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I didn’t know how he stayed so unseen, but ever since the day when I’d bled for the first time and my skin had prickled with someone’s avid attention when I’d climbed out of the river, I’d known.
How I knew, I couldn’t explain.
Deep inside me, weaved around my heart and knotted around my ribs, a silvery cord hummed with the same current and heat that flowed through me whenever Darro touched me. It stroked my spirit with heightened awareness, growing hot whenever I thought of him, silently wishing to feel what he felt and know what he kept hidden.
I knew if he was close by.
I knew if he’d gone off with Zetas farther afield.
And I knew when he missed me because the ache of his loneliness and the grief of our distance fed directly into my equally lonely chest.
I’d tried to get him to stay with the Nhil.
I’d seen Leca approach him on the rare nights he stood on the outskirts of the camp, offering him a place to stay. I’d watched Hyath offer new clothes to replace the wolf pelt he wore. I’d watched Niya carry Natim over to him, showing him how quickly the leggy fawn had grown.
He allowed them to talk to him briefly.
He didn’t leave if Solin went to whisper a few words or vanish if one of the other hunters was brave enough to pat Zetas.
But me?
He never stayed. He stiffened if I dared speak to him, and his answers were curt and cold, almost as if he didn’t trust himself around me anymore.
It hurt.
So much.
It distracted me from my lessons with Solin and added to my misery that my hopes of being an accomplished medicine woman like Pallen failed by the day. It didn’t matter that I’d somehow conjured trees and flowers with my first moon blood. It didn’t matter that Pallen spent hours sitting with me, pressing seeds of different herbs and plants into my palm, willing me to make them sprout by thought alone.
With each task, I failed.
Every time she taught me the properties of a particular root or stem, it never seemed to stay in my head. I constantly mixed-up toxic parts of a plant with the medicinal parts. My affinity with life and the faint glow of auras that constantly throbbed in my vision these days, did nothing to aid me in remembering valuable skills and recipes.
I wanted to tell Solin I’d been wrong about being a healer—to confess that the more I studied with Pallen, the more my mind scrambled until I knew nothing.
But pride forbid me from telling him.
He seemed so happy, so content.
Before we retired for bed each night, Solin would ask me what I’d learned. He’d nod and praise me, showing me his own ashes, oils, and dried herbs that reacted differently to fire and was used for different occasions, before slipping into his furs and sleeping soundly.
I’d lie awake in the dark, listening to the crackle of the banked fire and the soothing rhythm of his breathing, all while every inch of me burned to leave.
The blood bind was still a sore wound between us.
No matter how much time passed or how full my head was of lessons, I never stopped wishing I could run into the grasslands and find Darro.
To sleep beside him beneath the vast, star-spritzed sky.
To touch and kiss and—
“Are you okay?” Olish waved a hand in front of my face with a chuckle. “You just swayed.” His healer training kicked in as he gently touched my brow. “I did warn Solin that he might be expecting too much of you too soon. I’ve seen what your days consist of, Runa. You’re never still, always learning, always attempting to answer the questions of our people, willingly stepping into the fire to give the flames their many requests.”
I smiled and stepped away from his hand.
He was right.
I’d grown used to conversing with the fire. It was easier if I spoke on behalf of someone else, focusing on their woes, not mine, acting as the go-between and not the one judged and found lacking.
I looked at Olish again, and this time, my smile was genuine, even if a little heartsick. “It keeps me busy. I don’t mind.”
“Keeps you from thinking about a certain male who refuses to speak to you or your impending matehood to another who refuses to leave you alone?”
I stiffened.
In the moon that’d passed, Aktor had steadily grown more and more arduous. With every morning that grew cooler and each evening that chilled the clan—forcing us to gather tighter around the fire for its warmth and not just its light—Aktor grew more and more sure of our future.
For the first few days after Darro’s threats, Aktor had avoided me. He’d mourned Kivva and rested his bitten leg, granting me a reprieve and granting false belief that I was free of his attentions.
