Her Wolf King

He started from his memories as if breaking out of a trance.

Lenore. She needed him. Maybe it was the wedding or the bargain or this soul-deep knowledge of these grounds... but he needed to find her.

On all fours, he prowled the grounds that he had lived in for so long, each pebble and leaf and breeze as familiar to him as his own breathing. There was no part of this place that he had not familiarized himself with, no part that he did not know. Until she came along and disturbed his too-familiar life, his too-comfortable existence.

No, how could he call a cursed existence comfortable and familiar? How could he say it was anything remotely close to monotonous and tedious? Yet, as he wove his way along the well-trodden paths between the copses of golden-leaved trees and dens of rabbits and squirrels, he realized he had been asleep for years, for decades. He had gone through the same routine for nearly half a century, burying himself alive instead of trying to save himself.

Perhaps he had thought in part that he was not worthy of being saved. That he really was the monster Marya had cursed him to be.

So many years he’d spent on this estate, not trapped, but never leaving. Never trying. Never venturing any further than the village to snatch a child, to see if they could be the key to his salvation. He’d made a few feeble attempts, until her. Until she’d walked up to him and taken her own life into her hands, and caused him to rethink his.

“Lenore!” he shouted, transforming back into a man and leaning against a tree. He could smell her scent on the wind: roses and something bitter, something sharper, richer, like the wine that had not passed his lips for years. “Lenore, please.”

What if she was hurt? These woods were dangerous. Even for a girl whom a fairy had shrunk from, whom Marya’s messenger had shrivelled at the sight of... No, he’d admit she was no average human girl. Perhaps she, too, was part-faerie.

“Lenore, I apologize.” His voice sang on the wind, but it was an empty breeze, carrying back nothing more than his own disappointment.

A horse’s whinny reached his ears, sharper than a normal man’s. He stiffened, and became a beast again, chasing the scent of blood. There was no iron-sharp, metallic tang on the wind, but he’d heard the horse. There was no doubt about it. His mind’s eye showed him once more that white mare, its golden mane rippling as it ran, hooves pounding on the forest floor.

Could it still be alive? He was sure that the horse had something to do with his former wife--that she’d enchanted it somehow, or perhaps cursed it to be immortal and serve her forever. If the latter, there was no reason to him for her to have left it.

Maybe it had left her. Maybe it could only tolerate the pure of heart.

He ran faster, his paws thudding against the carpet of leaves until they turned to flowers, until he reached spring. Until he reached the abandoned hut in the woods, where he had lived all those years ago. When he had been a normal man, and Marya a loving wife.

His heart nearly stopped at what he saw.

Lenore was leading the horse by the bridle, petting its mane, looking for all the world perfectly at ease, as if the whole forest was hers to explore. He supposed it was; she was his wife now, as she’d thrown in his face only hours before.

Her head snapped up at his approach, but she didn’t step away from the horse. “I made a new friend,” she said levelly.

He made no motion to turn back into a man. He needed time to think, to breathe, to formulate some kind of thought that wouldn’t send her fleeing deeper into the darker parts of the wood.

“Are you jealous?” she cocked her head to one side, a faint smile playing on her lips. “Don’t tell me he’s a man, too, cursed to live out the rest of his days as a horse. That seems rather unpleasant, even more so than being a wolf.”

At that, he took on human form once more and approached her slowly. A smattering of wildflowers dotted the ground by the horse’s hooves, and by some miracle, the horse did not flee at his approach, seeming utterly comfortable with his wife. He picked a handful of white and pink flowers and offered them to her. “I apologize.”

“For what?” she said, still keeping her fingers wrapped around the leather reins. He wanted that small hand in his.

But his fingers clenched into a fist by his side, and he had to dig his nails in, to remind himself that he was no loving protector or a good husband, but a wolf. Everett stepped closer. “For telling you that I owned you, dear wife.”

The ensuing silence roared in his ears. He wanted her, and even more than that, even worse than that, he wanted her to accept his apology. He wanted them to have something like... like what? Love?

Friendship, at least. Peace, at the bare minimum.

“That will do, I suppose.” She took a step toward him. The reins dropped from her hands and she accepted the bouquet. The horse’s golden-brown eyes remained fixed her as if she were its mistress.

