Soul Seeker

31: Wolf At Your Door

She was drifting in the bliss of that midway place between sleep and consciousness, the mattress beneath her as light as a cloud, Ask's words resounding in her ears as her eyes drifted open and closed, open and closed. This world is contained within blue shadows against snow, the ones too faint to truly conceal anything... We are dancing on the fine line between light and darkness, between soul and flesh...

Ciara bolted upright. There was a figure cloaked in darkness in her room, and she gasped before her eyes adjusted enough to make out the face.

"Sebastian!"

"Sorry," he said, rubbing his forehead awkwardly. "I thought you were awake!"

"Well, I am now," she replied dryly. "What is it?"

"Remember when I said we had to talk?"

"I knew it would be something serious."

"Yeah, and it's urgent. It looks like the storm has finally died down, but no one else is awake yet."

"Okay, what do you want?"

He took a deep breath, sinking onto the end of her bed. She pulled her knees to her chest. "You know we can't just leave the mountain empty-handed after everything we've been through. We can't let Hati return to doing nothing for years and years when he's the only other guardian we've managed to find, and we can't let the atrocities he committed go unchecked – what's to stop him from burning the town down again, or any guardian from doing the same?"

"What are you saying?"

"We go back in, shoot Hati with tranquiliser, and load him onto a sled." His irises were splintered with cobalt and azure in the half-light. "You know the others would try to stop us. But we don't have a choice, and we can't just leave Hati for someone else to find him. I've heard rumours about this Sigurd of the White Hunters – he has the Protectorate's seal of approval and thinks he can do anything. He'll hear the rumours about Blackwolf soon. Either we take Hati to the Suzerain and make sure nothing bad happens, or Sigurd will, and the situation will just spiral out of control."

"I agree. But the others will hate us for going behind their backs." This wasn't the kind of thing she thought Sebastian would do, especially lying to his aunt and uncle.

"Let's go now, while everyone is still asleep."

"Wait. Now? I thought you said tranquilisers –"

"I have some. I never mentioned it because I never thought we'd need any."

"Let me dress first." Ciara threw back her pelts, and Sebastian's cheeks flushed scarlet when he realised she was clad only in her nightclothes.

"I – right, uh – I'm leaving and I'll – be outside," he said to the wall, looking anywhere but at her. He bolted for the door, tripped over his own feet, rebounded against the doorframe, and disappeared.

"It's not like they're revealing," Ciara called after him. Her nightclothes were thin, but shapeless. Hardly scandalous, but she supposed such an outfit could be considered... intimate.

Sebastian still wasn't meeting her gaze when she met him in the entrance hall, and she thought about making a joke by asking if he'd ever seen a woman before, but his awkwardness was affecting her.

"I wonder how many tranquilisers it will take to knock him out." Ciara felt delirious. They were going to try to knock out a guardian. If anything, after Hati's display, the stories under-estimated the guardians' power – they had more than she could have imagined.

They trudged through high snow, stepping where the crust was solid, until they found the great stone door, which was firmly shut as if they had never entered through it.