Chapter 9: The Boy in the Woods

They gave me a room in the palace with a bed the size of a cart and windows down to the floor. I didn't sleep in it. I sat on the balcony with my father's fang pendant in my fist and waited for the world to remember I was a dishwasher. At midnight, the King of all wolves knocked on my door. Then he coughed black blood into a handkerchief and had to sit down on my carpet. "You," I said, "are the worst patient in recorded history." "The Trials took more than I had." I knelt in front of him...