RED | A dark retelling of Red Riding Hood | WATTYS 2021 SHORTLIST

Chapter Seventeen: A Mother's Love

AN 

I hope I am not losing you guys with this story! I really love writing it and enjoy all of the feedback you give me! Fenris's backstory was something I wanted to add in, as Fenris remains one of the most mysterious characters! Have any of you guys shifted from team!Fenris or team!Petyr yet? Let me know! 

The moonlight bathed Fenris's features in a blood-red mask, forcing his face to shapeshift before Marjorie's eyes. He should look harsher in the vibrant crimson beams. Instead, it smoothed the worried lines framing his dark eyes and forehead.

For once, he did not appear ancient.

He looked young.

"How did you survive it?" Marjorie asked. She reached a hand out to his elbow and touched the warm skin there. Goose bumps spotted his arm, proof the past continued to haunt the man.

"She needed a human sacrifice," Fenris whispered. "Do I look human to you?"

Petyr and Marjorie remained quiet, as they had been for the last several long minutes. Fenris sat on the leather couch, curled into himself as if he still felt the cruel touch of Vivian's hands.

"She tried to kill you?" Petyr asked. There was more curiosity in his deep voice than concern.

"There was no try," Fenris said, bitterness evident in each word. "She placed a dagger in my heart and left me to bleed. Then, she killed every last being in the Temple. Man, woman, child, it mattered not. Nothing mattered to Vivian—nothing except her daughter."

"But you did not die," Marjorie whispered. She ached to thread her fingers through his, or to press her palm against the wide expanse of his chest to let him know she was there, waiting with him through the storm raging within his jumbled mind. "Here you stand, telling us your story, living to see another moon."

"It takes more than a dagger to kill a wolf," Fenris admitted. "Vivian made one mistake. She left the thing to finish her sacrifices. Each Priestess, Greenkeeper, guard and Child meant another year of life for the infant. I woke bathing in my blood and all the dead around me. Then I killed that thing tens, hundreds of times, until I took every life it was ever given. Until it never woke."

He swallowed hard and then, hung his head between his pronounced shoulder blades like a wilted flower. Something inside him deflated with the memory, stealing all his mystery and trading it for a somber reality.

"I wish this was another story with another ending," he admitted. His hands folded over his cheeks, hiding his tired face from view. "I ran from what I was my entire life. But it always comes back. It is always my destiny to be this. To be a monster."

"I do not believe you are a monster," Petyr whispered from where he leaned against the wall, stretched out like a long, skinny feline. If there was ever an opposite to Fenris, it would be the young Woodsman with all his golden hair and skin. It was as though the sun and moon lived in the same room, fighting for each inch of moonbeam or sunshine.

"You did what you had to," Marjorie said.

"But I did not do enough." Fenris stood from the leather couch, yanking himself out of Marjorie's tender grasp. He paced to the other side of the room, stopping at the door until he spun on his heels and retraced his steps. He offered Marjorie a watery smile. "As we speak, your village takes another step closer to death. She practiced under the Temple for years, and in all that time, she lived beside and loved the people she murdered. She took the lives of those who would fall on a sword for her. Vivian has spent the last hundred years waiting for this Blood Moon to rise. As long as there is breath in her body, all of her magick, all of her life will be spent raising that beast."