The scent of crushed lavender and damp earth was Celestine's only incense. On her knees in the rich, dark soil, she worked with the quiet focus of a creature for whom time was a vast, unending meadow. Her fingers, pale and deft as moon-pale roots, plucked stray weeds from around the base of a valerian plant. The evening air was cool, carrying the sweet, cloying perfume of night-blooming jasmine from the trellis by her cottage door.
This was her ritual, her prayer. The small, stone-and-timber cottage, with its sagging roof draped in ivy and its garden running wild in carefully cultivated chaos, was her sanctuary. It was a world away from the cold, echoing marble halls of her memory. Here, she was not the last scion of a murdered dynasty. Here, she was simply a woman who knew the language of plants.
A basket woven from willow switches rested at her hip, already half-full with sprigs of rosemary, clusters of chamomile flowers, and the dark, serrated leaves of wolfsbane she handled with a practiced, respectful caution. She hummed a tuneless, forgotten lullaby as she worked, the sound swallowed by the dense forest that pressed in around her clearing.
A twig snapped.
The sound was not the gentle pop of a drying branch or the scuttling of a fox. It was a sharp, violent crack, followed by a low, guttural sound that was all wrong for her peaceful twilight world.
Celestine went still, her hand freezing mid-reach for a stalk of mint. Her senses, far sharper than any human's, stretched out into the gloaming. The scent of pine and loam was suddenly, overwhelmingly, cut with the coppery tang of blood and the feral musk of a large predator.
Slowly, she rose to her feet, her grey woolen skirts whispering against the soil. She peered into the deep shadows between the trees. For a moment, there was nothing. Then, a massive, dark shape stumbled from the treeline.
It was a wolf, but unlike any she had seen in these woods. It was enormous, its fur a mix of storm-cloud grey and charcoal, matted and glistening with fresh blood along its flank. Its head was low, lips pulled back from teeth that were shockingly white against the dark gumline. And its eyes… its eyes were not the dull, animalistic gaze of a forest creature. They were a piercing, intelligent, and pain-maddened amber, fixed on her with a desperate, feral intensity.
It took a lurching step into her garden, its powerful body trembling with the effort. Its back left leg was held at an awkward angle, and a deep gash wept crimson onto her prized lavender bushes.
"Oh, you terrible beast," Celestine murmured, her voice soft but laced with genuine annoyance. "Look at my lavender."
The wolf snarled, a low, threatening rumble that vibrated in the quiet air. It was a sound meant to terrify, to paralyze with fear. Celestine felt the primal urge to freeze, to submit, but centuries of existence had forged a core of steel beneath her gentle exterior. She did not flinch.
Instead, she took a slow, deliberate step forward, her hands held out, palms open and empty. "Hush now," she cooed, as if speaking to a spooked horse. "All that noise won't help you, will it? You're bleeding all over my rosemary, too. Do you have any idea how long it takes to grow rosemary this potent?"
The wolf's snarl faltered. Its amber eyes blinked, a flicker of confusion breaking through the pain. It took another stumbling step, its massive body swaying. The scent of blood was stronger now, mixed with something else… something metallic and poisonous. Silver. The realization sent an unexpected, unwelcome jolt through her. This was no ordinary woodland injury. This was a hunter's wound.
"You are in a world of trouble, my friend," she whispered, closing the distance between them.
The wolf lunged.
It was a last, desperate burst of strength, a blur of grey fur and bared teeth. Celestine didn't have time to be afraid. She sidestepped with a preternatural grace that would have seemed impossible to a human observer, her movement a fluid whisper. As the wolf crashed past her, its jaws snapping shut on empty air, she brought her arm down, not with brutal force, but with precise pressure, on a specific point at the base of its skull.
The great beast crumpled, its body going limp mid-lunge. It landed heavily among the chamomile, its breath coming in ragged, wet pants.
"There now," Celestine said, kneeling beside the unconscious animal. "That was entirely unnecessary."
For a long moment, she simply looked at it. The sheer size of it was daunting. The power in its shoulders, even in repose, was immense. Its fur was coarse and thick under her probing fingers. The wound on its flank was deep, and the flesh around it was an angry, inflamed red, the tell-tale sign of silver poisoning. It would die out here, slowly and painfully.
