guardians, I worried that Sofia might give in to the dark lure of a destiny she couldn’t possibly understand yet.

It was that same concern for me that had lured my father to his death.

“Thank you. Grainger is . . . stubborn. I tried to convince him that he saw a trick of light and shadow, but he believes his eyes. And he won’t lie to save himself, as long as he believes that would mean putting the rest of Oakvale in danger.” And the fact was that, as terrifying as his insistence was, I respected his devotion to the village and to his job, especially considering that it had landed him in jail.

“He believes that evil from the dark wood has infected Romy Paget, and that she will, in turn, infect all of Oakvale, unless she’s burned alive to purify her soul.” Flashes of my father’s execution roared to the surface of my memory and sent chills crawling over my skin.

Max exhaled, still watching me carefully. “What do you believe?”

“I know she’s been infected, of course. But I can’t believe that either of the children are actually evil. They haven’t tried to hurt anyone.”

“Yet.”

“Shouldn’t that count for something?”

Max sighed. He stared into my eyes, as if he were studying them. “Does this have anything to do with your father?”

“What do you mean?”

“If you believe that Romy and Tom can be saved—that they aren’t evil—then the same would have been true of your father, right? I know it must be tempting to believe that he would never really have become a monster.”

“That isn’t tempting at all!” I snapped softly at him. “That would mean my father died for nothing.”

“And if Tom and Romy die before we know they’re a threat, that could be true for them too. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“I’m thinking that all we really know so far is that they are loup garou. As am I.”

“They are not the same as you. But I’m the only one who will believe that.”

“I know. Grainger believes that you and I know what Romy is, and that the only reason we would lie for her is if we are also corrupted.”

Max’s jaw clenched, his gaze narrowing beneath a furrowed brow. “And the rest of Oakvale? Which side of this do they fall on?”

“They believe he’s lost his mind.” I’d taken a long, slow walk through the village on my way home, to listen to the gossip and get a sense of the town’s mindset. “His father, included.”

“Unfortunately, that’s probably for the best.” Max stirred the pot still suspended over the fire and scooped up a bowl of broth for me.

“I don’t even know what ‘for the best’ means, anymore,” I said as I settled at the table with my bowl and a hunk of bread. “Grainger told the truth, and now he’s being punished for it. Romy and Tom haven’t hurt anyone, yet. . . .”

“You don’t have to do it yourself, you know.” Max sank onto the stool next to mine. “I’ll be with you out there. I can—”

“Thank you, but no. This is my mess.” I sighed as I stared down into my bowl. “I have to clean it up.”