Chapter 14: Both Wounds

He came at dawn, on foot, with frost in his hair.

I was at Oda's kitchen table in a pair of her old flannel pajamas, not drinking my coffee.

Anders was asleep in the armchair with his boots on.

My grandmother looked out the window over the sink and said, "That's the Hauge boy. Nine miles. In shirtsleeves."

"Don't let him in," I said.

"I wasn't going to. I was going to give him a coat."

She did. She went out on the porch in her slippers and threw my father's old barn coat at his chest.

He caught it and stood in the yard without putting it on.

I went out.

The cold bit my bare feet through the boards, and I didn't care.

"Say it," I said. "All of it. From the beginning."

"Linnea..."

"You've had five days and a night in my bed. Say it standing there."

He took a breath, and he said it.

He told me about the wine his uncle handed him, and the toast, and waking with his wrist on fire.

He told me Ingrid had been sitting on the edge of the bed, crying, with her own wrist wrapped.

He told me he had never remembered a minute of the night between.

"Gunnar said two bites made a claim," he said. "He said the Council had witnessed it. I believed him. I still don't know what I did."

"And you wore the glove for two years."

"I wore it so no one would see it, and so I wouldn't."

"And at the Gathering?"

His jaw worked.

"I smelled you from the doorway. Wet hay and lake water, over two hundred people. I couldn't smell anyone else."

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