“Wolf. Please—tell me who you are. Tell me why you brought me here.”
He sighed, as though he was weighed down with an impossible burden he could no longer carry. “I am the keeper of this house—I am bound to it, and it to me. I am old, my lady. I am dying. At the end of the year I will fade, and if the house does not have a new master by then, it will fade with me.”
Whatever I expected him to say, it wasn’t that. “You brought me here to … take your place?”
“If you choose the house. And if the house chooses you.”
“But I have to get back to my father—my family!”
“And so you can at the end of the year, my lady, if you so choose.”
“Will you give me a choice?”
“There is always a choice.”
“You didn’t give me a choice tonight—I couldn’t let my father die.”
The wolf shook his white head. “Tinker would have come, whether you made your promise or not. He was never in any danger.”
And then he stopped in front of a red door, carved beautifully with lions and birds and trees. “Your room, my lady, for the duration of your stay. Dinner will be ready as soon as you are settled.”
“But—”
He was already gone, the tuft of his tail showing around the corner, leaving me to reel with the knowledge I had abandoned my father and sacrificed a year of my life for absolutely nothing.
I HAD NO INTEREST IN investigating the room behind the red door. I paced the corridor after the wolf instead, but he was nowhere to be seen. Frustration twisted through me. The wolf had tricked me, and for what? To trap me in this strange and terrifying house? I could have been home with my father. I could have been safe.
But I blinked and saw my university acceptance letter crumbling to ash. If it weren’t for my father, would I even want to go home?
Down the hall to the left, lamps flared suddenly to life, stretching out of my sight line. I walked that way, hoping they would lead me to the wolf.
I passed countless doors and wandered up seemingly infinite hallways and staircases. Icy currents of air whispered past my neck. Laughter and music echoed faintly from behind some of the doors, while from others came the scent of wine and honey and autumn flowers, or the winter tang of a crisp starry night after a snowfall. The whole house seemed to brim with memory and sorrow, with lost dreams and forgotten joy. I ached with a sadness that wasn’t my own.
Magic teemed around me—I didn’t know how to process it all. Part of me still wondered if I was freezing to death and delusional in the wood, but it was all too real. I paced through a white marble hallway and brushed my fingers along a vein of gold running through the walls; it pulsed warm, humming with life. Donia would hate this place. My father would be awed. Rodya would try to make sense of it all, reduce it to cogs and gears. I could do little more than try and accept it, shifting my understanding of the universe to include something that, in this house, was as natural as breathing.
And then I found myself opening a tall door and stepping into a high-ceilinged chamber hung with glistening chandeliers and furnished only with a long table, draped in a linen cloth. The wolf was perched awkwardly on a chair at one end of it.
“My lady,” he said with a regal dip of his white head. “Come. Eat.”
A second chair was pulled up to the right of the wolf’s. I caught the aroma of braised meat, and realized how hungry I was, my stomach growling. I went and sat down. The table overflowed with food: platters of venison and bowls of fruit, soup tureens and a mountain of sugary square cakes layered with jam. An elegant place setting lay before me: a china plate intricately painted with blue and red birds, silverware wrought to look like tree branches on a lace napkin, and a crystal-studded glass of shimmering pink liquid.
I cast an eye at the wolf. There was no place laid out for him. “Is the food poisoned?”
“Poisoned? Certainly not. I have not the table manners to entertain a lady of your worth—I had my dinner elsewhere.”
I noticed suddenly that his back and tail and ears were flecked with blood. I shifted uneasily.
He dipped his muzzle at the waiting feast. “You are hungry. Eat.”
Tentatively, I obeyed him, my hunger outweighing my suspicion. I sampled little bits of everything: the meat was tender, the fruit summer-sweet, the soup hot and rich with flavor. The glass of pink liquid tasted lightly of honey and berries, and fizzed pleasingly on my tongue.
The wolf watched me eat. His stare was disconcerting—he rarely blinked—and I couldn’t stop looking at the blood in his fur. I laid my fork down before I was quite full. From some distant room came the sound of a woman’s bright laugh, but the next moment it was gone.
I thought of the long, long way from my bedroom to the dining hall, the infinite doors, the horror of the gatekeeper. The blood in the wolf’s fur. “Is the house … safe?” That wasn’t quite my whole question.
“It is like any wild thing that has been tamed, my lady. It is sometimes safe, and sometimes not. But that isn’t the point.”
“What is the point?”
“To remember that it is wild, and to be on your guard.”
I knew he was referring to more than the house, just as I had been. “Was that you in the wood, last spring? Why didn’t you speak to me then?”
He shifted in his chair, his fur brushing against the tablecloth and leaving little flecks of red on the linen. “There are times when I have been too long away from this house. I forget reason and speech. I become truly … wild. But when I saw you I remembered, a little. Enough to return to the house, where I remembered everything.”
“What did you remember?”
“That I needed you, my lady.”
His amber gaze pierced through me, and I found I could no longer meet it. Silence slipped between us. The flames in the candelabras danced; the light hurt my eyes. I felt like I was falling.
“My lady, you’re crying.”
I touched the scars on the left side of my face and my fingers came away damp. “I miss my father. You took me away from him.” But that wasn’t why I was crying. I didn’t know why.
One last shrewd glance and he leapt down from his chair, stumbling a bit. “Come, my lady. The night grows short, and the house becomes … less tame the nearer we get to midnight.” He paced toward the door, limping.
I wiped my eyes and followed, the sounds of shattering crystal and frenetic laughter clamoring in my ears. “What happens at midnight?”
“The magic ceases to function, and the house is unbound.” He nudged the door open with his nose. “You had better hold on to me, my lady. To be safe.”
Tentatively, I wound my right hand in the scruff of his neck, and we went out into the corridor together.
It was almost wholly dark, a single lantern flickering partway down the hall. Somewhere in the distance there came a high, keening wail.
“Stay close,” said the wolf. “Nothing can harm you.”
He was warm against my knee, a stark contrast to the frigid air around us. I couldn’t help but wonder: When the house was unbound at midnight, would the wolf also become wholly wild? I took a deep breath and tried not to think about the blood in his fur.
The darkness narrowed in as we walked. It seemed to stare at us, it seemed to listen. The floor creaked beneath our feet. Somewhere close by, doors sighed opened and snicked shut again. Keys rattled, voices laughed. Bells jangled loudly and chains dragged over stone. I caught the scent of a winter forest, damp wood and cold so sharp it burned.
And always the wolf, solid and strong beside me, padding quietly and confidently on. “What is your name?” he asked after awhile.
I fixed my eyes on the single lamp burning ahead of us that we never seemed to reach. “Echo. For the echo of my mother’s heartbeat.”
We climbed a set of stairs, turned a corner. Someone sobbed in the dark.
“I heard a story once, about a girl with that name.”
My breath caught hard in my throat. “How did her story end?”
“I do not remember.”
“What is your name?” I asked.
“I do not have a name.”