Rlpt.

She tasted dirt. Something salty and thick. Blood. She’d bitten her lip. And the sound… why was she making that sound? Rlpt. It was beside her. Nearly on her. Warm. Ripping.

Rlpt.

It sounded like mouth. Like teeth and flesh. And there was a smell—something humid and raw. Like berries, but darker. She reached and touched something plush. Something dense as a rabbit. But wet. Full of heat. The heat was near her legs, warm and wet just by her calves.

Rlpt.

Consciousness came in a flood of panic. The sound was with her. She sat up, head swimming, desperate to see, but the night was too heavy. She groped, kicking, trying to back away, the warm squelch-ing thing falling aside, and found herself against the trunk of a tree. Her heart lurched, rhythm too large for her chest—

Something was moving beside her.

She did not breathe.

There was a stepping, tsptsp. A sniffing. Something brushed over her foot. With a cry, she yanked it away.

The thing snuffled closer. Eyes wide, she saw only darkness in darkness. Terror growing, she scrabbled, trying to stand, to run, but before she could move, the rising moon slipped from behind the clouds.

For a moment, in the silver light, Rae saw only beast—rough teeth and rough fur and rough shape—but a second later, the shape transformed into wolf, wolf, wolf. A pair of eyes—gray as forest shadows—met hers. Relief rushed into her lungs—Ah, there you are. She stopped struggling. The wolf hovered, nose whuffling at her feet.

“Wolf,” she whispered, all fear gone with his name.

He’d followed. All this way. He’d followed her.

The moon now fully out from behind the clouds, she could see him, see the dark shape of the thing he had been eating, the glint of light on its wet organs and bones. “Oh…” She grimaced and looked away.

The wolf, settling himself by her feet, returned to his prey. Though he did not touch her, she felt his warmth against her soles. In the dark, Rae listened to the terrible eating—the violent noise of nature. She tried to block the sound, tried not to think of the ferocity of the creature that had dragged another animal here through the dirt, something it now ate with brutish macerations.

Not brutish, she thought. That was the wrong word. The wolf was just behaving according to his nature.

Not far away, she heard another sound—a snort, a stomping. Rising, swaying a little, hand on her brow, she picked her way through the trees. Leaving his prey, the wolf followed at her heels. She found the horse not far up the path, the loose reins having snagged on a branch.

Seeing the wolf, the horse buffeted uneasily against the trees, but at Rae’s calm hand, it settled, sides no longer heaving.

Untangling the leather, Rae patted its damp neck. “Good horse,” she breathed.

Ears pricked, the wolf waited patiently. Rae gazed down the path, its space opening silver in the darkness. How much farther to the king? It was a three-day walk, Mop had told her once, to the palace, but on horseback? From here? Perhaps not half that?