Sadie

I wandered through the gardens, picking an afternoon snack from the citrus trees on my way back to the library. The air was laced with the scent of blossoming tropical flowers and vanilla. The garden was truly magical, and I spent most of my waking hours there when I wasn’t in the library combing through scrolls and stories.

It was a daunting task relearning and scrutinizing our ancient history through a completely different lens. Sometimes the Wolf and human stories aligned, sometimes they deviated entirely from each other, and I struggled to parse fact from fiction. Too many words, too many translations . . . When I closed my eyes, I still saw the words inked upon the page, felt the parchment rubbing across my fingertips, and heard pages being flicked like a shuffled deck of cards.

I took another breath, letting the heady jasmine and vanilla replace the dusty must of old tomes. I idled about the garden, taking another deep inhale, my scent superseding all my other senses. At the center of the garden, I found the tiled well and meandered over.

As I reached out for the golden bucket, Navin’s voice said, “Don’t.”

Hand still hovering midair, I looked over my shoulder at him. “Why are you always lingering?”

Navin had been a constant shadow since the day I shifted, watching me from across the library as I flicked through every book I could get my hands on. Smart of him to keep his distance. Despite losing the resolve to kill him outright, I still was debating whether I could pull off a light stabbing. Of course, that wouldn’t lend itself well to this ploy that Navin actually had control over me. If Rasil truly believed it when he returned, he was more of a bloody fool than I gave him credit for.

“Why are you hovering around like an annoying little gnat?”

I asked again when Navin didn’t immediately answer me.

He plucked a bright pink fruit from the branch above him, its soft flesh denting in his grip. “Because you’re new to this place and you don’t know its rules,”

he said, shining the fruit on his shirt before taking a bite.

“And one of the rules is don’t touch the bucket?”

I asked. “Is it magical?”

“Yes.”

I look at him skeptically.

“It’s a whispering well,”

he said through a mouthful of fruit. He wiped the back of his hand across his lips. “We use it to communicate with other Songkeepers, but if you don’t know the right song, you might end up talking to the wrong well on the other end. It takes practice. I’ve accidentally scared a few farmers in my time.”

I chuckled, imagining the frightened person hearing voices echoing up their well. That would certainly be a story to share around the fire. I lowered my hand and backed away from the well, turning instead toward a stone bench. I perched on the seat, staring up at the purple flowers that rambled over the archway.

“Could we contact Maez through the whispering well?”

“Does Maez often frequent wells? The Songkeepers know which ones to go to and when. If Maez even went to a well, the likelihood we’d synchronize our times seems improbable.”

“Great,”

I muttered, dropping my head in my hands. What I’d give for a confirmation she was okay. But as the breeze blew through the trees and water trickled across the stones, I couldn’t seem to summon the same panic I’d felt in the days preceding.

Navin hummed to himself as he ambled closer, and I wondered what magic he was casting. Did he ever hum just for mindless enjoyment? Was there always a reason? Was he controlling my emotions with his songs even now?

“You look tired,”

he said finally as he took another bite of food.

“I wonder why,”

I muttered. “I think I’ve read an entire shelf of books in your extensive library, and even then, I’ve only scratched the surface.”

“I can tell you whatever you want to know.”

“I don’t want anything from you.”

I folded my arms across my chest to keep my hands from picking at my fingernails. Gods, I missed my knives. The kitchen ones just weren’t the same.

“You need to rest.”

“I need answers before Rasil returns,”

I countered.

“What answers?”

“All of them.”

“Okay, well, let’s start with one.”

“I found another song sheet—a letter between you and Rasil— and the endings were all of the feminine neutral form?”

The first question that popped into my mind was clearly not what Navin was expecting. “Why did Rasil call you that?”

Navin paused, then looked at me. “Are you familiar with the word ‘avist’?”

“No.”

“It’s a Taigosi human word,”

he said with a shrug. “It means I’m indifferent to all genders. That’s why Rasil called me that.”

