There were no words. There was only the cold, shared certainty in Torren's eyes. We moved through the sleeping castle like wraiths, our feet silent on the stone floors we'd raced across as children. Every shadow seemed to hold a memory, every gust of wind through the arrowslits a whisper of a life that was no longer ours.
Our packs, filled with our pathetic hoard of supplies, felt impossibly heavy. It wasn't the weight of the furs or the dried meat; it was the weight of the lie. The weight of leaving. We retrieved them from behind the loose stone in the armory, the scrape of rock on rock sounding as loud as a thunderclap in the oppressive silence. A guard snored softly at the far end of the hall. My heart hammered against my ribs so hard I was sure he'd hear it.
We had one last stop to make. One last act of cruelty.
I pushed open the door to my parents' chambers. It didn't creak. I'd oiled the hinges myself a week ago. The air inside was warm and smelled of them—my mother's scent of dried herbs, my father's of leather and cold steel. They slept, my father's arm thrown over my mother's waist. In sleep, the hard lines of his face were gone. He looked younger, more peaceful than I'd ever seen him.
A wave of such profound, gut-wrenching grief washed over me that my knees almost buckled. I wanted to scream. I wanted to wake them up and tell them everything—about the entity, the wishes, the curse that was tearing me away from them. I wanted to beg them to fix it.
But I was the monster in the dark. I was the source of the danger. Leaving was the only kindness I had left to give. I pulled the door shut, leaving the ghost of a son in my place.
Torren was waiting. He held up a small object—the clumsy wooden wolf he'd carved years ago. He walked to his own family's door and gently placed it on the threshold where his mother would find it in the morning. He didn't look inside. He couldn't. His sacrifice was just as deep as mine, and he bore it with a silence that broke my heart all over again.
Getting over the half-finished outer wall was the easy part. The moment our feet touched the crisp snow outside, the world changed. The air was sharper, the freedom terrifying. We were no longer sons. We were fugitives.
I pulled out the compass. In the darkness, the needle of captured light glowed faintly, painting our faces in its eerie, otherworldly sheen. It didn't point to any landmark I knew. It pointed out, into the vast, dark emptiness of the wolfswood, toward the sea. Toward the island.
We walked for what felt like an hour before we dared to look back. The castle, my father's great work, was a black silhouette against a sea of stars. It was the only home I had ever known. It was the last time I would ever see it.
Torren put a hand on my shoulder. His was the only warmth in the frozen night.
"Don't," he said, his voice rough.
I nodded, my throat too tight to speak. We turned our backs on the life we were meant to have and walked into the swallowing darkness. We were heading north. We were going to prison.