Forest of Lies

Chapter 31-Tale of the Golden Wolf

🫠Long chapter but so worth it, enjoy!
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There have been many things Evander has done that would twist and sour the stomach of many. There are a dozen more that would earn me the same sheen of fear from all who dared to gaze upon my face. To gaze into our eyes, the same pale blue orbs brimming with hunger and power.

I am a monster in similar ways as he, but I've never killed nor injured another who is no match for me. Mother and Evander, once I earned my place as the Scythe at sixteen, then as the undeclared leader of the Wild Hunt at eighteen, ridiculed me for never slaying human slaves or prisoners of my own will. Only under a direct order have my blades, claws, or fangs sunk into the flesh of a human.

I never knew where my acceptance for the lives and emotions of the subjugated class of slaves and free wild humans came from. Only that I've never learned any definite reason for them to be scared witless, enslaved, starved, or forced into a poverty so cruel it has made them as feral and sharp as the animals of the wild wood.

My years growing up in the cutthroat world of the Iron Court were wrapped in luxury and constant threats, physical and mental, from both the inside and out. King Midas, my tyrannical father, paid as much attention as Mother did with her least favorite mirror. Evander was the heir, and most of all he was male. Destined to be what he is now, a cold iron fisted ruler with no sympathy and no remorse for anyone but himself.

Then, there was me, the female child. Meant to be beautiful, delicate, meek, maternal, and silent. A pretty living statue suited only for decoration and the carrying of heirs by a male picked for me, not for love, but for an alliance if a mate was never found. With such minds fixed elsewhere, my tutors were neglectful and careless. Leaving me alone in the library with not but a few toys or sewing practice.

I was my own instructor as the years went on. Cared for only when it was needed, left on my own to learn from the thousands of books in the library. Once I gleaned the basics I read everything. Geography, law, fables, geologies, battle strategy, nature, science, religion, and most of all history.

The last I gleaned only as much as anyone, that our strong kind took away humanity's control of the earth a thousand years ago. A long war that ushered in an age of collared humans and the exiling of all other supernaturals. A move that resulted in a great catastrophe of nature's wrath, and placing us into an age without the famed inventions of the ancient humans and magic beings.

Magic and its knowledge still permeates this land, in good ways, and in the most horrific and cruel of cases. Ones like this moment, with my brother watching a stone faced Nyx step toward him and the grinning warlock. The trembling female sprawled on the ground in a layer of fox furs, mutters and hisses curses at the warlock, as her daughter stops a yard from her.

Admiration for this strange human queen enters my cold heart. Not many are able to stay so still and not tremble beneath the gaze of Evander. The warlock especially does not dare meet his eyes as he scuttles forward and secures the cursed rune collar around Nyx's neck. A sense of revulsion and possession ripples along my skin. A strange sensation that catches me off guard.

Firmly, I grip tighter to my dagger hilts, grounding myself as I've had to do before many a time. Times when other females appraised my mate Orlan with assessing, wanting gazes that lingered on his tall form and grim dark eyed gaze. But that came from the grumblings of my wolf side, here it seems this possessive feeling, this desire to remove this warlock's hands from the dangerous and feral Nyx, is all me for some unexpected reason.

Grey Griselda drips with pride, her body towering over the prone form of the shaman. Her quarry brought back triumphantly, as have all her hunts have turned out and placed in front of the king as both prizes and underhanded tools to serve his own needs.