The Warlord of Wycliffe: The Dethroning of My False Mate novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Cellar

The ancient wolf speaks in the dark and Hester brings her mother's real last words. The cellar lock opens from outside.

The cellar of Greyhollow Hall was cold stone, with one barred window near the ceiling and a drain in the floor.

The guards pushed me in and turned the key.

I sat on the thin blanket they had left and held my knees.

Through the window I could hear the pack shouting in the yard.

Some of them were shouting my name.

Not all of it was kind.

Then it went quiet, and in the quiet, something spoke inside my head.

Three years of nothing, and now a voice that was far older than I was.

You let him tie you down, it said.

I stopped breathing.

It was not my own voice.

It was low and slow, and it sounded very, very tired.

"Who are you?" I whispered.

You know me. You locked me away.

I did know.

When I was a girl, my father had told me every Wycliffe general carried the First Wycliffe, the first alpha wolf of our line, who had held the northern passes four hundred years ago.

It woke in one child of each generation.

In my family it had woken in me, the youngest and the smallest.

I had sealed it the night my family was killed.

I had been twenty-three, with my mother dying in my arms, and she had said something I thought I understood.

"I never want you to fight, Elowen."

So I had shut the wolf in the dark, and I had never fought again.

"I did it for my mother," I said into the cold air.

Your mother is dead. The wolf did not sound angry. Do you think she wanted this?

I put my head down on my knees.

"I can't unseal you," I said. "I promised."

Then rot here.

The voice went quiet.

I do not know how long I sat there.

At some point the window went from grey to black.

A key scraped in the lock.

I jumped to my feet.

It was not Roderick, and it was not a guard.

It was Hester Bell, the old healer, with a basket on her arm and her grey braid hanging over her shoulder.

She was sixty-one, with a weathered face and small, strong hands.

She had buried my family with her own spade, and she was the only person in Greyhollow who had ever said my mother's name.

"Colm gave me ten minutes," she said, and put the basket down. "I told him you needed your medicine."

She had brought bread, cold chicken and a flask of tea.

I ate with both hands.

Hester watched me and said nothing until the bread was gone.

"I heard what you said in the hall," she said. "About being tied."

"Yes."

"Is it true?"

"Every night this week."

Hester's mouth went thin.

"I wondered why Roderick's lamp was always dark," she said.

She sat beside me on the bench and took my hand.

"Elowen, I've kept something from you for three years, because you were not ready. I think you are ready now."

"What?"

"Your mother's last words. You think she said she never wanted you to fight."

"She did."

"She did not." Hester's eyes were wet. "I was there too, child. You had your head against her chest. You could not have heard the rest."

I stared at her.

"She said, 'I never want you to fight until you are ready,'" Hester said. "Then she said, 'Stay alive until you are strong enough. Then take back everything they stole.'"

The cellar spun.

"You heard half a sentence," she said. "And you built your whole life on it."

I could not speak.

I thought about three years of ledgers and bowed heads and bread-service, and a seal I had kept shut for a promise that had never been made.

Then I thought about Roderick tying my wrists.

Something very hot rose in my chest.

You see, the voice said. Quietly. Almost kindly.

"Not yet," I said out loud.

Hester stared at me. "Not yet what?"

"I'll open it. Not yet." I wiped my face. "Not until I can do it where every wolf in Greyhollow is watching."

Hester laughed once and wiped her eyes.

"Your mother would have loved you," she said.

Boots rang in the corridor outside.

Colm Radley was talking to someone, and he was talking fast.

Hester squeezed my hand once and went out.

I heard the lock turn.

I put my ear to the door.

"The grain order," Colm was saying. "Don't cancel it. Change the delivery address. My cousin's warehouse, east road."

A pause.

"No, the Alpha doesn't know. The Omega's frozen the money, so no one can ask where the old order went. I'll have it by the end of the week."

I held my breath.

The other voice was a man's, and it was familiar.

It was one of the guards.

"And the money for the grain?" he said.

"Already spent," Colm said. "She paid in advance, remember? Twenty thousand. Nobody ever checked."

I sat very still.

Colm Radley had been robbing my account all year.

I had written the checks myself.

Then, out in the corridor, I heard a thump.

A second thump, and a body hitting the stone.

Then the guard's voice stopped.

A low voice came through the door, and I knew it at once.

"Stay back from the door," said Dorian Stroud.

The lock on the cellar door burst inward, and he stepped through with a broken bolt in his hand.

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