I blinked at him. This was just another way I didn’t know Navin at all. “So when I call you he . . . ?”

“I don’t care.”

The wheels in my mind were turning so fast I couldn’t keep up with them. “And if I called you she?”

“I also wouldn’t care.”

“But Rasil at least once called you she?”

“Which I’m also equally indifferent to.”

Navin leaned against a palm tree and flashed me a grin.

“But do you prefer one to the other?”

“No.”

His grin widened. “That’s kind of the whole point.”

“So you’re like the Olmderian word ‘nezaim’ . . .”

“No.”

“What do you mean ‘no’?”

I asked, my voice increasingly exasperated. Navin only laughed. “Speak!”

I was learning not only an entirely different language, but concepts that the Wolves had never welcomed. Everything was so rigid. There were men and women. Men were meant to lead and women meant to follow. Somewhere deep within me I’d always resented those notions but neither had I questioned changing them. As a warrior, I knew my power, but Wolf Kings would never even let women rule let alone embrace the concept of more than two genders like the humans did.

“Nezaim feel they belong in all of the other words and prefer for all the other words to be used for them.”

“And you . . . just don’t care?”

“I feel detached from the concept entirely.”

He shrugged. “When you travel to as many corners of the continent and learn as many new words and customs as I have, trying to encapsulate oneself with a single word seems too reductive. Call me what you will. I remain the same.”

“But . . .”

He tried to hide his laughter as my mind raced. “You’re looking at me like I just said I had dinner with an ostekke.”

“I never knew about any of this! My world feels like it’s exploding!”

I barked, rising to a stand. “Until Calla ran off, I only ever knew that humans had different customs, and those were never elaborated upon nor were we ever encouraged to learn more about them. Gods, some things were outright forbidden.” I waved a hand wildly between the two of us. “Then I learned in Olmdere there were eight genders and learned what all of them meant and figured the other kingdoms would have some sort of amalgamation of them and now you’re saying there’s even more.”

“There’s infinite.”

I clenched a fist to my gut. “My stomach hurts,”

I grumbled as I started to push past him and back toward the library. I needed some more boring old histories to calm down.

“I thought you hated me.”

Navin turned and tailed me like his normal lingering self. “Why are you so concerned with calling me the right thing?”

“I hate you for a lot of very good reasons. Imprisoning me against my will for instance.”

I turned to look at him one last time, my eyes promising my words. “But this, this isn’t why I hate you. I’ll call you by the right name as I slit a knife across your throat for lying to me.”

Navin grinned. “There she is.”

We ate dinner in the garden, under the open sky. I’d given up on my attempts to avoid Navin. The questions he had sparked in me never seemed to stop, and I didn’t want to page through the whole library to get more answers.

There was a whole history, a whole system of magic, I had never known about. In the whirlwind of that thought, I’d almost forgotten everything that had transpired between us. Navin acted like we were allies, as if we were both thrown into this sordid arrangement together. But who knew what would happen once the others came back.

“I think my voice is growing hoarse.”

Navin chuckled and took a sip of his wine. “We still have one more day before Rasil returns. You can ask me more in the morning.”

I yawned and stretched my arms above my head, my body finally feeling comfortable and well-fed. “Am I to go back to the dungeons tomorrow?”

Navin cut me an incredulous look. “Do you have magic that can force me? Because you and I both know if it came to a hand-to-hand fight, I’d win.”

His lips curved. “Agreed.”

“Will they expect me to be bound and back in a cell when they return?”

Navin swallowed. “I want to get us out of here. If you can play their game a little longer, they will send us on our way with you as my prisoner.”

I scoffed. “As if you could keep me on a leash.”

He grinned. “Maybe I could,”

he goaded. “I have more tricks up my sleeve than you think.”

“So I need to play the role for your husband until we leave this place?”

Navin’s lips thinned at the word “husband”

but he nodded. “Only in front of Rasil. Only until we can get out of here.”

“Do you still love him?”

The words tumbled out, and I frowned into my cup of wine for loosening my tongue.

