The Wolves of Midwinter (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 2)

Margon welcomed him with an agreeable nod. Elthram sat back, almost slouching in the armchair, and smiled at Margon as he made a little helpless shrugging gesture.

All this was so puzzling to Reuben. Why wasn’t Margon furious that the Forest Gentry had done what they did? Why was he not claiming that he had foreseen such a grisly possibility? Or that he’d been right to warn against their involvement? But Margon had not been saying such things, and now he sat comfortably with Elthram at the foot of the table.

Stuart was drinking in every detail of Elthram with a kind of startled fascination. Elthram gave him a gentle smile, but the company continued in its miserable silence.

One after another was slipping away. Berenice and Frank headed off to drive down to the village for a nightcap at the Inn. Stuart went up to finish the novel he’d been reading. Suddenly Sergei was gone along with the brandy. And Thibault asked Laura if she might help him with his usual frustrating computer difficulties.

Phil rose to take his leave, pleading utter exhaustion, and refused all offers of assistance, saying he had not the slightest difficulty now in walking or seeing his way to the cottage in the darkness.

And it was the “cottage” now, wasn’t it, not the “guesthouse.”

Elthram sat there staring fixedly at Margon. Something silent seemed to pass between them. Margon rose, and giving a quick warm embrace to Felix, who did not acknowledge it at all, he went out towards the library.

Silence.

No sound came from anywhere, not the low fire in the grate or the kitchen. The rain had died away completely, and the lighted forest beyond the windows was a sweet yet sad spectacle.

Reuben looked up to see Elthram watching him.

Only Reuben and Felix and Elthram remained.

Then after a long period of quiet, Elthram said: “Go now, both of you. Go to the clearing, if you would see her.”

Felix gave a violent start. He glared at Elthram. Reuben was stunned. “You mean it?” Reuben asked. “She’ll be there?”

“She wants you to come,” said Elthram. “Go now, while the rain is slacking. A fire burns there. I’ve seen to it. She wants to come through. It’s in the clearing that she’ll be strongest.”

Before Reuben could say another word, Elthram was gone.

Quickly and quietly, Felix and Reuben went to the closet for their overcoats and scarves, and went out the back door. The forest sang of the rain but there was no rain now, just the high branches releasing their soft trickling downfall.

Felix walked ahead rapidly through the darkness.

Reuben struggled to keep up, realizing that once they were beyond the house lights and the lights of the oak forest, he’d be utterly lost without Felix.

It seemed an eternity that they struggled along one narrow uneven path after another. Reuben managed to put on his leather gloves without slowing his pace, and he wrapped his scarf high around his face against the wind.

The deep woods trembled and whispered with the collected rain, and the earth beneath their feet was often muddy and slippery.

Finally, Reuben saw a pale flickering gleam against the sky, and he made out in the light of that gleam the line of the approaching boulders.

Through the narrow pass, they slipped as before, and into the vast clearing. The strong smell of soot and ashes rose in Reuben’s face. But the cold air seemed at once to dilute it and diffuse it.

All the debris of Modranicht was gone—the scattered instruments, the drinking horns, the coals, the cauldron. A great black circle was all that remained of the bonfire, and in the center of it stood another small blaze, made up of thick oak logs, flames leaping in the swirling mist.

To this blaze they went, walking through the charred and shiny bits and pieces of the old fire. Reuben was painfully aware that Fiona and Helena had died here. But there was no time for mourning the two who had attacked Phil.

They stood as close to the little fire as they could, and Reuben stripped off the gloves and buried them in his pockets. He and Felix stood side by side warming their hands. Felix shivered in the cold. Reuben’s pulse was racing.

And what if she doesn’t come, Reuben thought desperately but didn’t dare to speak the words. And what if she does and what she says to us is terrible, more lacerating, more wounding, more damning than any words that came from Hockan?

He was shaking his head, biting into his lower lip, fighting the sheer misery of the anticipation, when he realized that another figure was standing directly opposite, on the other side of the fire, quite visible above the leaping flames, gazing at him.

“Felix,” he said, and Felix looked up and saw the figure as well.

A low moan came from Felix’s lips. “Marchent.”

The figure grew suddenly brighter than it had been, and Reuben saw her fully realized face, fresh and supple as it had looked on the last day of her life. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold and her lips were faintly pink. Her gray eyes were sparkling in the firelight. She wore a simple gray garment with a hood, and beneath the hood, he saw her short blond hair framing her oval face.

She was not four feet away from them.

The only sharp sound came from the lively fire, and beyond a soft series of sighs came from the great forest.

Then came the sound of Marchent’s voice for the first time since the night of her death.

“How can you think that I am unhappy that you are here together?” she asked. Ah, that voice, that voice which Reuben had never forgotten, so crisp, so distinct, so gentle. “Reuben, this house, this land, I wanted so for you to have it; and Felix, I wanted so for you to be conscious and alive and well, and beyond the reach of anyone who could ever harm you. And you two, whom I’ve loved with all my soul, you are now friends, you are now kindred, you are now together.”

“My darling, my blessed darling,” said Felix in the most broken and bruised voice. “I love you so much. I always did.”

Reuben was shaking violently. The tears spilled down his face. Clumsily he wiped at them with his scarf, but truly he didn’t care about them. He kept his eyes focused on her, as her voice came again with the same distinct and muted power.

“I know this, Felix,” she said. She was smiling. “I always knew. Do you think that, living or dead, I’ve ever laid blame on you for anything? Your friend, Hockan, and he is your friend, enlists me in a cause for which I have no sympathy.”

Her face was absolutely warm and expressive as she spoke, her voice as lyrical and natural as it had been that last day.

“Now, please, both of you listen to me. I don’t know how much longer I have to say these things to you. When the invitation comes again, I must accept it. Your tears hold me here now, and I must set you free, that I too might be free.”