The Master asked, his heavy voice inexpressive, “Shall I open the cage?”
Ezekiel answered, still quietly, “I swear I will not challenge you.” He looked up suddenly, not at Grayson but at Natividad. “In April… In April, if you choose Grayson… I will not challenge him.”
Natividad’s eyes widened. She glanced from Ezekiel to the Master and back again. “But I…” she said, and then stopped. “I’m not…” she began again, and stopped once more. She took a step toward the cage and stood for that moment alone between the two Dimilioc wolves.
“I can’t promise as much for anyone else,” Ezekiel warned her.
“I… You…” Natividad took a deep breath. Then, rallying, she cocked her hip forward provocatively, set a hand there, tipped her head challengingly to one side, and said, “It’s true Grayson’s got that super-sexy older guy thing going, but if I choose somebody else, you know, I’ll get you to promise to leave him alone before I announce it.” When Ezekiel began to answer, she held up a hand and asked warningly, “You think I can’t do it? You want to double dare me?”
After a stunned moment, Ezekiel actually laughed. Grayson, too, looked about as amused as he ever got. He held out the cage key to Natividad, who took it with a feeling of deep relief that made her want to laugh out loud. She wasn’t even sure exactly why she should feel so relieved and suddenly so happy, only she did, and she knew she was right. Everything was going to be alright after all. Everything was fine. She opened the door with a confident little flourish, as though inviting Ezekiel out into a kingdom that she herself owned and ruled.
Ezekiel rose to his feet. He did not immediately move toward the door, however, but looked deliberately to Grayson for permission. Just as deliberately, the Master lifted a hand in summons: come. And Ezekiel stepped forward, out of the cage, to reclaim his place at Grayson’s side.
Alejandro, aware he had missed a good deal of the subtext between Grayson Lanning and Ezekiel Korte, found himself relieved and confused in almost equal measure as he watched his sister go up the stairs with Ezekiel. The young verdugo offered her his arm, and she laid her hand there and walked beside him up the stairs, just as she had come down with Grayson. She did not even look at Grayson for permission. Nor did she look at Alejandro. She didn’t look back at all.
But when Alejandro would have gone after them, Grayson stopped him. All along, after that first hard stare, the Dimilioc Master had not seemed to pay the least attention to Alejandro. But now he stopped him with just a glance, waiting while the other two disappeared up the stairs. Alejandro tried not to show his nervousness. He dropped his gaze and backed away from the steps, moving automatically, but not without realizing he had moved and why.
It felt strange to notice the working of black dog instincts, but the thing that Natividad had done, borrowing his shadow like that, that had left him with a new and not entirely comfortable awareness of the impulses and emotions that moved his black dog shadow. Nothing he did yet felt entirely normal.
Though the feeling of separación was less now than it had been, he thought he would never again risk losing track of the boundary between himself and his black dog shadow. He even suspected he might have learned the secret behind Ezekiel’s extraordinarily control: the new clarity of that boundary made him understand, in a way he never had before, that it was his choice where to draw that line. His choice whether to hold fast to human self-control or allow black dog violence. Not his shadow’s.
That had always been true. But he knew it much better now.
“Come,” Grayson ordered him then, once Ezekiel and Natividad had had time to get out of the way. He led the way up the stairs, down the hall, and out into a winter day glittering and sharp with light and frost. The Master did not stop on the porch, but strode down the steps and out across the broad open area. The tracks of buses and vans and many human feet marred the smooth white expanse of snow, but almost all of the signs of the earlier battle were hidden. There was no wind. The forest, lying bright in the sun before them, was very quiet. At last, just before they reached the trees, Grayson stopped and turned his back to the forest, staring back the way they had come, toward the house.
Alejandro turned with Grayson and followed his gaze, wondering why the Dimilioc Master had brought him out here. He tried not to think that maybe he already knew. He tried not to think that maybe…
“You came to Dimilioc a week ago,” Grayson said abruptly. He turned his head to stare at Alejandro. “How many times have you lied to me in this week? Whose decision was it to approach Dimilioc? You told me it was yours, but that’s not true, is it? Was it your sister’s idea, or your brother’s?”