She turned that over in her mind. It fit. It fit so well it was uncomfortable, like a mirror held up at an angle she’d been avoiding.
“He values my freedom,” she said slowly. “More than?—”
“More than his own happiness. Yes. I know. It’s maddening.” Yasmin held out her hand. “Now give me my daughter before she wakes up starving and ruins this whole peaceful morning, and pass me those red beads. If we’re going to solve your love life we might as well make something pretty while we do it.”
She passed the baby over, careful to keep her head supported, and felt the little warm weight leave her arms with a pang that surprised her. Then she reached for the tray of beads, and for a while they simply worked, heads bent together, the fire warm at their backs.
It was the best kind of morning. The kind that a year ago she would not have believed she could ever have again. Two women, a sleeping baby, a bowl of colored beads, and no fear in the room at all.
She strung a necklace of pale carved snow-crystal and river stone, and while her fingers worked, her mind kept sliding back to what Yasmin had said.Say it plainly.As though it were that simple. As though the words wouldn’t stick in her throat like fishbones.
But maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe that was the frightening part. Maybe she was one honest sentence away from something she’d wanted longer than she’d let herself admit.
By the time Yasmin gathered up her baby and her half-finished jewelry and wrapped herself in her thick furs for the walk back to her own cave, the sun had climbed high enough to send a thin, cold light down through the light shafts overhead.
“Think about what I said,” Yasmin told her at the entrance, the baby a snug bundle against her chest. “Plainly. Words. Mouth.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“I’m saying it again because I know you.” Yasmin kissed her cheek. “You’re braver than you think, Polly. You just always find out about it last.”
And then she was gone, her footsteps fading down the passage, and she was alone in the warm quiet with a lapful of beads and a chest full of things she didn’t have names for yet.
She’d barely started tidying the trays when a brisk, business-like knock came from the cave entrance. A knock she recognized immediately.
“Come in, Cera.” She rose to meet the clan header. “Is something wrong? Is Yasmin?—”
“Yasmin’s fine. Rhaal was waiting to take her home.” The old female stepped inside, shaking snow from her white fur, and her sharp eyes swept over the cave before settling on her. Cera was not a female who wasted words or motion. She’d sat with Polly during some of those terrible early nights, and she trusted her more than anyone other than Njkall. “I need your help. If you’re willing to give it.”
“My help?” Her hand clenched nervously. “With what?”
“A patrol found someone this morning in an old cave up past the north ridge.” Cera sighed, watching her face. “They found a human female.”
Her heart skipped a beat.
“Human,” she repeated.
“Half-frozen. She’s dressed in nothing that would keep a Hothian child alive out there, let alone one of you naked skins. She’s also exhausted, dehydrated, and terrified out of her wits.” Cera’s voice stayed level, but Polly could see the worry in her eyes. “She won’t let anyone near her. The moment a warrior came within reach she came up swinging with a metal bar and almost took his ear off. We had to back off entirely. She’s cornered in that cave like a wounded skarn, and she’ll die of the cold before she lets one of us close enough to help.”
Her hands had gone cold. She knew that cornered feeling. She knew, down to her bones, exactly what it was to see something enormous and alien and fanged loom up out of the dark and be certain, absolutely certain, that it had come to hurt you.
“You want me to talk to her,” she said.
“You’re also a small human female.” Cera’s gaze was steady and not unkind. “You’re the one person in this clan she might not try to kill on sight. I won’t pretend it isn’t asking a lot. I know what that cave will look like to you. I know what she’ll look like. So I’ll only ask once, and you can say no, and no one will think less of you for it.”
She opened her mouth to say no. It rose up automatically, the way it always did, the small safenothat kept her worldmanageable.I can’t. I can’t go out there, I can’t go into a dark cave, I can’t look at someone in that much fear and not fall into it myself.
And then she thought of the metal bar. She thought of a woman with no furs, freezing to death rather than let a stranger touch her, so frightened she’d rather die alone in the dark than trust anyone ever again.
That was me.
“I’ll come,” she said.
The word surprised her more than it surprised Cera, and something in the healer’s face eased, just slightly.
“Good,” Cera said. “Get your warmest furs and bring food. Something small she can hold. And a light—not a bright one.”
She was already moving.
