While the cheeks of the king had grown paler, more spongy, the advisor’s brow was now a pink sphere of triumph—heated and shining. “No need to concern yourself,” he soothed in a voice not at all soothing. “How could we forget the apprentice’s warning? Torments will follow the one who marks a scratch… agonies will swarm the one who pulls a hair.… Weren’t those your words? Yes, yes. All understood. We will not harm her, as you’ve advised. She’ll be kept sheltered and fed. Perhaps eat even the same meals as the king. Dormice. Flamingoes. Honeycake. Plums. Here.” He motioned for a guard to bring the girl water. “You’ll see, Apprentice. No harm will come to her through us. Watch.” He turned to Rae. “You. Girl. If you stay here, would you like that wolf to stay with you?” he asked, voice sweet as figs.

His lip twitched. Alba wondered at his twisting grin, wondered why he might be so pleased with himself.

“He must go to the mountains again,” Rae whispered. Waxen with terror, she kept her arm about the tawny neck. “That is where he belongs.”

The advisor’s brow grew redder. “If he cannot go to the mountains, girl,” he said, biting his words. “If the choice for him is with you or death. Which would you rather?” He leaned forward. “He is, after all, too dangerous to leave loose in the city.”

“With me!” Her voice cracked. “Please! Let him stay with me until I return home.”

The worm reappeared, tails now curling into a gray smile, and Alba understood then what he intended.

“No!” she cried as the governor-advisor motioned for the guard to remove her. “You mustn’t! You can’t!”

“We’ll give no order to harm her.” He waved Alba away. “Just as you said we must do, Former Apprentice.”

The king, still a quivering pudding, clearly did not yet see what his advisor had planned, for as Alba was dragged across the floor, she heard him wail, “But, Governor-Advisor, we must do something! We must do something to prevent the prophecy!” with the advisor hushing him, “We are. We are. We ARE doing something.”

Alba, still struggling against the guard pulling her out of the room, caught one last glimpse of Rae before the door closed. In the midst of the guards and their spears, she was pouring water from the glass she’d been given into her cupped hand, and the wolf was lapping it now out of her palm.

Ah, there you are, Alba heard clear as day.

XLVII

SAUSAGE-GREASED FINGERS

Rae was not harmed. Not by the king, not by his men, not by the man called Governor-Advisor. Just as he promised.

She was not harmed, but she was not comfortable. The room where she was kept—it was a dirt floor. It was stone walls. It was a locked and heavy door. It was dank and, but for a thin square of light at the top of the wall and a far smaller square cut into the door, dark. She had caught a glimpse of the palace as they had led her through it—the stone so cold and polished it gleamed like water, the halls as white and empty as snow-cast fields, the gilding everywhere, on everything that caught the sunlight—and she wondered why the king had put her here, in this damp chamber, when he had a home so vast. But then she thought, It must be the wolf; of course a wolf cannot stay in such a palace, and she was grateful the king had let him stay with her, though the wolf was pained and panting and agitated.