Chapter 4. Conscious “Choice”

I stayed on my knees beside Grey, arms around his shoulders, and could not stop the tears. They came of their own accord — hot, salty, endless. I wiped them with the back of my hand, but they returned again and again, blurring my vision until I saw him only as a trembling, indistinct shape in the unsteady torchlight.

Grey was crying too. Quietly, without sound, only his shoulders shaking under my fingers, and every so often a short, stifled sob escaped his chest before he forced it down, as if even that small surrender shamed him.

I stroked his head, the dirty, matted hair, the cheek where a deep graze darkened the skin, and whispered,

“It’s going to be all right. I’m here. I’m with you.”

I did not know if anything would be all right. I knew almost nothing. But I needed to speak, needed to do something, because the silence was worse than any words.

Footsteps sounded behind us — heavy, measured, unhurried.

Dan walked around us and stopped a few paces away, arms folded across his chest. In the torchlight his face looked carved from stone — handsome, cruel, expressionless. His eyes glowed with that pale blue, cold fire that had nothing in common with Grey’s warm amber.

He looked down at us with neither anger nor pity nor impatience. Only calm, patient expectation. Like a surgeon who knows the patient is going nowhere and can afford not to rush.

“Grim,” he said.

The voice was even, almost indifferent. But beneath the indifference lay steel — cold, sharp, merciless.

Grey jerked. His whole body went rigid under my hands; his breath caught. He raised his head slowly and looked at Dan.

In his eyes — still dull, sunken, ringed with dark circles — something flared. Not only fear, though fear was there. Not only anger, though that was there too. Despair. Pure, undiluted despair of a man who knows he has already lost and is still trying to bargain.

“Dan.” Grey’s voice was hoarse, weak, almost soundless. He swallowed — I saw his Adam’s apple move — and tried again. “Dan, please. Let her go. She doesn’t know anything. She didn’t mean any of this. I ... I’m the one who broke the rules. I’ll take whatever’s coming. But she ... she shouldn’t be here.”

He spoke, and with every word his shoulders hunched further, as if the weight of his own voice was crushing him. His fingers, resting on the earth, clenched into fists until the knuckles whitened.

“She didn’t see anything,” he went on, pleading notes creeping in. “I never told her a thing. She only ... she only wanted to help. She thought she’d hit a wolf — an ordinary wolf. She didn’t know...”

“Didn’t know,” Dan repeated.

He did not ask. Did not query. Simply echoed the words, and in the echo there was not a trace of doubt. Only the faintest smile, hidden at the corners of his mouth.

“Didn’t know,” he said again, slowly, tasting each syllable. “And so you ... what? Decided it was fine to open up? Tell her everything? Show her what you are? Shift right in front of a human?”

Grey lowered his head. His shoulders trembled — from cold, from strain, from shame; I could not tell which.

“I ... I didn’t mean to. But she ... she was so...”

“So what?” Dan’s voice softened. Became more dangerous. Like a cat playing with a mouse before it snaps the spine. “So kind? So pretty? Did she smell so good it short-circuited your brain?”

Grey said nothing. Only clenched his fists harder, nails digging into his palms.

“I know,” Dan continued, taking a step closer. “I can smell her. And I understand why you lost your head. But that’s no excuse, Grim. You knew the rules. You knew what would happen if you broke them.”

“I’ll take the punishment,” Grey said dully. “Any of it. But her ... let her go. Please. She doesn’t belong here ... she doesn’t...”

He stumbled. I felt his body shaking with a coarse, nervous tremor he could not control. I pressed closer, trying to give him whatever warmth or certainty I still had, but I was shaking just as badly.

“Doesn’t what?” Dan tilted his head, studying us as if we were specimens under glass. “Doesn’t deserve to suffer? Doesn’t deserve to pay for your stupidity? Then who does, Grim? You? You’re already paying. Sitting on a chain, naked, filthy, pathetic. And you’ll sit there a good while yet. But it isn’t enough. You know it isn’t enough.”

Grey lifted his head. In his eyes — cloudy, red from crying, ringed with bruise-dark shadows — something close to madness flickered.

“Then kill me,” he said. “Do whatever you want. But her ... let her go.”

“Kill you?” Dan gave a short, soundless laugh that never reached his eyes. “What makes you think death is a punishment? Death is a release. An escape. You, Grim, haven’t earned an escape. You’ve earned the right to remember. Every day. Every night. Every time you close your eyes, you will remember what happened because of you.”

He took another step. Now he stood very close — I could smell him again, that scent that made my head swim. Forest, smoke, pine. And cold. Cold rolled off him despite the heat of his body.

“Or shall I call you Alex?” Dan asked, a light, almost affectionate mockery entering his voice. “Or whatever she calls you? Grey?”

Grey flinched. I felt his body tighten even further and understood: the name I had given him, the name that had become ours, now sounded like an insult in someone else’s mouth.