Chapter 119: the voice inside her

Chapter 119 — The Voice Inside Her

The morning began so normally that Roxanne would later think it had been suspicious. She sat through Pack Law, passed notes with Tessa about the lecturer’s remarkable talent for saying nothing at length, and agreed to meet Isla after dinner so they could go over the next stage of her family plan.

Twice her mind drifted to the crooked list taped between their beds. Try something I’ve never tried before, just because I want to. She still hadn’t decided what that something would be. It was a pleasant problem to have, and she carried it around all day like a coin in her pocket.

During the afternoon break, three girls from her Strategy class stopped by her desk. "We’re walking the outer courtyard before the next bell," one of them said. "Want to come? We’re only going to complain about the homework."

"Gladly," Roxanne said, and was surprised at how much she meant it. None of them mentioned the Moonstones. Nobody asked about Lucien. They were simply girls on a walk, and she let herself be one of them.

The outer courtyard lay along the oldest wall of the academy, where the stones were green with moss and the grass grew long. Tessa had caught up with them, and she was in the middle of an impression of Professor Wren when Roxanne heard it.

It was low and thin, a sound barely above the wind. She slowed. A stray dog, she thought, or a fox, something that had slipped through a gap in the grounds. She tilted her head and listened.

It came again, from beyond the wall.

This time there was no mistaking it. It was a whimper, high and cracked at the end, the sound of an animal in pain. Roxanne stopped walking altogether.

"Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" said one of the girls, still laughing.

Nobody else had stopped. Tessa glanced back, mid-sentence, waiting for the punchline of whatever Roxanne was about to say. There was nothing in her face but mild curiosity.

The whimper came a third time, and Roxanne was already moving. A narrow path ran beside the wooded edge of the grounds, half hidden by bracken, and she turned onto it without deciding to.

"Roxanne?" Tessa called. "Where are you going?"

"I’ll be right back."

The trees closed in around her. The light turned green and dim, and the voices behind her faded as though a door had shut. Her heart began to pound, harder with every step, and beneath her ribs an unfamiliar pressure swelled, like a hand pressing outward from the inside. The air smelled of damp earth and rotting leaves, and under that, something wild and warm and living. She had never smelled anything so clearly in her life.

She stopped beside a cluster of birches, breathing hard, and every instinct she owned told her to run toward that sound. She could not have said why. She only knew that she had to.

She ran.

The path opened into a small clearing, dappled and silent. At the far edge, half buried in last year’s leaves, a young wolf lay on its side with one hind leg caught in an old wire snare. The wire had bitten deep into the fur. The animal was thin, with grey fur and pale, frightened eyes, and when it saw her, it thrashed against the snare and bared its teeth in a rattling snarl.

"Easy," Roxanne said. She dropped to her knees a few feet away and held out both hands. "I won’t hurt you. I promise. Easy."

The wolf kept snarling, but its sides were heaving, and the sound was more fear than threat. She had no training for this. She had never handled a wounded animal, and she knew perfectly well that a frightened wolf could take a finger off. But leaving it there was impossible. It simply was.

She edged closer, murmuring nonsense, and reached for the wire.

Pain exploded through her chest.

It was not the wire. It came from within, a white-hot flash that seized her lungs and bent her double. She gasped and fell forward onto her hands. The clearing tilted. The trees swam, and the ground slid sideways, and a rushing sound filled her ears like a river in flood.

Then, through the roar, a voice spoke.

Stop hurting yourself.

Roxanne froze.

It was not the wolf in the snare. It was not behind her, or beside her, or anywhere in the clearing. It was inside her own head, clear and close, a woman’s voice, fierce and impatient and unmistakably alive.

Move your hand. You’ll cut yourself.

Roxanne stared at her fingers. They were an inch from the wire, and the edge was sharp, and a thin line of blood had already started across her thumb. She had not noticed. She drew her hand back slowly.

"Who’s there?" she whispered.

A pause. Then, with a kind of grudging wonder:

You can hear me.

Roxanne scrambled backward across the leaves until her shoulders hit a tree trunk. Her breath came in short, ragged gasps. "Who are you? Why are you in my head?"

Don’t shout. I can hear you perfectly well. The voice sounded annoyed, as though she had been woken. I’m your wolf.

"That’s not possible."

Evidently it is.

