Half Claimed novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Proof

We carried him to my cottage because it was nearest and because he wouldn't let go of my sleeve.

The pack healer, a gaunt woman with grey braids, looked at the gash across his ribs and then at me.

"The wound's clean," she said. "But it won't close. His body's fighting the cut."

"Why?"

"Every time you're out of arm's reach, his heart goes wild and it opens again. The bond's tugging on it."

She said it.

"Keep him near you tonight. Keep pressure on it. I'll stitch it, if you'll hold the lamp."

"I'll stitch it," I said.

The healer raised her eyebrows.

"I bind books," I said. "I've sewn through boards. His skin can't be worse than calfskin."

"Well," she said slowly. "No."

I washed my hands, threaded a curved bookbinder's needle with waxed linen, and knelt on the floor beside the table.

Idris lay on my kitchen table on a folded quilt with his shirt gone and a knife-scrape on one cheekbone.

His chest rose and fell, huge and pale and striped with blood.

"Talk to me while I do this," I said.

"What about?"

"Anything but how much it hurts."

"Then tell me what the Stone felt like."

He was quiet while I made the first stitch.

"It felt like falling into warm water," he said. "I had my teeth in you and you tasted like paper and rain."

I made the second stitch.

"And?"

"And I knew. In my teeth. That you were mine."

"And then the bell."

"And then I was tearing out of you before I knew what I'd done."

His voice cracked.

"I felt it in my mouth for two days. Like I'd bitten through a promise."

"You ran."

"Everyone ran. I ran faster."

"I'd have run too," I said. "Possibly into a river."

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