Page 20

Her sharp gaze flicked up from the gash the moment the bite was revealed and hooked my gaze, but she kept whatever commentary she had about the wound to herself.

“Man, Kai’s going to be . . .” Rook found a stool and sat next to the young man’s body, letting Rosalie do what she did best in her contribution to the village, dabbing and cleaning the ragged edges of the throbbing, hot wound. Whispering to himself, “Nick was a good kid. A bit of a bruiser, but a good kid.”

“You’re lucky. It’s early enough to stave off infection and it won’t need stitches. You drinking my tea?” Rosalie’s hands worked fast and efficiently and she went on, satisfied with the snap of my head. “Good. It’ll keep the infection at bay. Most around here drink the one cup in the morning, that’ll do them just fine. But I want you to drink more tea than water at least for the next two days.”

“I . . . I haven’t any way to pay you for it.”

Rosalie frowned and turned to Rook. “She not staying?”

“She hasn’t decided yet.”

She gave him a half-hearted shrug and began wrapping my leg in clean bandages. “Well, no use for it, new girl. Stay or go, the leg has to be kept clean and wrapped for a few days. If you decide to leave, come see me ‘fore you do. I’ll send you on with some medicines to keep yourself relatively healthy.”

“Just like that? What’s the catch?” I narrowed my eyes on the woman. Rule #6 whispered in my ear: Debt was a great way to kill yourself.

“Oh, she’s real new isn’t she, Rook?” She took a deep breath and softened her tone just slightly, and it annoyed the fuck out of me. “I get it. I was in Dealramh Léas when I first came here. Took me years to get the immediate tick of assuming someone was trying to screw me out of my system. But out here? Away from the pointy pricks? We look after each other. If we have, and you need, it’s yours. No one goes hungry here. No one walks around hurt because they don’t have a few pebbles or sticks or whatever. And we don’t expect anything aside from the same consideration. So, I’ll be sure you get some tea.”

She leaned forward, cutting her eyes to the bent back of Rook who looked to be silently crying over the body on the bed. “If you feel so inclined as needing to owe me, my friend over there could use someone to talk to, and I have rounds to see to. Stay here, talk with him. And I’ll forget the pattern of those teeth in your leg, and I’ll deliver some tea to your cabin.”

She didn’t wait for me to agree. She just flicked the leather bundle closed, picked it up and left without another word, grabbing a basket of herbs on her way out.

Awkwardness filled in the gap she had left in the air. I didn’t know what to do with my hands or what to say. I never had to comfort someone. I never had the opportunity to sit with a family member and grieve. When I was grieving the woman in the iron ring, all I wanted was to have The Raven sit close to me. He didn’t need to talk, just having the room feel a little smaller with another person there was enough.

Would that be enough for Rook?

I drifted closer, just enough to hover near him. When he inevitably turned his head a little to acknowledge me, I saw the distinct track of tears. “What happened?” I asked as quietly as possible, giving him the respect to ignore me if he wanted to.

“He got lost in the forest and ran into a meadow full of flowers. Nick never listened to us. We told him over and over again that out here in these woods you gotta ask permission before taking anything. The trees own this forest, more than any other land, the trees own this place. You can’t just go taking from them without asking first. Nick didn’t listen.” He turned back to the dead young man and closed his eyes. “Doesn’t make it easier, but it’s true. He didn’t listen. Just took a bunch of flowers home to his partner. Simple, really. Back in the real world, it would have been just another Tuesday. Except here?” He sighed again. “The curse took him that night. Almost killed Kai in the process. Imagine waking up next to a rotting lion head in your bed where your partner was when you fell asleep. Claws, teeth, big mane. The whole thing.”

Lions head. Stick in the eye. Missing a nose. Magic storm. The pieces rattled around in my head like a puzzle snapping into place. The thing that chased me in the woods . . . it had been this innocent-looking boy of maybe nineteen.

And I had killed him.

“We didn’t understand at first. Chased him out of Havenhome and back into the woods. We thought something had gotten in. We hunted him all night. When the sun hit him, he turned back into himself. And we thought it was over. Went on like that for almost a month, until he stopped coming back to the village during the day. We’d hear him out in the forest, screaming like a bobcat. We’d find mangled animals thrown at the walls in the morning.”

“I’m sorry for your loss, Rook.” It felt like the right thing to say. The only thing to say, really.

Rook flashed a thin, pained smile up at me. “Flower curse. Couldn’t be avoided really, Goldie. It was inevitable. Nick died the day he picked those flowers. What was left wasn’t really Nick. We were still scared that he wouldn’t find his way home when he was wounded by whatever stalks the dark, and we wouldn’t have anything to bury. It’s better this way though. Better for Havenhome and better for Kai. To have a body to bury. People need that when they care about someone. The closure.”

Silence stretched between us as I struggled to decide if I should tell Rook that I was the one who killed his friend. Rook was a good person. He had treated me well since the moment he first met me. He cared. Cora cared—I didn’t know her well, but I could tell in the way she moved among the residents of Havenhome this morning and how she moved with Rook as a singular unit. They were all but parents to the entire village.

“Rook,” I whispered and he turned toward me. “I . . . I think I killed your friend.”

“This isn’t your fault. There’s no way this could be on you, kiddo,” he murmured and turned his attention back to the body on the cot.

“But I think it is. Back in the woods. We were attacked by a few different things. One of them was a beast with a rotting lions head. I bit its nose off and stabbed it in the eye with a stick. We were being chased by a magic storm. It was across the river, deep in the forest near a giant downed tree.” I spoke slowly and softly, giving him space to stop me at any time, and he never did.

“Is that how you got the wound?”

“Yes. He bit me and was pulling me down off the log.” I didn’t add that I thought he was going to kill me. It was implied.

Only when I was done did he roll his head to stare up at the ceiling, taking long measured breaths. “You did what you had to do, Cricket. Can’t say that if I was in your position, with people to keep safe, in a strange land, being chased by someone cursed like Nick was, that I’d do anything different. This place isn’t soft. It isn’t easy. And you had no reason to assume he wouldn’t kill you. I’ve known Nick since I got here. Still can’t say I would have made a different decision than you did if I was put in that position, even knowing it was him.” He turned his head back down to the corpse and exhaled. “I don’t think any of us would have made a different decision. We’ve all survived a series of events where we were forced to choose our lives or trust the beast at the door. Just . . . keep it to yourself. Just because we understand doesn’t mean we aren’t still human under all the gilding they’ve put on us. Not everyone will act reasonably.”

“I can dig him a grave,” I whispered. I didn’t have much to offer in the way of skills or knowledge. Not like Rosalie. Not like Cora. Not like the many humans that moved through the village. In the other world, I got by solely on whatever job I could con someone into tolerating me for a few weeks at. I had no skills. Barely an education. But I had two hands, and I could use them to do the one thing that most people didn’t want to do.

Make someone’s last bed.

Rook nodded to me. “I think we’d appreciate that. Shovels are in the barn. Go out to the river where you first saw Cora, follow it away from the village for a while. You’ll see the small graveyard we’ve built.”