"No." Roxanne pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. "No. I have sat through every control class they have. I’ve watched the others talk to theirs. I waited years. I decided there was something wrong with me, that I was empty, or broken—"

You aren’t broken.

"Then where were you?"

The voice did not answer that. Roxanne tried to stand and her legs gave way at once, trembling like a newborn foal’s. She slid down the trunk again.

Breathe, the wolf said, more gently. In through your nose. Slowly. Focus on one thing. The tree. Feel the bark.

Roxanne obeyed because she could think of nothing else to do. She breathed in, and out, and pressed her palms against the rough bark until the tilting slowed. Her pulse settled by degrees. The roaring faded. The clearing came back into focus, ordinary and green.

The voice stayed.

"I’m losing my mind," she whispered.

If you were losing your mind, I wouldn’t have to share it with you.

"That’s not funny."

I wasn’t trying to be funny.

Roxanne laid a hand flat against her chest, as though she might feel the other presence there. Her heart was hammering. "Why now?" she asked. "Why not years ago?"

For the first time, the wolf did not answer straight away. The silence stretched, and Roxanne felt something stir behind it, not evasion, but something worse.

I don’t know.

Of everything that had happened, that frightened her most. A voice that knew everything would have been terrifying. A voice that was as lost as she was seemed to open the floor under her feet.

Behind her, a branch cracked.

"Roxanne!" Tessa came crashing out of the bracken, breathless, her braid half undone. She stopped dead at the edge of the clearing. "There you are. I’ve been shouting for ages. You’ve been gone for twenty minutes."

Roxanne blinked. It had felt like five.

Tessa took in the scene, the wolf pinned in its snare, Roxanne pale and shaking against a tree, the blood on her thumb. She crossed the clearing and crouched in front of her. "Are you hurt? Do you need the infirmary?"

Roxanne almost told her. The words rose all the way to the back of her throat. I heard a voice. There’s someone inside me. But they caught there and would not come out. She did not know what she would be saying. She did not even know what she was.

"I felt dizzy," she said. "I just need a moment."

Tessa studied her for a long second, then nodded. She did not push. "That animal needs help."

"I know. I couldn’t get the wire off."

"I’ll fetch the groundskeeper. Stay there." Tessa was already back on her feet. She ran off along the path, and within minutes returned with a broad, weathered man carrying cutters and a blanket. He freed the wolf with quick, practised movements and bundled it away, muttering about poachers and old traps.

Tessa slid an arm around Roxanne’s waist and helped her up. They walked slowly back along the path, and the green light thinned until the walls of the academy rose ahead of them.

Halfway there, the voice returned, quieter now.

Don’t tell everyone yet.

Roxanne kept her face still and answered silently, as she had no idea how else to answer. Why not?

Because you don’t know what they’ll do with what you tell them.

She turned the words over. Was it fear? Instinct? Some old knowledge the wolf could not explain? She had no way of telling. But the warning sat in her chest like a stone, and she decided that for now, she would listen. She would wait.

---

She locked the dormitory door behind her and sat on the edge of her bed with her hands between her knees. Isla was still in class. The room was quiet, and the crooked list hung on the wall, cheerful and ridiculous.

Roxanne kept her voice barely above a breath. "Are you there?"

Yes.

"That was real. In the clearing. I didn’t imagine it."

You didn’t.

She let out a shaky breath. "Can I shift? Is that what this means?"

Awakening and shifting are not the same thing. The wolf sounded matter of fact. You have a great deal to learn before you could control it. Do not try it alone.

"Have you always been there?"

A pause.

I have been closer than you realise.

"What does that mean?"

I don’t know how to say it better. And I won’t guess about things I don’t understand myself.

Roxanne pressed her lips together. She wanted to demand more, and she could feel the wolf’s reluctance, not stubbornness but the edge of a wall. Nothing she said would push through it tonight.

She lay awake long after the dormitory grew quiet. Isla breathed softly in the other bed. Down the hall, a door closed, and the building settled around her. All her life, she had wondered why she was different from everyone else. Now she had one answer, and a hundred new questions in its place.

She closed her eyes.

Are you still there? she asked silently.

I’m here, the wolf said at once.

Roxanne swallowed.

What’s your name?

The silence stretched through her mind, long and strange and almost frightened.

Then the wolf replied.

I don’t remember.