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The night is cool against Richeh’s skin as she makes her way into the woods. The moon is large and full tonight, illuminating her path. Around her, branches and twigs snap as the night creatures run amok.
Usually, she would stick to the main roads, restocking her supplies in nearby towns and sleeping in beds. The main roads take longer, but she is still a young girl, and being a witch is not a reason to lack caution. However, tonight, Richeh has a purpose.
Tonight, she seeks the wolf.
As Richeh continues to walk, the woods get quieter. The hairs on the back of her neck rise, and she tenses, ready to click her heels together and take off with her sylph shoes if needed. At the next clearing, something primal lurches in Richeh’s gut. She comes to a screeching halt. Her heart pounds in her ears.
There, the moon hanging low and heavy above it, stands the wolf.
It was the size of three men stacked atop each other, Richeh recalls hearing on her travels, finding the words wholly inadequate in description. Its eyes were as red as the devil’s. It had fur darker than any winter’s night. Richeh had suspected, then, that the wolf wasn’t natural, and she knows now that she was right. And if it’s not natural, then…
The wolf’s fiery eyes meet hers. She looks over its body intently, and—ah, there. Her suspicions were correct.
Richeh takes a step forward. The wolf rears back, snarling, its fur standing on end. It leaps.
Richeh goes flying backwards, its heavy weight landing on her chest, pinning her down. When she opens her eyes, straining to catch her breath, the wolf’s teeth glint above her.
Richeh feels…nothing. There is no fear, only a deep, haunting recognition as she stares into the wolf’s panicked eyes.
“Hello,” she breathes. “My name is Richeh.”
If wolves could look surprised, she thinks this one would.
“I came looking for you,” Richeh continues. “I was wondering—are you going to the witch’s school in the west? I’ve heard that you’ve only been seen in the woods. The path through the woods leads straight there, doesn’t it?”
The wolf stares at her.
“Do you know how I know that?” Richeh asks. “Because I’m going there, too. Not to learn—you can see by my hat that I already have a teacher. He’s wonderful, the best I’ve ever had.” She smiles, placid. “I’m going because I had a teacher there whom I hated, who was terrible to me and my brother, and I’m going to kill him.”
The wolf goes still. That terrible look in its eyes sharpens. Richeh nods.
“Did someone there make you like this?” she murmurs. “The same person who put that glyph into your fur?”
The wolf slowly moves back, releasing Richeh. It growls, then begins to cough and hack. Then, Richeh hears it:
“Yes.”
Richeh gets to her feet.
“My name,” the wolf says, hoarse and cracking, “is Euini. My teacher was… bad to me. He grew tired of me, and eventually, he used me as a tool in his experimentation. He made me…this.”
Richeh swallows down the bile rising in her throat. “So you’re going to kill him,” she says. “Just like me.”
“He ruined me,” Euini growls, low and furious. “He ruined me. I will get him to change me back, and then I will ruin him.”
Richeh looks at him for a long moment. She takes one step forward, then another, the silver-blue outside of her cape a luminous contrast to Euini’s night-dark fur, the red inside of her cape matching the blood-red of his eyes.
Their hearts beat the same.
Richeh reaches forward and cups Euini’s enormous jaw. Euini flinches, an instinctive reaction that calls to Richeh’s soul. Against her will, she remembers a raised hand, a scream, her brother’s wide, scared eyes. She lets out a long breath and leans her forehead against Euini’s, feeling the warmth of his fur seep into her chilled skin, grounding her in the unnatural stillness of the moment. It is quiet, not even the nocturnal animals stirring. They recognize the presence of a hunter, and they run.
There is the wolf, of course.
But there is Richeh, too.
“My teacher caused my brother to disappear,” she whispers. “My brother protected me and took the brunt of our punishments. He grew sad, and angry, and hurt, and once he took me away from that school and left me with my mentors, he disappeared. I don’t know if he…if he decided to die.”
Euini presses closer. Richeh closes her eyes.
“They ruined us,” she echoes, a dagger’s edge to her voice. “We will ruin them back.”
Before Richeh sets up camp for the night, she and Euini decide to travel together. This will cut Richeh’s travel time in half, and though Euini doesn’t say it, she assumes that he appreciates the company. She does, too—some distant part of her longs for companionship now that she’s so far from home, from her friends and mentors.
She and Euini are silent for the initial part of their journey, Richeh trying to get used to riding on his back, and him clearly finding it slightly awkward. Eventually, however, they start to talk. In the hush of the woods, they recount to each other the traumas they faced at their teachers’ hands, soothe each other with reassurance and commiseration. They share the new friends and family each has made—Richeh talks abour her mentors Qifrey and Olruggio, and Euini about his adopted aunt Alaira. They describe the twin flames of vengeance they have nurtured for years on end. Euini has the gentlest heart Richeh has ever seen, and she’s surprised by how protective she is of him already. She rarely takes to new people this way.
“Do you think you’ll really be able to do it?” Euini asks one night. A sliver of the new moon shines distantly.
Richeh imagines the weight of her dagger in her hand, the clean slice across skin, the lovely blossom of blood, a body thumping to the ground. “Yes,” she says, firm. She pauses. “Do you?”
