Page 37

He gathers the wet linen and pauses with the bowl in his hands, looking at my shoulder once more. Then he carries it into the inner passage.

I pull the cloak over my knees and sit there until I hear water.

My shoulder throbs under the new wrapping. There’s a sore patch on my hip from the tackle, and my legs ache from getting me farther than they have in days. I touch my mouth, then reach beneath the fur for the flake of stone.

The empty place beside the eleventh scratch is easy to find.

I brace my right wrist against the wall and draw the point down. It leaves a pale line, too faint beside the others, so I go over it again.

Twelve.

He can carry me back as often as he likes. I made myself a promise when I started this row, and I haven’t been home yet.

I rub the grit away, feeling the new groove catch my thumb.

The moon should’ve flattened him. It made him faster.

Eleven days of arguing with him, and I never asked what he can do.

Tomorrow I start asking. He can refuse until he’s sick of my voice.

I tuck the stone away and lie down on my right side. Whatever happened in the needles changes nothing. I’m leaving.

Chapter 8

I put my right hand beneath her elbow and reach for the knot with my left.

Two fingers lie blunt against her skin. I turn them underneath her arm, where she can’t watch them, and loosen the wrapping.

Dawn has reached the vent above the passage. She’s sitting forward on the pallet with her left arm out of my shirt, holding the loose cloth against her ribs with her good hand. It covers very little. She watches my hands while I unwind the linen.

She smells of last night. Her wet has dried on her thighs beneath the shirt, and it’s still on the two fingers under her elbow, though I scrubbed that hand at the pool before she woke. I’ve been hard since I knelt down, and for most of the night before that, lying on my furs with her breathing across the room. I didn’t put a hand to it. No one warned me it’d keep until morning.

I get the last of the linen off her shoulder. The pad underneath has a small brown stain at its center. I bend close and breathe in for fresh blood, but there’s only what’s dried there. “Did it hurt in the night?”

Her shoulder shifts under my hand. “When I move.”

“Then keep still.”

She lets me wet the pad without answering. Yesterday that would’ve bought an argument. Today her eyes move up to my mouth and stay there until I turn toward the water.

Harder. I’m not the bandage.

She told me that against the pine, with my knuckle wet between her thighs, and I can still hear exactly how she said it. I keep the cloth where it is and wait for the edge to soften.

She caught herself with that arm while she ran. The wound was already open when I reached her. I had my face beside her throat, close enough to smell the pine on her hair, and I missed the blood.

“Still attached?” She tips her chin at her arm.

“The pad is.”

“I meant the shoulder. You’ve been very thorough.”

She’s not wrong.

The last edge comes away, leaving the narrow split exposed. I clean around it while she holds still.

“Hold this.”