He Starved My Wolf for Ten Years, So I Burned His Proof novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Unless I Ask

Fiona picked the turnout beside the river bridge, where the gravel widened and the road went blind in both directions.

She came alone, in her father's grey sedan, at dusk.

Bram stopped his truck a hundred yards back and cut the engine.

"I won't hear a word," he said. "But I'll see you the whole way."

"Stay in the truck."

"I'll stay in the truck."

I walked down the road with my hands open at my sides.

Fiona got out and leaned against the sedan.

She had no braid.

Her hair hung loose and unwashed, and the cream sweater had a smear of soot across the shoulder.

The silver leaf pin was fastened to her collar, and its left tip was bent.

"You look well," she said.

"I look like someone who spent a night in a barn full of smoke. You'd know."

"I wasn't there."

"You left a note on the desk."

She flinched, very slightly.

"I wrote it before," she said. "I thought it would be funny."

I waited.

Fiona turned her face toward the river.

"I carried that cup every morning for ten years," she said. "Do you know what I told myself? That I was the only one who was ever kind to you.

"Papa said you were sick, and I took you tea. Nobody else would go down the road."

"It was poison, Fiona."

"It was medicine!"

Her voice cracked on the word, and she heard it, and she laughed once.

"No. No, it wasn't. I knew it wasn't by the second winter. I watched your handwriting change."

"And you kept going."

"Because it was easier than stopping." She turned back to me, and her pretty face was sharp. "You think you had a bad ten years. You slept, Wynne. You slept in a cabin where nobody asked you for anything.

"I had ten years of him. Every dinner. Every word I said to Bram.

"You were the lucky one."

I looked at her for a long moment.

There was a thing I could have said, and it would have been true, and I put it away.

"Tell me what he's going to do," I said.

Her mouth tightened.

"The old law. He'll call the right of the ring. Any chair of the Alliance can challenge a claim to the Larkin seat by combat, before a full hall. If the claimant can't hold a shift for a full bout, the claim is void."

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