Stormcaster (Shattered Realms #3)(123)

Lyss threw the doors open and walked out onto the terrace, facing the ocean and the storm head-on.

The wind teased her hair out of its braid and frothed the Indio into gray peaks and valleys that smashed against the seawall below her feet. Waves like packs of gray wolves, leaping higher and higher, scrambling for a purchase on the wet stone. The hairs on the back of Lyss’s neck prickled, and she shivered.

I need to get home, she thought, even if the only way to get there is at the head of a Carthian army.

She saw Breon only at a distance, and always in the presence of the empress. He was like a bird in a gilded cage, dressed in his court finery, attended by serving girls seemingly chosen for their beauty.

I am going to save him, too, somehow, Lyss thought. She was, after all, in the habit of making impossible promises and dreaming impossible dreams.

Spray needled her face, startling her. She thought it was rain, until she tasted the salt water on her tongue. That couldn’t be happening—she was too high above the water. But when she leaned forward, she could see that now the waves were crashing just below the top of the wall. The leading edge of the Boil had rolled closer, so that she could have reached out a hand and touched it.

The ocean was coming to her. The wind continued to howl, although now it sounded more like . . .

No, she thought. That’s impossible.

As she backed away from the edge, she breathed in the familiar scent of lodgepole pine and wet fur. When she turned, meaning to flee back into the safety of her room, she all but ran into a massive silver wolf with gray eyes. The wolf’s fur was matted with the wet, and she dripped seawater onto the stones. As Lyss stood frozen, the wolf shook, spattering the entire terrace with droplets.

“You are a long way from our mountain home, Granddaughter,” the wolf said.

Lyss began to tremble, until she was shaking uncontrollably. Her mother often told stories of visits from their ancestors, the Gray Wolf queens, in wolf form. They usually came in times of trouble, bringing wisdom and warnings when the Line was at risk, or change was coming.

The wolves had been the unseen guardians of her childhood. The wolves had walked when Hana died, when their father died, when the assassins had come for Lyss in Fellsmarch. When the wolves walked, her mother kept her close. In Lyss’s experience, the wolves always brought bad news, though she’d never seen them herself. Maybe it was because she was never meant to be part of the Line. Maybe it was because she’d not yet been crowned princess heir, though her mother had seen them several times in the year before her coronation.

Lyss took one step back, then another. As she did so, she felt rather than heard the sound of paws hitting stone as more wolves arrived. Soon the terrace was packed with them. She was surrounded by a sea of silver fur and glittering eyes.

“Who are you?” Lyss whispered, her teeth all but rattling together.

“I am Hanalea ana’Maria, your many-greats grandmother,” the gray-eyed wolf said. Another wolf stepped out from behind her, this one with green eyes. “And this is Althea ana’Isabella, also my granddaughter. We bring greetings from your ancestors, the Gray Wolf queens.”

“All right,” Lyss said, a stone of dread in her middle. “Why are you here?”

“We are here because the Line of Queens is broken, and you must pick up the pieces,” Hanalea said.

“What do you mean? Are you saying that my mother—that my mother is dead?” Lyss’s voice rose until that last word came out in a kind of shriek. Regret sluiced over her like a rogue wave, nearly knocking her off her feet. She’d refused to go home and mourn with her mother, and that had led to a cascade of misfortunes, ending in this.

But Althea and Hanalea were shaking their heads. “Not exactly,” Hanalea said. “It’s . . . complicated.”

“What do you mean, it’s complicated?” Lyss shouted. “A person is dead, or she isn’t.”

But that wasn’t exactly true, was it? Case in point—the bloodsworn, who seemed to be somewhere between. Were they saying that her mother had—had—

“Complicated is what happens when people don’t honor boundaries,” Althea said, curling her lips away from her teeth and looking down her nose at Hanalea. A murmur rose from the gathered queens, mingled agreement and dissent.

“That’s what we do, Thea,” Hanalea said. “We cross boundaries. How else could we offer counsel to the living queens?”

“That’s been tradition for more than a thousand years,” Althea said. “But this thing with Alger Waterlow—and now Raisa—it sets a bad precedent.”

Alger Waterlow? He’d been the founder, with Hanalea, of the New Line of Gray Wolf queens. But that was a thousand years ago.

“I chose love,” Hanalea said. “This New Line of queens was founded on love, and breaking the rules, and I stand by that choice. And that was the counsel I gave to Raisa.”

“That’s turned out well,” Althea said.

“The end of this story isn’t written yet,” Hanalea said. “The journey through it is important.”

Lyss felt like a mortal in one of the old stories watching the gods squabble over her future.

“Hey!” she said.

The two wolves turned to look at her, ears pricked forward. The other wolves shifted and murmured.

“Since you’ve come all this way, I would like to be included in the conversation,” Lyss said. “You’ve said that the Gray Wolf line is broken, but my mother isn’t dead—well, not exactly—but I still don’t know why you’re here, or what happened to my mother.”