Page 76 of Moonless

I’ve got my shoulder against the stone at the last bend, where I can see her by the hearth. One step would put me in the firelight. Not after today.

I’ve been here since she told me to stop lurking. Lurking.

My left arm throbs when I move it. The bites have closed, but the fur’s stiff with blood. I was still tearing at things hours after I ran from her, and now I need the wall to stay on my feet. Hitto.

She’s turning the knife over in her hands, keeping the edge off the cloth. My first talon, and she’s careful with it. She runs her thumb down the handle and looks toward the passage.

I could answer her from here. I want her to keep talking, so I stay where I am.

When she looks down I can see her lashes are wet, and the hair stuck to her cheek. She’s beautiful, sitting there in my old shirt. She rubs under her eye again, and I want to go to her.

She sits there with the knife until the pot spits over the coals, and that’s the end of it. She puts the knife in its case and gets her bowl.

“Yours is here.”

Her voice is rougher than when she was complaining about the sled. She leaves a second bowl beside the pot and takes hers to the pallet.

My ears pull back. She can’t see me from here, and she’s put a bowl out anyway.

I wait while she eats. She keeps her left arm against her side and stops once to rub above the bandage. She dragged three wolves to the river with that shoulder. That was mine to do.

When she’s finished she sets the bowl down and works at the ties on her foot wraps. One knot won’t come. She’s pulling the wrong end. My right hand lifts off the stone, and I put it back.

She lays the wraps beside the pallet and lies down on her right side under my cloak, with the knife by her good hand. As she should.

I stay against the wall after she closes her eyes, breathing out slowly through my nose so she won’t hear it.

I won’t feel him coming anymore.

That was the bolt. Moonbright, and something under it I still don’t know. What went into my arm today was only the flower, crushed into the bite. I can still smell it through the blood.

Her hand was on my chest. Her face was that close, and my claws were right beside her sleeve.

Perkele. I press my claws into the stone until my hand stops shaking.

I stop the growl before it wakes her.

I know every patch of moonbright on my ground, and I can find the rest.

I’ll burn all of it.

Chapter 21

A claw taps my hip through the cloak. I pull the cloak off my face, and Rauk’s crouched beside me.

He’s back.

I push onto my good elbow to get a better look, and there’s soot in the pale fur above his eyes. His left arm’s across his knee, and the bites have closed, but the blood’s still crusted in the fur.

“Where have you been?”

“Dress. We have things to do.”

Good. I didn’t know if he was coming back, so he can bark at me all he wants.

He reaches past me for the foot wraps, and the smell comes with him. Ugh. He reeks of smoke, sweet enough to turn my stomach, but when I look toward the hearth the coals barely show through the ash.

“Lovely. It’s not even light out, and there’s a half-beast in my face who stinks of burning rubbish. Do you do this for all your guests?”