SECRET OF THE WOLF By Susan Krinard

He waited for Johanna in her office, perched on the edge of the faded chaise longue that sat across from her desk. He could see a little of the view outside the window opposite; he had a very strong desire to climb through that window.

Instead, he got up and paced a nervous circle about the room, ending at her desk. The polished oak surface was spotless, dust-free, and neatly laid out with a minimum of clutter: a stack of papers or notes, an inkstand and pen, a metronome, a pair of medical books taken from the alphabetized rows in the shelf against the nearest wall… and a small vase of wildflowers, similar to those May had brought him at breakfast.

The desk was like the woman herself: orderly, pragmatic, its seeming severity moderated by the homely beauty of a handful of flowers.

Quentin was tempted to upset the perfect balance of the desk: scatter a few papers out of order, or stick a wildflower stem in the inkwell. Just as he had been tempted, more than once, to loosen the tightly bound strands of Johanna’s light brown hair.

It wasn’t too late to do something just outrageous enough to make her toss him out on his ear, reject him as a patient. He didn’t have to go through with this. If Johanna’s hypnosis was what she claimed, he wasn’t going to be able to hide himself. Not any part or portion.

He sat at Johanna’s desk and picked up her pen. The scent of her hands lingered in the glossy wood of the handle. He drew it slowly along his upper lip, thinking through what he’d already debated with himself a hundred times or more.

He was crazy, as crazy as any of the other residents of the Haven.

Because he trusted Johanna. He trusted her to help him, she alone of all men or women in the world. He trusted her not only with his uncertain memories, but with the one fact she surely could not accept—she with her logical mind. What would she do with that secret, once she received it into her keeping?

She thought she could cure him of dipsomania. He hadn’t told her the rest, the thing he feared, the shadow he never saw except in nightmares and cloudy recollections of conflict and violence. He wasn’t even sure it existed except in his imagination.

If it did exist, Johanna would discover it.

The pen snapped between his fingers, driving a splinter into his thumb. He watched a tiny bead of blood well up from the wound. In a few minutes no one would be able to see that the flesh had been broken.

Would he be dead by now, if not for the healing power of his body? Lying in some alley, perhaps, poisoned by alcohol or murdered by cutthroats?

The point was moot. His flesh, his bones, his organs—they all mended in time, barring a fatal stroke to the heart, spine, or brain. Only his mind didn’t heal. He understood his mind least of all.

His elder brother, Braden, Earl of Greyburn, had once told him that he’d wasted a good mind in the pursuit of pleasure and frivolity. Braden didn’t know about the Punjab, or the shadow that followed Quentin, haunting him from the corner of his vision. The shadow had gone away while he’d lived a fast life in England, unable to match the frantic pace Quentin set. It had returned five years ago, at the Convocation, and ended the life Braden had so disparaged.

I ran out on you, brother—on you and Rowena. I had to. What would you think to see me now?

He glanced at his hand again. The skin was almost smooth where the splinter had pierced it. Yes, his flesh had mended, but what of Johanna’s pen? Wasn’t it a metaphor for what she was—sound enough in average hands, but so easily broken in the wrong ones…

“I see that you are ready to begin.”

Johanna stepped into the room, her arms full of books. Quentin jumped up and took them from her, setting them down on the desk.

“I must apologize,” he said. “I fear I broke your pen. I’ll replace it, of course.”

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