Page 59

“We need more than one fish, Kestria.”

Chapter 16

I pull the stake from the gravel while Kestria coils the line.

Four salmon lie in the open sack by her feet, and she looks at them again before she tucks the end of the cord through the coil. The bow’s leaning on her leg with the arrows bundled next to it.

“That one was bigger in the water.”

I follow her finger to the last fish. “They often are.”

“It fought harder than the others.”

“It’s still coming home with us.”

She nudges its tail into the sack with her foot. I fold the hide over it and tie it off, cord between my thumb and the blunt fingers, and pull the knot tight with a fang. Hers is at the bottom, where the tie won’t crush it.

She picks up the bow and arrows and settles them against her hip, keeping the left arm down.

“I can carry these.”

She can, so I leave them with her, take the fish, and start up the bank.

The sun’s gone behind the pines, and the gravel where we stood this morning is in shade. Another salmon goes through with nobody shooting at it. Four fish for most of a day. I’d have filled the sack twice on my own, and I’d still bring her again.

Kestria glances back once before she steps onto the path.

“Mel would’ve complained about those.”

I lift the sack a little. “All four?”

“She’d find something. The first fish I brought her had hardly any meat left on it. And teeth marks.”

“Yours?”

She shrugs. “I’d cleaned it.”

I turn my head, and she points the bundled arrows at me.

“Badly. I know that now. I took it to her cottage and asked if I could stay for one night. She let me in, fed me, then complained about the gift.”

“You stayed.”

“Of course I stayed. She’d cooked the fish.”

She lifts the bow clear of a low branch and comes alongside me. That’s more than she’s said to me in days. I keep my mouth shut so she’ll go on.

“She brought it up years afterward. Pointed out the teeth marks weren’t human.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I’d gotten better.”

I turn an ear toward her, and she grins at the path.

“Marginally less terrible, according to Mel. She still didn’t know I was a wolf. All those teeth marks, and I kept turning up at her door wanting supper.”

The path bends away from the river. She steps over a root, still smiling, and then she’s looking down at the bow, her thumb going over the worn place in the grip.