The next morning, a polite knock on the door woke me from a light sleep. I opened the door warily. The man standing outside instantly reminded me of the matron's warning.
His facial features were almost identical to Kaelen's—the same high nose, deep-set eyes, and strong jawline. But the difference was stark. His lips were curved in a gentle smile, and his deep black eyes, unlike Kaelen's lifeless pools, shimmered with warmth and concern. The aura he exuded was that of a sunlit pine forest, not a frozen wasteland.
"Hello, I am Liam," he said with a smile. "I heard you were isolated because you were 'sick,' so I came to see how you are. I'm sorry, my brother… he sometimes has trouble expressing himself. I hope you don't mind."
I stared at him, my mind in a whirl. So, this was the prince "you must never provoke"?
"Physician Ilian asked me to give you these herbs from the South," he said, handing me a small cloth pouch. "He said they might help with your 'illness.'"
"Thank you," I said, taking the pouch. A preliminary sense of goodwill formed towards him. At least this "Kaelen" didn't look like he wanted me for dinner.
After Liam left, my attention returned to the forbidden door across the hall. I took a stiff pin from my hair, knelt down, and began to try and pick the lock.
The lock was complex, and I fumbled with it for a long time without success. Just as I was about to give up, something caught my eye. In the dusty, narrow crevice where the door hinge met the floor, a tiny, dark brown strand was caught.
I carefully pried it out with the tip of the pin.
It was a lock of hair. The exact same color as Willow's.
My heart sank. Willow… she had really been through this door!
My determination to open it hardened.
I was kneeling at the door of the forbidden room, completely engrossed in studying the damn lock, utterly oblivious to the footsteps behind me.
"What are you doing?"
A voice as cold as a winter night's wind sounded behind me.
I froze, scrambling to my feet and hiding the hairpin behind my back. It was Kaelen.
"Nothing," I said, forcing a calm I didn't feel. "It's just… a bit dusty here. I was cleaning."
"Cleaning?" he said, stalking towards me, his powerful presence making it hard to breathe. "With your hairpin?"
Before I could invent another clumsy excuse, he moved like lightning, grabbing my wrist and pinning me hard against the cold, forbidden door. His other hand easily plucked the bent hairpin from my clenched fist.
He trapped me between his chest and the door, looking down at me. His eyes were bottomless pools, capable of swallowing everything.
He didn't question me further. Instead, he slowly lowered his head to my ear. He took a deep breath, as if savoring the scent of my nervousness.
Then, in a deeply predatory voice, he said something that sent a chill through my entire body:
"Instead of being curious about what's behind this door, why don't you first have a taste of my fangs?"
His words were like a cold viper, slithering into my ear and leaving me paralyzed. Fangs? Was he going to eat me?
I could feel his warm breath on my skin, sending shivers down my spine.
Just as I thought he was about to bite down, he suddenly released me and took a step back. A flicker of emotion crossed his lightless eyes before they returned to their usual emptiness.
"Get back to your room," he threw the cold words at me, then turned and strode away, as if staying a second longer was unbearable.
I leaned against the cold door, gasping for air until the sound of his heavy footsteps disappeared down the stairs.
From that day on, I became a true prisoner in the tower.
Kaelen ordered that no one was to speak to me without his permission. Every day, a silent maid would deliver my food, never saying a word, placing the tray down and leaving immediately. I had become a "living ghost," isolated at the highest point of the castle.
The days passed in dead silence. I spent all my time studying my mother's silver comb and the forbidden door, but made no progress.
However, strange things began to happen in the dead of night.
I began to lose the line between reality and dreams.
Often, in a half-awake state, I would see a tall visitor in a wide, black cloak standing silently at my bedside. I couldn't see his face, only feel his deep, bottomless eyes watching me quietly, intently.
Each time I startled awake from this dream, the room would be empty. It was as if it were all a hallucination born of loneliness.
But on the table beside my bed, there would always be something new. Sometimes a piece of still-warm roasted meat, other times a ripe, sweet-smelling fruit. Once, there was even a small bouquet of white wildflowers, a rarity in the North.
The food was real. The flowers were real.
This terrified me. Was this visitor real, or was I slowly going mad?
In the early mornings, the sight of Liam below the tower became my only anchor to reality.
I would go to the window and see Liam standing in the abandoned courtyard at the base of the tower, smiling up at me. He would then climb the dilapidated spiral stone staircase on the side of the tower to talk to me from below my window.
"Good morning, Aila," his voice sounded especially clear today. "Did you sleep well?"
"Well enough," I said, looking at his face, so like Kaelen's but always filled with warmth. I couldn't help but ask, "Liam, can I ask you a question?"
"Of course."
"Northern werewolves… what are they like when they transform?"
Liam paused for a moment, then smiled gently. "Probably much like yours in the South. Though, our wolves in the North are generally larger, with darker fur."
"Is it possible… for one to be pure black? And… exceptionally large?" I asked tentatively.
The smile on Liam's face faltered slightly, but he quickly recovered. "Probably much like yours in the South. Though, our wolves in the North are generally larger."
"Is it possible… for one to be pure black? And… exceptionally large?" I probed again.
Liam was silent for a moment. He didn't answer my question directly, instead sidestepping it skillfully. "Why do you ask? Have you been having nightmares from being cooped up in the tower for so long?"
His reaction was subtle, but the more he avoided it, the clearer the suspicion in my mind became.
"It's nothing, just… asking," I quickly changed the subject.
He nodded, not pressing further. He took a small deerskin pouch from his coat and tied it to a rope. Then, with nimble grace, he climbed a few of the broken steps of the spiral staircase and accurately tossed the other end of the rope onto my windowsill.
"What's this?" I asked, curious.
"Something… to help with the boredom," he said softly, a gentle smile on his face. "It must be dull in the tower. I thought you might need something other than the walls to look at. I should go, it wouldn't be good to be discovered."
He gave me a reassuring smile and quickly turned, his figure soon vanishing into the morning mist as if he had never been there.
Curiously, I untied the deerskin pouch.
Inside, there were no herbs, no food.
It was an old, coverless storybook, its pages slightly curled at the edges, clearly read many times. Tucked inside was a drawing pencil made of charcoal.
I was stunned.
Back in the South, besides Willow, no one knew my greatest hobby was to sketch with charcoal on wooden planks when I was bored.
How… how could he know?
This thoughtful gesture almost made me let down all my guards.
I picked up the book and opened the first page.
It was a travelogue of ancient heroes and faraway lands.
From that moment on, a bold and absurd theory began to take shape in my mind.
I thought of Liam's gentle face, of the warmth and kindness he brought with each visit.
I thought of the docile giant wolf by the Moon Lake, of its deep, night-sky black eyes after the red had faded.
Finally, I thought of the black-cloaked visitor who appeared in my room each night, bringing me food and flowers.
A seemingly impossible equation slowly formed in my mind:
The gentle Liam = the docile black wolf = the silent guardian.
And the cold Kaelen, the one who threatened me with his fangs, was a completely different entity.
The matron was right. There are two Alphas here. One is like the sun, the other like ice.
I began to suspect that Liam was carrying a curse he himself might not even know about, one that turned him into the black wolf at night, instinctively drawn to my scent. And the black-cloaked visitor was perhaps his subconscious, making amends when he briefly regained his senses.
This theory made my heart beat uncontrollably faster.
If… if this was true, then the one who guarded me every night, the one who gave me the only warmth in my deepest loneliness, was Liam.
And all the pain and humiliation I had endured came from his brother, the true tyrant, Kaelen.