Ep. 15: She-Wolf

Dark as Dawn, Bright as Night, a novel

DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AS NIGHT is a dark fantasy novel serialized in seventeen episodes. This is Episode Fifteen.

New to the story? START HERE.

Previously: Blythe comes face-to-face with Mae’s soul, while Ten learns valuable information from the mornrill keeper and receives a strange but potentially powerful gift.

Up ahead: Mae, Bram, Blythe, and Ten meet in a confrontation that has disastrous consequences, while Hesper uses her shades to craft her most dangerous creation yet.

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TEN

Days and nights pass in a blur. I run and rut and work at Blythe’s bidding. I have a vague feeling this should bother me, but I find I enjoy my new body and unburdened mind too much to care. 

Except at sunset.

The dying day and the coming night unsettle me. The dark sea of my spirit stirs, disturbed by the same electric current that makes my bright blood prickle in my veins. And always, the only way to make it stop is to come to the river's edge. I’m drawn there, a golden string tugging me through the dusk.

I never see the keeper again. I never see anything out of the ordinary. Just clear water reflecting the black sky. But that’s enough to bring me peace.

I don’t try to hide where I go from Blythe anymore. She is too sharp for that. Instead, she assesses my daily trips to the water’s edge with the same cool calculation that drives all her decision-making: what will bring her closer to the Dawn?

She has sensed the change in me that the golden hour brings, and she’s noted the calming effect the waters have. Weighed against whatever she wants to keep hidden from me, it’s apparently a risk she’s willing to take to keep me focused and compliant. 

But in those quiet moments on the mornrill’s bank, with the shining water at my feet, I wonder if she’s made a mistake in letting me come.

Because it’s not the water that calms me; it’s the ghosts the water holds.

Like the keeper, I never see them, but I know they’re there, calling out from that watery prison. And something in me, some sunken relic, sings out in response—a secret song that would certainly anger Blythe if she could hear it too.

Either way, I know this daily ritual and all the rest of it are temporary. Blythe has become more insistent in her demands. Her composure is faltering. She hardly slept before, and now she spends her nights wide-eyed and agitated, muttering and plotting, checking the web she’s woven, and wondering if now is the time to strike. Tonight she’s frantic, pacing the floor, dragging her fingers through her wild hair.

“Hesper is healing too fast,” she says. “Your little girl did a number on her, but the Wright is too strong. She must not be allowed to regain her full strength.”

I nod. Nothing about this is new. I’ve heard her say nearly the same thing every night since I arrived. I watch as she swoops back and forth through the small space, a flickering flame, unpredictable, dangerous. 

“We’ll strike tomorrow. At daybreak.”

This surprises me, and I sit up straighter in bed, eager, suddenly, for the possibility of real action. My body aches for it.

“You like that idea, don’t you?” she says, her eyes sparkling in the dark, the fire in the hearth working its sinister magic, carving her face into that grotesque mask of shadow and light.

She stops her mad pacing and sits astride me, her thighs digging into my hip bones. She traces my face with one finger, pressing just a little too hard into the skin of my cheek before smothering me with a brutal kiss. I respond almost immediately to her attention, and Blythe smiles at the effect she has on me. 

With the sweat glistening on her skin and her hair lit up with the light of the fire, it’s easy to see her as a golden goddess, beautiful and cruel. There’s a look in her eye, though, that I haven’t seen before. 

“My prince,” she whispers in my ear, and there’s real tenderness in her voice before she loses herself to our strange, sordid communion.

***

The moon is low over the water, and the fire is near ashes now.

The sun will be up soon.

We dress, she in leather pants and vest, her chestnut hair gathered into an intricate braid that winds over her shoulder. I wear a simple black shirt and jeans that Blythe has procured for me, as well as the holster and second set of double scythes.

Blythe looks at me. “Ready,” she says.

I nod even though it wasn't so much a question as a statement. She comes close and kisses me, her lips sweet and hard against my mouth. “To the Dawn,” she breathes and steps back. 

