Ankyra Sound a grey mist on the sea’s face

The skeletal creature’s tightly wound musculature jerks and flinches at the approach of not one, but two strange wolves. Tufted ears flatten as she tries in vain to shrink herself wholly from their sight, and her Neptune eyes flicker uneasily from one face to the other. Which of them, she wonders, is the greater threat? At first, in the downpour and the dark, the commander and her guard appear strikingly similar — but as the tiny Groenendael’s eyes adjust and Eske’s long, graceful steps close some of the distance, obvious differences can be appreciated. Hints of cream and sandalwood are interwoven into the younger wolf’s pelt; her fur is brown, not black, and her speculative gaze is a glittering bottle green, not slate.

The little stray catalogues these things. She understands them. Outwardly, however, she tucks her quivering nose against her frail collarbone and shuts down. A soft growl of warning ticks feebly in her throat — a timorous sort of, “Stay away…please?” — as the warrior princess draws nearer, but it is short-lived. At first, the words carry no meaning, but understanding kicks in a few seconds later — “Heda” must be the large wolf’s name. Technically, Seelie has no reason to distrust Eske’s promise — the Blackfeather wolves had consistently made it plain when they were going to hurt her. Some of them, like the pale-bellied Silencer, had made a twisted game of it; but still, they had never promised what Eske is promising now.

Tufted ears tiptoe forward upon her skull, but she casts her gaze behind her first — where is the green-eyed girl? Although the skeletal wraith has no particular affection for the honey-and-nutmeg agouti female, she’s grown accustomed to seeing her here and there and has, accordingly, placed her in the “not a threat” category along with the gold-eyed slate-and-taupe male. Neither of them are with her now, but she realizes as she tenses the muscles in her legs that she has no choice but to endure the presence of Heda and the quietly speaking wolf with no name. She’s run further than her body could physically carry her and her spindly legs have locked up to the point where she knows herself stranded.