Half Claimed novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: Second Night
Idris's tower room sat at the top of a long, steep stair.
I had not been invited.
The Moot had risen at dusk, the Alphas had gone to their fires, and I had walked the hall twice looking for something else to do.
Then I had stopped pretending and climbed.
The door stood ajar.
He was at the narrow window with his back to me, bare to the waist, the bandage pale across his ribs.
A fire burned low in the grate.
His father's grey coat hung on a peg beside it, with the fur collar worn flat where a big hand had gripped it.
"I felt you on the stairs," he said, without turning. "From the fortieth step."
"Then you had time to put a shirt on."
"I thought about it."
I shut the door and shot the bolt.
He turned around then, and the firelight caught the cut on his cheek and the hollows under his eyes.
"Sit," I said. "Let me see the stitches."
"They're fine."
"Sit down, Idris."
He sat on the edge of the bed, which was built for a man his size and still looked narrow.
I knelt and peeled back the linen.
The seam had held.
The skin around it was an angry plum colour, and my own ribs ached with it, dully, like a memory.
"Your father had this room," I said.
"He died in that bed." He said it to the fire. "Two winters ago, in the third week of snow."
"You don't have to."
"I want to. I haven't said it aloud."
I sat back on my heels and waited.
"His lungs went in the autumn," Idris said. "By midwinter he couldn't climb the stairs, so I carried him up."
"He weighed less than my coat. I carried him up and down for a month, and he apologized every time."
The rest of this chapter is part of the paid portion of the series. Chapters 1–12 of Half Claimed are free to read — start from the beginning, then unlock the rest with coins in the app.
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