Blythe crosses the floor with purpose and throws open the door, stepping through, leaving me staring after her in the empty cabin. I hear her voice from outside the door, and I think she’s calling to me, but what she says doesn’t make sense.

“I thought you’d be here.”

Brow furrowed, I follow her outside and then stop short. In the meadow is my daughter, a magnificent pair of wings growing from her back, and a man with peculiarly boyish features, similarly winged and spectacular.

Mae seems poised to say something in reply to Blythe, but when she sees me, she swallows her words and her eyes shine. She takes a step forward, but thinks better of it and stays where she is. 

“Dad,” she says, finding her voice again.

I don’t say anything, just step out from behind Blythe so that I stand at her side, my fingers flexed and ready for a fight.

Mae’s face falls when she sees this, and she looks down at the grass beneath her feet for a moment before meeting my eye once more.

“What have they done to you?” she says.

It’s a simple question spoken with such genuine concern that I almost respond, almost tell her that I wish I knew, that I wish I understood, that I wish I could remember. But then Blythe’s voice slices through my mind with the terrible precision of a surgeon’s knife, and the words are gone, the thoughts that spurred them a vague haze I can clear away with the shake of my head.

“It’s quite an improvement, if I do say so myself.”

Blythe floats down the cabin’s few stairs and stops just in front of Mae. Next to her, I see the man’s fingers curl into fists. A muscle in his jaw twitches. Mae reaches out a hand and rests it on his sleeve.

“I did think your Sluagh army would be a little more…robust,” Blythe says, eyeing Mae’s companion and arching a brow.

The man’s eyes go black. His wings seem to flex out and up. Mae tightens her grip on his arm, but he doesn’t relax.

“Bram’s not my army,” Mae says. “In fact, I don’t actually possess one of those, so if that was part of your grand design, you may need to rethink your plan.”

“There’s no sense pretending, girl,” growls Blythe. “We all felt it the moment you were born. You’re the Sluagh’s long-lost riona, Queen of the Shadows, Leader of the Dark Horde.”

She dips down into a sarcastic little bow, tipping an imaginary hat in Mae’s direction. Mae watches this with a wry smile, one that twists her lips just so, and for a moment, it’s not Mae standing in front of me but Helena.

I blink and she’s Mae once more, but I’m startled. They looked so alike just then. I blink again, take a deep breath, but that smile loosened a knot in me I didn’t know was there, and it’s hard to concentrate.

“Not quite.” Mae’s speaking, and I try to focus on her words. “As I told Bram, I have a few things I need to do before I take on the whole riona thing, and the first one is rescuing my dad from this ruthless bitch that turned him into a mindless murder machine.”

Blythe scoffs at that. “I don’t think it works that way,” she says, but her sarcastic tone can’t hide a hint of concern.

“Who says?” Mae asks, and I can see she’s enjoying seeing Blythe squirm. “I’m not the riona, Blythe. I haven’t seen a Dark Horde and wouldn’t know how to lead one if I did. Sorry.” 

She shrugs her shoulders. It should be a casual gesture, but the way it makes her wings sparkle in the early morning light is breathtaking, and even Blythe looks up at them with something that passes for awe on her ageless face.

“You can deny it all you want,” Blythe says, recovering herself, “but you can’t change who you are. And you can’t change the fact that I have a piece of you in my control.”

“You know as well as I do that whatever bit of me you have has never been more than a fragile tether.”

Blythe arches an eyebrow. “Be that as it may,” she says, “yours is not the only votary I’ve requisitioned.” She wraps her slender arm around mine. “And I think it would be in the best interests of your goal…” She pauses and taps a finger against her delicate chin, feigning forgetfulness. “What was it again?” she continues. “‘Rescuing your dad from a ruthless bitch,’ I believe.” She smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “It would be in your best interests to go along with the plan.”

I watch my daughter, and the feeling that I’m missing something important scratches at the back of my mind again. I haven’t been this close to her in what feels like a lifetime.