“Where did you find the horse?” he said, keenly aware that there were more ears and eyes in this forest than he liked.

“This old nag?” she joked, gesturing toward it with a thumb. It tossed its head and whinnied. He struggled to remember the name that Marya had given to the horse. “He was wandering about the forest with all his accoutrements. I thought he might be lost... But he’s been following me around since I clapped eyes on him.”

Something crinkled. Paper. The note in his pocket, perhaps? “He’s Marya’s.”

She froze in her tracks, about to reach for his hand. “What? How is... Is he really a fairy horse, then?”

Fairy horses were immortal, usually, one of four, blessed or cursed by some deity. They would run in packs, run races until their riders died, or drag men apart upon their executions for daring to trample on fairyland. Fairy horses were not kind or loving or remotely gentle, but vicious and brutal. This mare, though larger than most, had none of the malice and brutality that he’d seen in fairy horses.

’No,” he said firmly. “Simply... enchanted by her, I think. But in all my years here, he’s always shied away from me.”

She reached for the horse, but it sidestepped her hand, looking playful. “Perhaps he likes me.”

“I see no reason for him not to... Except, perhaps, for a pesky habit of running away...” he teased her.

“Oh, you’re frightened I might be a runaway bride?” Though there was a jovial lilt to her words, her eyes spoke of more fear than he’d seen in a long, long time.

“I fear nothing.” He twined his fingers with hers, his thumb caressing hers. The sensation was foreign to him--she was so lovely, so vibrant, so very vivacious that it hurt to look at her. Like the sun to his darkness.

“I think you fear being alone,” she said. “Is that why you came looking for me?”

A raven cawed in the distance. They both shuddered as it flapped its wings, landing on the branches of a nearby tree. “We should go back to the castle. It’s getting dark.”

“What happens after dark?” she said, casting an eye at the greying sky, clearly upset at having a question unanswered.

“You don’t wish to know, Lenore.”

***

As they travelled back to the castle, both of them astride the unnaturally large horse with Lenore’s arms wrapped around his waist, Everett felt... almost happy. Content. It was a strange feeling for him. One that was so rare he felt the need to savour it, like a rainbow in a spray of water before the mist died again and it was gone forever. Yet that was the problem. It would end. This would end.

And he would be alone again.

“You haven’t answered two of my questions,” she noted. “Yet you apologized. Hardly a true apology if no real amends can be made.”

“Marya and I had a tumultuous ending to our marriage,” he said. “She turned me into a wolf after a hunting trip one night. Ironically, that was the night that I hunted down a wolf and brought it back to the hut. Perhaps I should be grateful I hadn’t bagged a wild boar or a stag.”

“Oh?” she said. “But what was her curse for? Simple retribution, or malicious tomfoolery?”

“I still can’t be certain,” he said, though her dark eyes, full of caustic anger, haunted him nightly. “She is the Queen of Curses: a half-human, half-fairy, who crowned herself. Her father, I think, must have been very powerful, but her mother was simply a beautiful human girl who caught his eye.”

“Hmmph,” Lenore said. “What made her what she is?”

“Her upbringing, I would say, as is often the case for most.”

She smacked his shoulder before making a noise of distress.

“Serves you right,” he said, urging the horse on through the forest. It flew through at unnaturally fast speeds, far faster than any horse he remembered riding when he’d been fully human.

“You’re rather cruel,” she said. More crinkling noises reached his ears as she shifted on the saddle behind him, tightening her grip on his belt. “I saw... I saw a hut in the forest. What was it?”

He sighed. “It was one that we used to live in together. I am confined mainly to these grounds, though, perhaps more by bitterness than by any real boundaries. I have been here for the past half-century and during that time, though I’ve tried to burn the house down or otherwise destroy it, it’s remained immune to my assaults.”

“You sound very upset about that,” Lenore said. A lock of her hair slipped over his shoulder, and he brushed it away, the texture soft as silk. “I... Are you going to show me the note, now?”

“It’s in my pocket.”

Slender fingers reached into the pocket of his overcoat. Her touch brushed against his side, his chest, and Everett wondered if she could feel his breathing quicken. “You’re a little thief, aren’t you?”

“Stealing from my husband?” she said sweetly. “Such a thing is impossible. We share all things in common.”

All except secrets, he thought, as the sun set and they returned to the palace.