Chapter 5

Dawn arrived, and frost collected on the trampled earth around them. The tips of her fingers were cold despite the blanket pulled tight around her shoulders. Half the men had been gone when she’d woken up. The other half were preparing to leave now. Sorcha was surprised the Wolf had let her sleep so long when there was still so much ground to cover to get her to his prince.

He sauntered over and picked up a waterskin from beside the fire, then extended it to Sorcha. She didn’t take it, and he crouched down, holding it out once more. He waited, and someone chuckled nastily behind him.

Sorcha glanced at the man. Hugh. More than anything, she wanted to shut him up.

Sorcha snatched the heavy waterskin and took a sip, the water cool and tasting of earth. When she thrust it back at him, the blanket slipped away, and the sleeve of her dress rucked up to expose a section of her elaborate tattoo. Hurriedly, she smoothed the fabric down, but the Wolf stopped her with a rough hand. She flinched with a gasp, pulling back against his hold but stuck tight.

He stilled, the two of them breathing together, locked in the moment.

Gently, he pushed the sleeve back with one gloved hand, revealing more of the tattoo—detailed and complex, starting just above her wrist and disappearing into the sleeve.

She watched, transfixed, as he traced a line across her skin. A road yet to be traveled, a destination yet to be reached. Each location was carefully detailed, nothing hidden, her skin a map and promise of what could be found at the end of the journey.

“Did your prince tell you about me?” she asked, intensely aware of his grip on her arm.

Who had been the last person to touch her with such gentleness? Ines before the fall of the Citadel gates? And now, this monster with black leather between them.

His dark eyes flashed up to her face. “Yes.”

“How much?” She raised an eyebrow, wanting to remove his hand even as her heart raced with the connection. “Everything?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I don’t think he knows it all.”

“About me or the Saint?” she asked.

“You are one and the same to him,” he said.

“And to you?”

Her words hung between them. He didn’t respond, watching her without emotion.

“It doesn’t matter.” She shook her head, pulling her sleeve down to hide the small part of the larger tattoo. “He won’t get what he wants.”

The Wolf rocked back on his heels. “He will. I will make sure he does.”

“Do you even know what that means? What the Saint means?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know the stories here. I grew up thousands of miles away. I only know what the court whispers.”

“And what do they say?”

“He’ll bring back the dead.”

“He will bring death.” Her eyes glittered, hardness and slow simmering anger building. “He is death. Walking, consuming, physical death.” The words came out softly, belying the fury inside. “Does the prince think the Saint will do his bidding? That he can bend a god to his will?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought you were his monster. Shouldn’t a dog know what his master is thinking?”

The Wolf’s hand clenched, his face betraying nothing—eyes black pits of nothing. The leather across his knuckles creaked, pulled taut.

Sorcha watched his fist until his fingers relaxed, the angry response quelled. Or maybe saved for a better moment, when others weren’t watching.

“His mother is dying,” he said, voice flat and hard.

Sorcha sucked in a breath, surprised. She hadn’t expected something like this, so ordinary and very human.

“People die,” she said.

He nodded.

“No one comes back from the dead,” she whispered.

All the blood in the temple, her sisters and brothers—the only family she had ever known—all dead around her, all trusting her to do what she had been born for. The only thing she was good for.

Resurrect the Saint.

“Don’t they? Isn’t that what your religion teaches?”

She bit her lip, looking down at her pale hands and the dried blood beneath her bitten-down nails. “Are you religious?”

He shook his head, waiting until she looked up to speak. “You’re a death cult.”

You will be the instrument of our resurrection. He will walk the earth again because of you.

They’d killed themselves so easily. It had shocked her how quickly they brought blade to flesh, poison to lips. The gates breached, houses burning, the air stinking of death. The earth beneath her trembling, quaking, as if it might split at any moment.

She closed her eyes, squeezing it all out, forcing it down and away.

He grasped her chin, turning her face to his, forcing her to look at him. His grip was strong, unyielding, and her heart began to pound, her skin tingling with his touch.

“You don’t believe it,” he said.

Not a question, a statement, seeing it all on her face.

“I don’t have to believe it for it to be true.”

He grabbed her arm, pushing the sleeve back again to reveal the tattoo. “And these?”

The words spilled out of her, flowing without thought.“I was chosen, born beneath the right stars at the right time. Divine. I grew up in the temple. There is always a vessel. Always a girl at the right time and place.”

She pushed his hand away, reaching up to tug at the high neckline of the dress. The tattoo on her chest began beneath her collarbones, wrapping her breasts and torso, following the line of her hips and down her thighs. Ankles to wrists to neck. Her whole body covered in the history of the Saint.

She pulled the neckline down enough to show the edge of the tattoo beneath her collarbone, a swirl of gold and blue. “In my seventeenth year, I took the final step and began the map ceremony.”

He touched her collarbone with one gloved finger, following the line of bone beneath skin. The contact made heat writhe within her, a horrible mix of desire and disgust. He touched her with his gloves on, a layer between them, and more than anything, she wanted to take those gloves off. She wanted him to touch her with his bare hands.

His hand dropped away. “How long did it take?”

“It takes years to finish the map.” She bit her lip, mind racing.

The map on her skin was incomplete. She’d not yet completed the rituals. Now, she never would.

“And you believe the pieces of the Saint can be found in these places?”

“Your prince believes it. Don’t you trust your prince?”

“Always.” He stood, staring down at her. “But I am not blinded by the impending death of someone I love. I won’t be fooled by your death cult. I won’t be taken in by your innocence.”

She snorted, angry with his coldness, with herself for sharing so much without a second thought. “And what will you do if you find out it’s nothing but a myth after all?”

“I’ll kill you myself,” he said. “We leave in a few minutes.”

He turned away, his broad back to her, and walked through camp toward his waiting men, leaving her cold by a dying fire.