Vermillion & Silver

Chapter Seventeen || Pack

The ice killed everything. What remained were just traces, corpses left for the beholder to imagine what they might have been. Selene ran her finger over a frozen branch and sighed. The small courtyard was filled with skeletons of rose bushes and trees resting among death leaves and fractured sculptures. She sat on the edge of the broken fountain and closed her eyes, she pictured a beautiful garden, filled with winter roses, violas, irises and carefully kept shrubs. She could almost smell the flowers and feel their soft petals under her touch. But when she reopened her eyes she was greeted with the pitiful sight of the ruin that surrounded her everywhere.

It had taken a couple of days, but after some pushing from Freya, Selene had started venturing out of her room. She took a stroll every morning and kept her path away from the busiest parts of the castle were Kaspian and his wolves gathered. Since the confrontation with the Alpha she'd been avoiding the wolves, the exception was Freya, who was helping her recover from the ordeal of her first days in Vargstad.

She wasn't angry anymore, her fury had burnt away leaving behind the ashes of bitterness, a feeling that was strong enough to blur the way forward. She had no idea what to do next. This was the first time she didn't know what was expected of her. In the temple, she had grown up with clear rules and a strict routine that she knew how to follow, and life Arcadia had been easy to understand, she'd been taught the etiquette of the court and knew what her role was and how to play it. But Kaspian and his pack were a puzzle that had too many missing pieces.

"This is where you have been hiding," Freya said, pulling her away from her musings. She was standing a few steps away, under the archway that opened into the courtyard and had a small girl by her side.

"I was trying to clear my head," she said and offered her a small smile.

"Is it working?" Freya asked with a teasing tone.

"Not entirely," Selene admitted. Her mind had been muddled for days and she was still struggling to find clarity, she was beginning to think it might never return.

"You might feel better if you stopped spending so much time on your own." Over the last few days, Freya had not very subtly hinted that she needed to accept her new situation and integrate into the pack, but Selene was not convinced. She couldn't look at Kaspian and Anja without feeling angry and bitter, and the few times she'd encountered any of the other wolves she could tell that they were on edge around her. "You should have supper with the rest of us tonight."

"I will consider it," Selene said, she knew she wouldn't but she didn't want to argue with Freya.

"Are you the princess?" The little girl that was accompanying Freya unexpectedly spoke up. She was small, and couldn't be more than five years old, but she was confident and was looking at Selene with open curiosity.

"I am." Selene liked children, she'd been in charge of the young girls that came to the temple and she'd always enjoyed her time with them. It was nice to be around kids again.

The girl stepped forward and looked her up and down with a very serious frown on her face, measuring her up. It was a funny sight and Selene couldn't help smiling.

"You're small and you don't look strong," the girl said. "But your hair is pretty."

Selene was a little taken aback by the verdict, but it made sense. Pack-wolves valued physical strength and Selene had never been frailer.

"Kaija, you shouldn't speak to her like that," Freya said, before kneeling down to look at the girl in the eye and explaining further, "She is a princess, and you are not supposed to talk to royalty the same way you talk to the rest of the pack. You have to be respectful, like when you talk to the Alpha."