Her presence and her words have an effect on me that I want to understand. That I want to remember. I try to hold onto whatever it is, but Blythe speaks again and my whole being resonates with the power of her. Whatever my daughter stirred in me founders in the waves of Blythe’s magnetism. 

“I need only ask, and your daddy will gladly slit his own throat. Would you like to see?”

Blythe’s face flashes feral, and my god, she’s awful. Awful and wonderful. And it’s true. I would take a blade, make my own blood run should she ask me to.

My daughter’s face remains resolute, but her hands are trembling at her sides. The man she appeared with, Bram she called him, takes hold of her fingers in a gesture that’s at once tender and strong, eliciting a harsh cackle of derision from Blythe.

“And here I thought I only had your father to work with,” she says. “Silly girl. Live as long as I have, and you’ll understand that love is nothing but pain, a vulnerability to be taken advantage of.”

Mae grasps Bram’s hand hard, and a look passes between them that I can’t quite read—an apology, maybe—or recognition. But then she lets go and steps forward, leveling her gaze at Blythe.

“What is all this for?” Mae asks, her gesture taking in the meadow but indicating far more. “What do you hope to accomplish with all this suffering, Blythe?”

“I’m reclaiming what I lost,” she says. “And with your help, I’ll do more than that. I’ll rule it all. The whole of the Dawn. And then they’ll pay for how low they’ve brought me all these long years.”

“But what if what you want is gone?”

Blythe scoffs. “You have no idea what you’re talking about, girl.”

Mae continues, unfazed. “The Dawn is gone, Blythe.”

“Blasphemy.”

Mae shakes her head. “Truth.”

“The Dawn is a vast, complex realm. Rich beyond measure. More beautiful than anything this world has to offer. It is filled with gods.” She hisses the last word, her eyes fire. “It cannot disappear. It is everlasting. An eternal paradise that I will rule.”

“Tell me who still believes in your gods.” Mae says.

Blythe’s jaw works. She opens her mouth to speak but closes it without saying a word. The fire in her eyes, constant since the moment I met her, seems to flicker. It’s disconcerting to see her falter. She blinks, recovering herself, and raises her chin.

“A heathen’s question,” she growls.

“A valid one, nonetheless,” Mae responds. “The devout believers in the Dawn are long dead. Those with a reason to hold on to tradition, to celebrate the ancient beliefs of their ancestors, gave up generations ago. What is a god without someone to believe in them?”

Blythe’s face is dark, her features growing feline, fierce, the fire in her eyes ablaze. She is dangerous, anyone can see that, but my daughter doesn’t back down.

“You’re fighting a lost cause, Blythe. The gods are dead. The Dawn is no more. There is nothing to rule but your own misguided need for revenge. Let it go. The path you’re on can only lead to suffering.”

Blythe seethes. Her face vibrates, straining toward its animal form. Her long fingers curl into fists, and her shoulders hunch, knotted with muscles meant for hunting. When she speaks, her voice is raw, the barest hint of humanity allowing words to form. 

“You’re right, girl. You’re no queen. Royalty recognizes royalty, but in you I see only a stain in the fabric of the world, an abject fool.” 

Blythe’s voice frays, becoming nearly unintelligible as she chokes out a few more words, but I understand her all too well. 

“Kill her.”

BLYTHE

I want to destroy her. I want to crush her so that nothing remains. A second death so absolute that not even a memory of her remains. 

But before that, I want to make her suffer.

I want to see her face when her own father tears her to pieces. Such a one as her, with her profane words and vulgar manner deserves nothing less. 

I can feel myself changing, taking on the form of the Dawn. I embrace the shift. Never have I wanted to rip the human form from me more. With the change comes a feeling of rightness, of power, a glow that suffuses my skin. I let it fill me.

I want Mae to see it. She needs to see the power that she has so recklessly dismissed. I long to let it fill me, but I reach out instead for Rhett. Our connection is strong, close as we are, and I send it all to him, smiling as the Dawn’s awful light slides through the air in thick ropes that wrap around his body like a net and then close tight, sinking through his skin. I watch his face as pain melts into pleasure.

