Page 75 of Moonless

“Keer would’ve carried the whole lot down to the river. Then he’d have carried me home and spent the walk telling me I should’ve let him do it in the first place.”

I pitch my voice down for him. “Stay where I put you, Kes.”

It comes out hoarse and thoroughly unimpressive. I rub my forehead with my wrist.

“He’s better at it. He usually just looks at me.”

My brother’s face is easy to picture. The missing eye, the gray at his temples, his attention on the door when I’m late.

“I’d know he was angry before I got there. Even if he’d gone quiet so I wouldn’t know how worried he was.”

I turn the knife over, laying the handle across my fingers.

“I won’t feel him coming anymore.”

I run my thumb along the blunt curve near the handle, well away from the edge.

“I keep thinking about getting home, and then I think about everyone going for a run. They used to wake me doing it. I’d feel them getting excited and go out before I’d even found out where we were going.”

The pot bubbles, and I move it back.

“Now somebody’ll have to come and tell me. And they’d wait for me, that’s the problem. Keer would make them wait, and I’d be walking behind them on these stupid feet while they tried not to go too fast.”

My eyes sting. I press the back of my wrist under one and sit forward.

“Mel would tell me I’m being an idiot.”

I try her voice, and it comes out too high. “I’ve been managing with two legs my whole life, Kestria.”

A laugh catches in my throat. I swallow and look into the fire.

“She has. She’s human, and she’s got a home there. She’s got Keer and the children, and she’d be furious if she heard me talking like this. She’d make room for me. I know she would.”

The borrowed cuff’s come down over my hand. I leave it there, with the knife resting on the fold.

“But I used to be able to feel all of them. Even when I wanted to be left alone, they were there.”

I pull my knees closer.

“I miss them.”

I sit with the knife in both hands until I can talk again.

“I could’ve left today. You were gone. There wasn’t anybody to stop me.”

I lift my head toward the empty bend.

“I came back here.”

My thumb rests against the smooth handle, and I hold it still.

“I don’t know why I stayed.”

Chapter 20

Kestria doesn’t look up from the hearth. “I don’t know why I stayed.”

Neither do I.