The Cursed Luna's Tenth Awakening novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Fourteen Days

In the Ironclad cell Sabine proves she knows what no outsider could and bargains fourteen days to name the poisoner; her wound closes before Rorik's eyes and he says he has watched her bleed in his sleep.

They put me in a cell under the Ironclad hold, and nobody bothered to bandage me.

The room was stone on all sides, with one barred slit of window high on the wall.

Rain ran down the glass of it and dripped on the floor.

I sat with my back to the cold wall and my bound hands in my lap.

The wound in my belly had stopped bleeding sometime in the cart.

I did not think about why.

I was too busy listening.

I tracked the guard's boots in the passage and the drops from the window slit.

I had lived through the poisoned river nine times and never once asked who poisoned it.

The door opened and the torch outside threw two shadows across the floor.

Rorik Haldane came in first.

He had washed the mud off his face, but there was still blood dried in the creases of his knuckles.

The man behind him was younger and leaner, with sandy hair and a nose that had been broken at least twice.

"Joren," Rorik said, "stand there."

"I'm standing here," Joren said, and he put a hand on his sword.

Rorik crouched in front of me.

He was close enough that I could smell rain, iron and pine smoke on him.

I made myself look at him and not at his wrist.

"Say the name of my mother again."

"Edda," I said.

"Where is she buried?"

"Under the white birch behind the east wall of this hold."

Joren swore under his breath.

"Someone told her," he said. "The cooks talk, Rorik. Half the valley knows."

"The valley knows she died," Rorik said, without turning. "The tree, no."

He looked at me again.

"How did you know?"

"I told you. I saw it."

"You were never here."

"I was not here in this life," I said.

I had decided that the plain truth was safest, since a lie would have to be kept straight, and I had nine lives of memories to keep straight already.

"I have died on that field before. Nine times. Each time I wake in my bed at the spring thaw, and I remember nothing until your sword is on my neck."

Joren laughed, short and ugly.

"She's mad. Let her bleed out and be done with it."

Rorik did not laugh.

His eyes had gone very still.

"Your east gate," he said slowly. "My scouts reached it before the battle. It stood open and unguarded."

"I know."

"I thought it was a trap."

"It was a gift," I said. "Somebody opened it for you."

"Who?"

My mouth went dry.

The name was right there.

Harlan had held my hand at my father's burial, and I had trusted him with my back for two years.

I had no proof of anything except a horn I remembered and a smile I was only now learning to read.

"I can't give you a name yet," I said.

"Because there isn't one."

"Because if I say it now and I'm wrong, you'll kill an innocent man. And if I'm right, he'll be warned and gone by morning."

Joren stepped forward.

"She stalls, brother. She's Moonflare. Her people poisoned our river and killed our mother."

"My people did not."

"Your people were the only ones who had reason."

"Then give me a reason to prove it," I said, and I held Rorik's gaze.

"Fourteen days. Until the full moon. Keep me here, watched, however you like. In that time I will put the one who did it in front of you."

"And if you don't?"

"Then you take my head at the moon, and I'll hold still for it."

Joren made a noise of disgust.

Rorik did not answer for a long moment.

Then he reached out and took my chin in his hand.

I almost flinched.

His hand was large and calloused and warm.

He turned my face toward the torch, and his thumb passed over the line the sword had cut under my jaw.

It was only to look at the wound.

I told myself that.

His thumb stopped at the edge of the cut, and neither of us moved.

"Fourteen days," Rorik said, very low. "You stay in this cell. You don't shift inside my hold. You don't speak to your people unless I'm in the room."

"Rorik," Joren said.

"She lives till the full moon."

"If she lies, I want to be the one who does it."

"If she lies, it's mine."

He let go of my chin.

Then his eyes dropped to my hand, still pressed to my stomach.

"Take your hand away."

"It's nothing."

"Take it away, Luna."

I lowered my hand slowly.

The front of my tunic was black and stiff with blood, soaked through at the belly.

The cloth under it was torn where a spear had opened me to the gut a few hours ago.

Under the tear the skin was smooth.

There was no wound, only a faint pale line that faded as we watched.

Joren took a step back.

Rorik did not move.

He stared at the place where I should have been dying.

"I have seen you bleed like that before," he said, almost to himself.

"In my sleep."

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