He is beautiful, perfect, a prince. 

My prince.

“Kill her,” I say again in the old language, and with those words, Rhett’s glow—our glow—intensifies. His muscles tighten. His fingers curl into fists. He is a knife whetted.

The boy, Bram, moves in front of Mae, his wings shielding her from the light, but Mae puts a hand on his shoulder and steps out from his shadow, giving a quick shake of her head. 

“He won’t hurt me,” she says, her voice maddeningly calm.

“Blythe’s hold on him is too strong, Mae,” Bram says. “And the light of the Dawn is dangerous. It can kill you. He can kill you.”

“I’m already dead, Bram,” she says. “And I can see it in his eyes. My dad is still in there.”

“Enough!” I scream, tired of hearing her voice. This has all gone on too long. “End her! Now!”

Bram tries to throw his wing in front of Mae once more, but Rhett reaches through the black webbing like it’s nothing but smoke and wraps his fingers around Mae’s throat, throwing the boy to the side as he does so. Bram lands hard against the grass, his side and wing melted into tar-like whorls. He tries to stand but cannot.

Mae’s skin crackles and hisses beneath her father’s touch. Her face twists with agony, but she doesn’t give into the pain. Indeed, she must be actively resisting it, pushing back against the Dawn’s light with her own power, or Rhett’s fingers would have melted her neck the same way they cut through Bram. 

I call forth more of my light and send it to my prince. It’s a dangerous thing, giving away this much power, but I don’t care. Mae must die, and Rhett will do it. No matter what it takes.

I scream with the effort. I give it all to him. I see his fingers tighten. I see the skin of Mae’s neck begin to give way. Her shimmering wings flash gold and black as they beat at the air in a futile attempt at escape until, finally, they slow, then stop. I give him more, all the light I have. Mae’s eyes flicker. Her unwavering gaze falters. I let myself smile, already tasting triumph.

I don’t notice the slight movement until it’s too late. She’s lifted her hand, uncurled her fingers. She reaches out a shaking palm and lets it rest above Rhett’s heart. It's such a small gesture I miss the significance at first.

But then, as I see the fire in Rhett’s eyes flicker, I understand. The same Dawnlight that lets her father wrap his fingers around her throat also allows him to register her hand on his chest and all the simple magic that touch communicates.

It’s a grave miscalculation.

I scramble to correct my mistake, reaching for more Dawnlight, but there is no more to give. Instead, I concentrate on intensifying what’s already there. The flame in his eyes reignites, but I can feel it’s a tenuous thing. I can tell I’m losing him. 

Rage fills me. I am a deity that has lived for centuries. Mae is nothing in comparison. I’ve never needed her. It was foolish to think I did. She’s only been a hindrance, a feeble competitor. I should have ended it myself a long time ago.

But I can end it now.

I let go of my connection with Rhett. There’s not enough time for the light to flow back to me, but I don’t care. I scoop up a rock at my feet and cross the distance between us in less than a breath.

But Mae’s palm doesn’t waver from its position over Rhett’s heart, and without my backing, she’s able to reach deeper, extinguishing the Dawnlight in her father with each beat. 

Rage consumes me. I swing the rock up and bring it down with all the force that my godform allows, aiming for Mae’s head, but a hand grasps the rock just before I can connect with her skull.

It’s Bram.

His side and wing are still ravaged, but his grip is strong. The rock cracks at his touch, turning into a handful of sand that sifts through my grasping fingers. His own fingers lock around my wrist, and pain rockets up my arm. There’s some strange power in his touch. But before he can turn my bones to dust, I fling him away from me. He flies across the meadow and lands harder than I imagine a ghost should.

Not a ghost, I remind myself. Sluagh. 

Rhett has stumbled back from Mae’s touch, but I can see its lingering effects. He’s almost to the tree line by the time the last of the Dawnlight dwindles from him. I’m weakened and soon to be outnumbered, so I turn to Mae and launch myself at her before she has a chance to recover her breath, pummeling her with my fists, lashing out with my teeth and claws.

