Chapter 6: The Mark Pulls

Corvin's tent smelled of cedar smoke and wet leather.

He pushed the flap shut behind us and the noise of the camp dropped away.

A map lay across the table, pinned flat with a dagger and two cups.

"Sit," he said.

"I'm not tired."

"You have that woman's blood on your hand. Sit."

I looked down.

Blood had dried across my right palm and fingers.

I had not felt it.

I sat on a camp stool, and Corvin pulled another close and took my hand in both of his.

The mark flared at once.

I hissed.

"It does that," he said. "It will for a few days."

"You know a lot about it."

"I know what my mother told me. I never believed her." He tore a strip of linen with his teeth. "She said it feels like standing too near a stove."

"It feels like a stove."

"Good. Then we're both being cooked."

He cleaned the cuts with a wet cloth, slow and careful.

His thumb pressed into my palm.

It was not a place anyone had ever touched me on purpose.

Heat spread from his thumb up my arm and settled in my stomach, and I stared at the top of his head, at the black hair cropped short.

His pulse was visible in the mark over his scar.

It beat fast.

He was wrapping the linen very, very carefully for a man who had just told me he did not know what he thought.

"Stop looking at me," Corvin said, without raising his eyes.

"I'm looking at the map."

"The map is behind you."

I turned my face away, burning.

He finished the knot and did not let go.

His thumb moved over the inside of my wrist, over the mark, once.

Every nerve I owned ran toward that spot.

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