TOUCH OF THE WOLF By Susan Krinard

He let his arm drop and the bottle slip from his fingers. He leaned on the sill, sucking in lungfuls of rain-washed air.

It had been storming the day he lost his sight. The day he lost everything but the Cause.

He knelt beside the window and felt for the discarded bottle. It fit surprisingly well under his arm. He found crystal glasses on a shelf in the same cabinet, and took one along with the bottle. He closed Quentin’s door firmly behind him as he left.

His destination was the room at the end of the corridor. The door to Grandfather’s suite was heavy and carved like the woodwork in the Great Hall. Its very appearance had intimidated Braden as a young child, when he’d equated it with lectures and punishment.

He was far beyond fear now.

Everything was the same as it had been when he’d visited the room two months ago. As it would always be. He walked to the bed and placed his hand on the velvet bedspread. Tiberius Forster had breathed his last in that great, medieval bed, a tyrant to the bitter end. A tyrant who knew his Cause was safe in the hands of the grandson he’d made into a mirror image of himself.

There’d been a day, long ago, when Tiberius called Braden into this room. The final day of the Convocation where Braden first met Milena.

“Quentin is only worth to me whatever children he can sire,” Tiberius said. “Rowena is the same.” How well Braden had taken that lesson to heart, that philosophy as his own.

He sat down on the edge of the bed. That distantly remembered boy woke within him, feeling greatly daring for the sacrilege. He set the bottle and glass on the coverlet and poured carelessly, letting the brandy slop over the rim of the glass to splash his trousers.

The taste was as poisonous as the scent, but he downed the stuff in one swallow. He felt Grandfather’s stare, full of disgust and scorn for the flawed weakling he was.

“You will not betray me in the end.”

No. He’d betray everything and everyone else, but never Tiberius Forster and his Cause.

“By the time I’m finished with you, you will have no other purpose. You will live for the Cause. Nothing else will matter.…”

Braden replenished the glass and emptied it as quickly as the first. His body was a hollow vessel filling with honeyed warmth. The nectar of forgetfulness. What had Quentin been trying to forget? The duty Braden forced on him?

He raised the empty glass to his absent brother. “But you’ve won, haven’t you? I won’t go chasing after you. I’m done. I’m done with—”

“You will not betray me,” Grandfather roared. Braden hurled the glass to the ground and heard it shatter on bare wood. He stumbled to the perfectly preserved suits of armor and slammed into the nearest. Metal clattered and screeched. He pushed, and it fell with a cry almost like that of a man dying in battle. In rapid succession Braden toppled the others, until the floor was strewn with the dismembered limbs and torsos of once-proud warriors.

Breathing hard, he laughed. How brave he’d proven himself when Tiberius wasn’t here to witness his petty insurrection. He tripped and staggered his way back across the room and snatched the half-empty bottle from the bed.

Telford was waiting for him just outside the door. “My lord,” he said softly. “May I be of service?” Braden bared his teeth. “What are you doing here?” “The wagon is ready to depart, my lord.”

“Then go. Go.”

“Perhaps it’s an inconvenient time—”

“I don’t need you, Telford.” He leaned his head against the door. “She’s gone.”

The non sequitur spilled out all unexpected, as if the liquor had loosened his tongue. Telford would already know. Everyone at Greyburn would know by now.

“If you see her—” No. He wouldn’t ask. He wouldn’t beg. “Go.”

Telford backed away as if he were in the presence of royalty—or a viciously unpredictable beast. When the valet was gone, Braden walked back to his room—the room he’d shared with Cassidy—and sat down in the chair by the window. He couldn’t see the light, but he knew it was growing late. The smell of rain leaked through the glass. Cassidy’s scent overlaid that and everything else in the room. He tried to wipe it out with the taste of liquor, drunk straight from the bottle.

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