I’m relentless. Wild. I want the taste of Sluagh on my tongue, need to feel what runs beneath Mae’s skin run down my throat. I sink my teeth into her, and the taste is unlike anything I’ve ever known. It’s like tasting the midnight sky, and I want more. I want it all. I drink and drink and finally throw my head back in ecstasy, intoxicated by her nightmare blood.

The pain in my chest is sudden, cutting through my revelry in an instant. My veins burn. My bones ache with an impossible heat. I’ve felt this before.

Waterwild.

I look down at the strange piece of wood buried in my ribs. Rhett’s fingers are wrapped around it. He let’s go, and I scrabble at it, trying to wrench it free. 

“You should leave it there or you’ll bleed out.”

I drop my hands, grit my teeth against the pain as I fall back into the meadow grass. Rhett rushes to his daughter’s side and I know. He’s still beautiful, still a god of my making, but he’s no longer mine.

I fight against the fire inside me for breath, watch him gather Mae into his arms. She’s shaken, trembling. The wound in her neck oozes black, but it’s already healing.

It’s Ten, not Rhett, that looks up at me then, his face contorted with rage, with hate and disgust. He’s never looked more like my prince.

I close my eyes against an agony that has nothing to do with the waterwild in my veins. Memories of a time long since forgotten by humans float to the surface. In that faraway place, Janu made me who I am. He gave me a name.

Blythe. Heedlessly happy.

Heedless I have been. But happy? Maybe once. And then only for the briefest of moments in my too-long life. 

All these years of exile and penance, of striving to return, of yearning for revenge. All for a human long since turned to dust that I foolishly tried to reinvent. The realization that I’ve repeated my gravest mistake and paid the same price humiliates me. I reach for the wood shard with shaking fingers, wondering where gods go when they die, but before I can pull it from my chest, a gentle hand takes hold of my wrist.

“Don’t,” Mae whispers. 

I open my eyes and meet her gaze. Only minutes ago I’d been ready to destroy her; now she’s looking at me with kind eyes, staying my hand. 

“We are more than our destinies,” she says.

I want to believe her. But I’m tired and the wood sings through my skin begging to be released. I imagine what it would be like to let my ancient blood flow, to let it taste the air, to let it soak the ground. To let it return to a world it has left for too long. 

“We can fix this,” she continues. 

She’s so young. Too young to understand that some things can’t be fixed. But a part of me, maybe the heedless part, wants to believe her.

A rumble in the distance distracts us both. It’s hard to tell if it’s the earth or the air vibrating. Maybe it’s both. A second later I can feel the shift in that eternal balance between Dawn and shade and know: Hesper.

“We have to end this,” Mae says. 

“No.” I manage the word through clenched teeth. 

Mae seems about to protest, but the vibrations around us have increased, and the ground seems in danger of splitting open and swallowing us whole.

Then, the trees nearest to us on the edge of the meadow crash to the ground, their great trucks splintering into pieces. Standing above them is a creature, huge, black and vulpine. It growls so low I can feel it more than hear it. The creature bares its teeth, a long, red tongue curled inside of its thin snout visible through the fangs.

Its topaz eyes glisten in the dawn, but even the clear light of day reveals nothing but malice in their depths. 

And it’s looking right at me.

HESPER

I stand before the blackness and feel its pull—a strange gravity.

It’s a beautiful creation, my best yet, a masterpiece.

The swirling shades twist and bend, contorted in agony, I suppose, at being used in this way. They’re accustomed to making up the fabric of my reality. But I’ve never put them to work like this, never even knew I could, but it was surprisingly easy—painting my pain with theirs.

After I licked my wounds and regained my strength from that disastrous battle with Mae where I lost so much, the desire to create was stronger than it ever had been before. I didn’t know when I started that I would end up seeing myself in the swirling silvers, the eddies of sable.

