"I'm adding that to the list of things I'm yelling at you for. When you wake up. Which you're going to do. Because you don't get to die on my floor. That's rude. I'd have to clean it."
Nugget screams outside. A crash—the water bucket, probably. I should check.
I don't. I stay.
The light shifts. Late afternoon. Golden. My stomach has given up growling and settled into a dull, persistent ache. The chickens have gone quiet, which either means they've calmed down or something got into the coop. I heard sniffing around the deer carcass earlier. Didn't get up to check. Didn't care enough to check.
"How many of you are there?" I ask her. "A whole group, right? A pack. Has to be. The men who built my cottage—four of them. And the wolves who came for treatment, they weren't all the same wolf. Different sizes, different injuries. That's at least fifteen. Twenty."
No answer.
"Is there someone in charge? Do you have—meetings? Assignments? 'You go get stabbed on Tuesday, you go get stabbed on Thursday'?"
Nothing. Just her breathing, and Nugget honking at thedark.
"You could wake up and answer these. I'm keeping a running list and it's getting long."
The cottage gets darker. Evening. I light a candle with numb fingers, then two more. The wicks need trimming—they're smoking, burning uneven, casting shadows that jump when the draft hits them. The gap in the ceiling lets in a thin thread of cooling air.
Add it to the list. Ceiling. Bandages. Paste. Water. Deer. Chickens. Werewolves. The list is getting unwieldy.
My eyes are gritty. My back is one solid ache from the wall. Her pulse—still fast. Her temperature—still burning. The wound—gray edges paler, retreating, but slow. So slow.
"Any time now," I tell her. "Fever breaking would be wonderful. I'd like to eat something this decade."
I lean my head against the wall and close my eyes. Just for a second. Just while the candles burn and Kestria breathes and the world outside gets dark and quiet. My hands are crusted with her blood—dried brown under my fingernails, in the creases of my knuckles. I need to wash them. Need to eat. Need to sleep. Need to figure out what comes next, because Theron is coming back and he's going to bring more men and they know where I live and they know about Kestria and—
Later.
The next time I open my eyes, the candles are guttering. One's already out, a thin ribbon of smoke curling from the wick. The other two are stubs.
And the room sounds wrong.
Not wrong. Different. The rhythm of—
Her breathing.
I jerk forward, hand on her forehead before I've fully woken up.
Warm.
Not burning.
"Oh." I pull the blanket down, check the wound. The gray is gone. Healthy pink spreading out from under the paste,new skin forming at the edges. "Oh, thank—it worked. Of course it worked. It always works."
My whole body is wrung out—back screaming, knees locked, neck stiff, so hungry I'm nauseous, which is a fun contradiction—
"You're going to be fine." I'm smoothing the blanket back over her, tucking it at the edges, and the words come out so high they crack. "Fever broke. Wound's healing. You're going to be fine and I'm going to eat an entire loaf of bread and then yell at you. In that order."
Her breathing is deeper now. Easier. Color coming back to her face—faint pink where there was nothing, warmth where there was gray.
I let my head fall back against the wall.
I don't relight the candles. Just sit in the dark and listen to her breathe.
I wake to fingers brushing my arm.
My neck screams when I lift my head—I fell asleep against the wall, chin on my chest, and everything has locked into place at terrible angles. Dawn light leaks through the window, gray and thin. The candles are cold puddles of wax. My mouth tastes stale. My back is going to be furious with me for a week.