She sighed, a sound of profound resignation. She could not leave it. The part of her that had spent decades cultivating life, that found solace in the simple act of healing, rebelled at the thought. It was a dangerous, unpredictable creature, but it was a living thing in pain on her doorstep.
"Well," she said to the unconscious form. "You are far too heavy for me to carry. And I am not dragging you through my vegetable patch."
She stood, brushing the dirt from her knees, and walked with purpose to her woodshed. Inside, next to neatly stacked logs, was an old wooden sled she used for hauling firewood in the winter. It was sturdy, if not elegant.
It took her another twenty minutes of grunting, heaving, and strategic pulling to maneuver the dead-weight of the wolf onto the sled. She was stronger than she looked, her vampire nature granting her a latent physical power she rarely had call to use. Still, by the time she had the beast inside her cottage, a fine sheen of sweat coated her brow, and her humming had been replaced by muttered complaints about inconsiderate, oversized canines.
Her cottage was a single, open-plan room, dominated by a large hearth and cluttered with the artifacts of her simple life. Drying herbs hung in bundles from the ceiling, clay pots and glass jars lined rough-hewn shelves, and a large, comfortable bed piled with quilts stood in one corner. She pulled the sled next to the hearth, where the embers of her fire still glowed warmly.
The next hour was a study in focused, practical care. She fetched a bucket of clean water and a stack of soft, worn linen cloths. She worked with an efficient, detached tenderness, first cleaning the wound of dirt and debris. The silver-laced blood sizzled faintly against the cloth, and she wrinkled her nose at the acrid smell. Using a pair of iron tweezers from her sewing kit, sterilized in the fire, she carefully probed the gash, extracting several tiny, wicked shards of a silver-tipped weapon. The wolf whimpered in its unconscious state, a pitiful sound that made her pause and lay a calming hand on its massive head.
"Almost done, you big lummox," she whispered.
Once the silver was out, she packed the wound with a poultice of honey, yarrow, and comfrey from her garden, binding it tightly with clean strips of linen. She worked until the bleeding had fully stopped and the animal's breathing had evened out into the deep, regular rhythm of healing sleep.
Finally, exhausted, she sat back on her heels. The wolf lay on her floor, a dark, wild island in the sea of her domestic peace. In the firelight, it looked less monstrous and more… majestic. A creature of raw, untamed power, now vulnerable. She reached out, hesitantly, and let her fingers sink into the thick fur of its neck. It was warm, and the pulse of its life beat strong and steady under her touch.
A strange, protective feeling stirred in her chest, an echo of an instinct she hadn't felt in centuries. This was her patient now. Her responsibility.
"You will have quite the story to tell your pack, won't you?" she murmured, rising to her feet and fetching a quilt from her bed. She draped it over the sleeping form, tucking it around the massive shoulders. "Sleep well, my strange guest."
She banked the fire, blew out her single candle, and climbed into her bed, leaving the wolf to its rest on the rug before the hearth. The last thing she heard before sleep took her was the deep, steady sound of its breathing, a new and unfamiliar rhythm in the nocturnal symphony of her home.
When the first grey light of dawn filtered through the leaded glass of her window, Celestine awoke. The cottage was silent. Too silent.
The deep, rhythmic breathing was gone.
She sat up, her eyes instantly adjusting to the dim light. The quilt she had draped over the wolf was now a rumpled heap on the floor. The sled was there. The bucket of pink-tinged water and the bloodied cloths were there.
But the wolf was gone.
The cottage door was still bolted from the inside. But the small, latched window by the hearth, which she always kept cracked open for the cool night air, was swung wide open, the morning chill spilling into the room.
Celestine swung her legs out of bed and walked over to the empty space on the rug. She knelt, placing a hand on the spot where the great beast had lain. The wood floor was still faintly warm. She picked up the quilt, bringing it to her face. It smelled of blood, herbs, and the wild, deep-forest scent of the wolf.
She looked at the open window, then down at the empty space on her floor. A slow, thoughtful frown touched her lips.
"Well," she said to the silent, empty cottage. "That was terribly rude."
Outside, the first birds began to sing, and her lavender bushes stood bruised and battered, the only physical proof that the night's events had not been a dream.