But as I worked, I began to understand. This wouldn’t be the figure of another, a perfect statue made from a stranger’s name, a stranger’s blood and passion.

This would be me.

When I was done, I had a creation thrice as tall as I and twice as wide. A living, swirling portrait. A portrait made from a thousand-thousand shades, each a reflection of their creator’s twisted spirit. A portrait that held real pieces of me, alive with the vengeance that animates everything I've ever made.

A portrait and a portal to the darkest parts of me.

Because I could look within its depths and see the darkness waiting there, asking to be released, needing to be set free.

So I let it loose, let it burst free from the self-imposed confines I’d clung to for so long.

And what came forth was magnificent: a she-wolf with a black mane like a lioness and yellow eyes filled with the fierce confidence of a survivor.

I knew her, would recognize that fellow creature of the night anywhere, even after so long. She had come to me on the night I died and remade myself. Now she’d come to me at the start of something new, something more potent, something more significant than I’d yet experienced: stepping into the power I’d created for myself.

She locked eyes with me. She was an ancient beast, lethally graceful. I spoke not a word to her, but she understood what had to be done nonetheless. I watched her go, growing with each step so that by the time she left my home by the lake and rippled the water along the shore with her pounding stride, I knew she would be a magnificent monster. As terrible and brilliant as the unrequited rage that made her.

I felt the balance tip in my favor the minute she emerged, and I feel the pull of it still as the she-wolf bounds away to kill Blythe.

I wonder what I’ll be able to do in a world where the dark is no longer haunted by the Dawn, where ghosts that have never rested in peace finally feel the pull of the dirt on their bones. In a world where a self-made goddess finally conquers all.

My masterpiece calls to me, and I want to go. How I want to surrender to it, let it take me back to a world I thought was lost to me: a boy gone long, long ago, but who still speaks his name in my dreams, whose blood and bone still echo in mine.

If I step through, if I climb into the dark world of my creation, will he be there? I let my hand linger over the churning surface. I can feel the pull of it on my fingers, the tug of it on the cold desolation where my heart should be. 

But then there is pain, or at least the echo of it. My hand instinctively reaches for my chest, trying to quell the sudden throbbing ache. It takes a few moments of panic to realize that it’s not my chest that’s been pierced, that no poison flows through my veins. It’s an echo, a reflection, another shift in the balance, but more intense than I’ve ever experienced.

Blythe. Something’s happened to her.

I wonder if my she-wolf could have reached her and dispatched her already. Perhaps. Yet the feel of it, this phantom wound, is different from the cold vengeance that a fatal blow from my monster would produce. No, this feels like protection, like sacrifice.

Like love. 

I cover my hand with my other and try to catch my breath, to stop shaking. This is serious. This is real. Blythe is dying, and instead of elation, all I can feel is a thrum of panic.

I’ve lived with her presence for so very long. From a distance I’ve felt her triumphs and seethed. I’ve felt her defeats and rejoiced. Our connection has been fraught but strong.

Ours was an uneasy balance maintained, a cold war that sustained us both, a reason to exist. And for the first time, I realize that her imminent demise means a significant part of me could die too.

And that’s okay. That’s what I need. A rebirth.

My wounds have grown stiff with scar tissue. I’ve lived too long under the burden of this grudge and given too much power to a moldering ideology.

I drop my hands, slow my breath. I still feel the reverberation of Blythe’s pain, but I breathe into it, embrace it.

It’s time. 

I will the she-wolf to run faster, and when she reaches the meadow across the lake, I can feel her presence in the dread she inspires in Blythe. There is no more time for distraction in the form of perverse sentimentality.

Now is the time for action and consequences.

I turn back to my dark opus, the swirling, tragic symphony of my shadow life. So much pain there, and in it, so much power.

I wonder what other monsters I can bring forth from it’s dark depths.

---

It’s a privilege to share my work with you! Thank you for taking the time to read the fifteenth episode of DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AT NIGHT.

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ONWARD TO EPISODE 16 ===>

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