Euini is silent for a long moment. “Yes,” he says, but it’s weak, unconvincing. He growls; it rumbles into Richeh’s bones where she’s curled against him. “Yes. I have to. I want to.”
“You have me now,” Richeh vows. “I won’t let you down.”
Euini lets out a long sigh. “Thank you, Richeh.”
Three days later, in the dead of night, they reach the school.
Richeh expects Euini to quail, but he moves across the grounds confidently, slinking through the shadows. At first, Richeh is worried about his size—can he really maneuver through the hallways? But then he turns onto a path, and after a few moments, Richeh sees a row of grand cottages.
“He lives there,” Euini murmurs, nodding to the house furthest away from the others. Richeh slides off his back and lets him lead the way. They peek into a window, and Euini shudders as soon as they get a clear view. A genial-looking man sits at the table drinking wine, a blanket drawn over his shoulders and a book in is hand. His eyes are wide and unblinking. His teeth are too sharp and white when he laughs at something he reads.
Richeh’s lip curls.
Without preamble, Euini smashes open. In an instant, he pins the man against the floor.
The man’s face goes sheet white. The sharp scent of urine hits the air. “Please,” he chokes.
“Turn me back!” Euini roars. “Turn me back, and maybe I’ll let you live!”
The man turns paler. “I can’t,” he cries, shaking. “I can’t! I never learned how to reverse the effects of the glyph; the witch I learned it from disappeared.”
Euini snarls. The man flinches. “Wait,” he gasps. “There’s a spell that will only have you turn on the full moon. Check my drawers there!”
Richeh follows the tremorous point of his finger and finds a sheaf of papers. She gives Euini a nod.
Euini lowers his head to meet his teacher’s eyes. “Goodbye,” he intones. Before the man can scream, Euini closes his jaws around his teacher’s neck and snaps it.
They stare in silence at the body. Richeh lays a hand on Euini’s neck. Under his thick fur, he’s trembling. “My turn,” she says, gentle, “and then we can go.”
Richeh leaves Euini outside and creeps through an old, still-broken library window. She slips down the corridors with ease and finds her teacher’s rooms. He’s asleep when she pushes open the door, curled onto his side in a nest of blankets. Cold rage burns in Richeh’s throat.
“For Ririfin,” she says and drives her knife into his throat.
He dies quietly and easily. Richeh finds that she’s disappointed at how anti-climactic it feels. In her opinion, he didn’t suffer enough, but Euini needs to leave as soon as possible, and she’s fulfilled her mission.
As she turns to leave, a shadow falls over the doorway. Richeh tenses.
“Who’s there?” someone calls.
Richeh drops her knife. It can’t be. It can’t be.
“Hello?” the voice says, tight.
“Ririfin?” Richeh whispers.
The figure stills. “Who are you?”
“Ririfin!” Richeh chokes on a breath. “It’s me.”
A sharp inhale. Slowly, the figure walks into the dim moonlight.
And before her stands her brother.
Her brother, whose look of awe is transforming slowly into horror.
“Ririfin,” Richeh breathes, uncomprehending. “You’re here. Have you…been here this whole time?”
Ririfin’s eyes are pinned to the blood on her hands. “What have you done?”
Richeh swallows, unnerved by his tone. “Look,” she says, gesturing at the corpse behind her. “He’s gone. You’re free! He can’t keep you here anymore.”
Ririfin’s eyes are a stranger’s. “He wasn’t keeping me here, Richeh. I came back here by choice.”
Richeh stills. “What do you mean? You…you saved me from him, and then you came back?”
Ririfin rubs at his forehead. “I had a plan,” he stresses. “He wasn’t the only bad teacher here, and he was part of a greater collective of dark magicians. I was working on bringing them all down, and now that he’s dead, I’m going to be the prime suspect.”
Richeh takes in his cold, distant expression. “And you didn’t think to inform me of this? You just let me think you were dead?” Ririfin’s face doesn’t change, and Richeh wants to cry. “I mourned you. I thought you had died protecting me! And you just lied?”
“Stars,” Ririfin sighs, rubbing his forehead. His eyes soften for the first time. “You’re a child. It was better not to have you involved. I didn’t expect you to…avenge me.” He says it almost mockingly.
Richeh wills her face not to crumple. “You didn’t expect me to still love you, you mean.”
Ririfin flinches. He looks away, darkness shrouding him as a cloud passes the moon. “I think you should go.”
“I will,” Richeh says, numb. “If you decide you still want a sister, you know where to find me.”
She leaves without looking back.
Dawn is on the horizon, and Richeh and Euini take off at a gallop, racing into the trees before the sky fully lightens. They find a shelter under an overlapping tree canopy and collapse onto the ground. Richeh stares up at the sky, and the world blurs as she recounts the night. Euini presses against her side, and Richeh weeps into his fur for an aeon.
“What do we do now?” Euini asks after a long silence.
Richeh wipes at her face, smearing away her tears. “First,” she says, “we go back to my mentors, or yours, and figure out how to turn you back.”
Euini sighs, clearly relieved that they don’t have to separate. She feels the same, this new, stabbing ache inside her somewhat eased by the fact.
“And then,” Richeh says, breathing through her pain, “somehow, we learn how to live.”