“No,”

Navin said softer. “Not for a long time.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, the silence between us eating away at me again. I still didn’t know if I could trust Navin, but I knew I needed to get out of this place, and if letting the humans think they had the upper hand would do it, then I would play along. Once we got to Sankai-ed and found Maez, then she and I would decide together whether we helped retrieve this eternal song or left Navin in the dust.

“Do you think Maez is still alive?”

I asked, my voice breaking a little thinking of her. She and I had been best friends since we were pups. The thought of anything happening to her made me ache.

“She’s alive,”

Navin said with a nod. “Galen den’ Mora is the safest place in all of Aotreas . . . once you’re inside, that is.”

“The songs written around the outside of the wagon?”

“You’re catching on,”

he said. “They are wards and songs of protection.”

“Can magical songs be written on objects to protect them?”

“No.”

“But the wagon—”

“Galen den’ Mora is a dying wish; it sings its own songs if you listen close enough.”

Navin sighed wistfully. “The magic must be felt, heard, or sung—even if it’s only into our own minds, sometimes it’s enough. But the louder it is, the more powerful.”

I shook my head. “In Durid, when the Silver Wolves attacked us . . .”

“No song could’ve protected us from that many Wolves,”

he said. “I tried . . . tried to sing into my mind, tried to hold that protection for us. But remembering songs when fists are flying at your face isn’t exactly easy. After that right hook from the big one, I could barely remember my own name let alone my magic.”

I swallowed the lump that’d formed in my throat, remembering his bloodied, brutalized face. He bore some of the scars still—the nick in his eyebrow, the fading scar down his jaw. “You held your own for a while there.”

“I tried not to,”

he countered. “But when I thought of them hurting you, I couldn’t hide my fighting skills. You seemed too preoccupied to notice.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to notice. Maybe I wanted to consider myself the superior fighter.”

“You are the superior fighter.”

I huffed. “Fat lot of good it did us.”

“They bound and gagged us,”

Navin reminded me. “But even without the gag, songs still don’t heal as fast as a Wolf’s shifting. Our lesser magic is only slightly faster than a normal, non-magical healer.” He stared up at the cloudy sky above us. “I thought for certain we were going to die.”

“We nearly did,”

I said, the guilt seeping from my pores, leaving an invisible sticky shame that only I could see. I’d carried that shame, that panic, for months, thinking that I had led Navin into the Silver Wolves’ path, thinking that I was almost responsible for his death.

He leaned his shoulder into me. “You saved us.”

I dropped my head into my hands, pain rolling off me. The memories flashed through my mind like flashes of lightning. “?”

“I thought I had put you in the worst danger of your life. I thought you were this sweet musician and I felt responsible for your suffering. I was sick that I had done that to you, ruined someone so kind and pure. But you were never that, were you?”

I stood too quickly. “I’m going to bed.”

Navin caught my arm as I spun.

“Remember what I said about you grabbing me,”

I warned, but neither did I move.

Navin waited a breath before saying, “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you who I was. When we met, you were pretending to be a human, too, remember? We thought we needed to keep our true selves from each other then, but whatever burden you carry for letting me get hurt, I absolve you of it.”

He touched a hand to his throat where I’d choked him. “And of the pain you’ve inflicted since,” he added with a chuckle. “I’ve known danger, known pain, my whole life.”

“I thought they were going to kill you,”

I whispered, choking on the words. “And I thought it was my fault.”

“None of this is your fault,”

he said. “I chose this life.”

“But you did not choose me!”

My chest heaved, my heart cracking open as I laid it all bare for him. The truth echoed between us. He hadn’t chosen me, just kept me on a too-long string, reeling me in again and again. I still felt gripped by a fear and shame that I never needed to feel because he was never the person I thought he was.

I cleared my throat and folded my arms tighter around myself, not wanting to face him anymore and all the feelings still being unearthed inside of me. All of it was just a manipulation. All of it was from his songs and secret power. All of it was a lie. “Just . . . I’m going to bed.”