Chapter 4. What the Wolves Remember

No one ventured beneath the nursery if they could help it. Beneath the back stairwell, a half-cellar yawned like a wounded beast, its low ceiling choking on decay. Broken things gathered there over the years—cot frames corroded to orange lace, pails crushed flat and scattered like empty skulls, stools shattered at odd angles, and tools whose blades were dulled by time and rust. Every surface exhaled dampness; the stone walls felt perpetually cold, slick with unseen seepage, even when the summer sun boiled overhead. A single, narrow window near the ceiling offered a shard of pale light, a bitter beam that died within a few sullen feet, leaving the rest of the room steeped in a hush so dense it pressed against the ears.

Aeryn hadn’t meant to linger. She had told herself she was hunting for a broom—an excuse as pliable as the dust beneath her boots—but the broom remained elusive. What held her there was the floor. Not the fine grey dust coating it, but what lay beneath that ash: a mark unbefitting a cellar floor. She crouched, fingertips brushing the grit aside, and revealed five parallel grooves etched deep into the stone. They curved with a deliberate grace, each line uneven in depth but uniform in intent—no frost crack, no scavenging rat could carve such symmetrical arcs. These were claws, or something like them, pressed hard enough to catch at her fingernails.

The scent of wet stone rose in her nostrils as she regarded the grooves—musty, mineral, tinged with something older and colder. From the kitchen stove she had stolen a scrap of coal-black soot; with that she traced a thick ring around the grooves, sealing them in shadow. Then she moved deeper into the cellar, where beneath a broken cistern and splintered bench slats she discovered a second set of marks—older, darker, half-swallowed by crumbling wood. She circled those too, breath shallow in the damp hush.

When at last Aeryn climbed back out, the seam of her sleeves stuck cold against her forearms, as if the stones themselves had pressed their chill into her skin. She said nothing to anyone about what she’d found. No explanation felt true.

The quarrel with Sera never began with fists or raised voices. It began as a question—civil, almost luminous in its simplicity, which made it all the more dangerous. Aeryn sat by the pump house, cupping her hands in the churned overflow barrel, scrubbing the split scab at her knuckles where dirt had seeped beneath her skin. The barrel’s water was tinted chalky, and each swirl left a whisper of mineral against her palms.

“You’re hiding something.” Sera’s voice fell in neat articulation, her silhouette framed by late-afternoon light and the gnarled roots spilling from the pump’s stone base. She stood just far enough off to look rehearsed, her boots pressing into the soft mud, her gaze sharp.

Aeryn kept her eyes on the water, on the way it gathered in little eddies before spilling back. “Hm,” she murmured. No denial, no confession.

Sera took another step, lowering her voice. “I let you have your silence. I thought maybe you needed time—maybe you were protecting someone or trying not to be seen. But now I think you’re enjoying it. You’re playing the orphan ghost. And you’re very good at it.”

Still Aeryn said nothing. Behind her closed lips, doubt and fear warred, but she did not allow them voice.

“You haven’t spoken to me since the claw,” Sera pressed on, the single word echoing in the empty courtyard like a tolling bell. “And I’m done pretending it doesn’t matter.” She paused, waiting for answer or refusal.

Finally, Aeryn met her eyes. No anger, no shame—only calm attention, like a stone watching the water. “I didn’t choose it,” she said in a low voice that felt absolute. “Whatever it is… it chose me. And I need to understand it before I can give it away.”

Sera frowned, her brow furrowed, as if seeking purchase on some invisible shape. She opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment the silence around them shifted, as though inhaling. The wind did not stir; the branches above remained motionless. Yet the hush deepened, a weight on the air.

Both girls turned. At the corner of the pump house’s foundation, a smear of frost began to dissolve—not slowly, but in an instant, as if the cold had been wiped away by an unseen hand. The thaw took the shape of a perfect footprint. Then the chill returned, the frost reknit itself, the breath of the world exhaled and settled.

Sera closed her mouth and stepped back. Without a word, she turned and walked away, her figure dark against the brightening sky. Aeryn watched her go, alone in the pale light.

That night, after the hour for dreaming, Aeryn slipped into sleep only to find herself standing in a clearing she had never seen. The snow lay unbroken under trees whose branches knitted together in black lace against a sky so low it felt like a lid. Silence reigned—so complete it bled warmth from her veins.

Then the wolf emerged. Not snarling, not growling, but stepping forward as if it had always belonged to that stillness. Light bent around its flanks; the air drew back from its fur. It regarded her with eyes that held centuries, and in their gaze images unfurled around them like shards of memory—

A circle of broken dolls, their eyes empty as her own, the edges of her sleeves singed with soot.

A courtyard ablaze, walls older and wilder than her orphanage, voices screaming her name in accusation, not fear.

A dark den beneath root-tangled earth, a lone candle guttering at her feet, breath heavy above, a presence unseen but vast.

Her hands plunged into something viscous and warm, thicker than blood, and alive.

Then it reversed. She stood again in the snowy glade, the wolf’s gaze gentle, and she whispered, “I didn’t ask for this.” The wolf blinked once, then turned into the trees and vanished. Aeryn woke with her fists clenched tight on her blanket. When she opened her palms, they were stained black with ash.

The storm had been looming for days, its clouds dragging a metallic weight across the ridges. On the night it broke, a fine mist brushed the windows first, almost tender, before recurring as a drumming on the roof. Torches sputtered out in the courtyard; rain pooled in the stone alcoves, the guards retreating behind dripping arches.

Aeryn lay awake in the dormitory, breath fogging the narrow glass slats as she watched water carve rivulets down the pane. All the others slept—everything still but Sera’s empty cot, pushed half a pace away after their silent parting.

Just past the third hour, Aeryn saw it: not a form, not a shadow, but a ripple in the curtain of rain. Across the far wall where stone met stone, the downpour parted as though rent by a seam in the world. Something stepped through—no shape visible, no sound, but the night air quivered with its passing.

She rose, bare feet each step soft on the wood, careful not to awaken her dormmates. She crossed the corridor, the outer hall, and opened the door to the storm. The rain descended in a cold, thick sheet, each drop a small sting as it struck her skin. Mud sucked at her ankles, the wind pressed in from all sides, yet she moved with quiet purpose toward the wall where the world had split open.

She did not know what awaited her beyond that curtain of falling water. Only that it had summoned her. And this time, she would not wait to be found.