Cursed by the Light for Loving the Dark novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Wolf in the Barn

In the night a huge black wolf comes into the barn and lies against Linnet; at dawn a naked man wakes beside her and stares at her arms.

I didn't go to bed that night.

Mom had made me up a bed in my old room, and I lay in it for an hour with the page in my hand.

My own name, in my own writing, asking Heaven to sentence the man I loved.

At midnight the Wane started burning.

It always burned worst at night, a line of heat running up the inside of each arm.

I took the quilt and my slippers and went out the back door to the barn.

The hay in the loft was cold and dry, and the cold was the only thing that helped.

I lay down with my arms stretched out on it and stared at the rafters.

Mom's lantern went out in the kitchen window across the yard.

Across the road, the old Pruett house was lit in every window.

Cassian had taken it for the wedding, and the whole town had watched him carry Odile's bags up the steps.

Somewhere past midnight a howl went up from that house, one long note.

It was not an animal's howl, and I knew exactly whose it was.

I put my hands over my ears and lay there with my teeth shut.

Then, a long time later, something heavy walked into the barn.

I heard its claws on the boards before I saw it.

I did not scream, because I knew that tread.

It came up the loft ladder, which no animal that size should have managed, and stood at the top.

A black wolf, as big as a pony, with eyes the color of embers.

It looked at me and I looked at it.

Seven years ago I had watched this animal tear an Abyss lord out of his armor to keep me from being touched.

"You're not supposed to be here," I said. "You're supposed to be across the road with your fiancée."

The wolf didn't move.

"She's very nice," I said. "She gave me water."

His ears went flat.

I laughed, and it turned into a cough, and the cough hurt all the way down my arms.

The wolf crossed the loft in three steps.

He lowered his huge head and pushed his nose against my wrist, right over the black lines.

He breathed in, and his whole chest went still.

A low sound came out of him, not quite a growl.

"Don't," I said. "It's nothing. Don't do that."

He did it anyway.

He ran his nose slowly up the inside of my arm, to the elbow, where the lines stopped.

Then he turned around twice in the hay and lay down against my side.

He was so warm I could have cried.

The heat in my arms didn't stop, but it dulled.

"This is a terrible idea," I told him.

His breath went out against my neck.

I put one hand in the thick fur of his shoulder, because I couldn't stand not to.

It was exactly as coarse as I remembered.

I had spent three hundred years in the Light, and nothing in it had ever felt like that.

"I didn't sign it," I said into his ruff.

My throat closed on the next word, and I stopped, because I knew better than to push it.

The wolf's ear flicked toward my mouth, listening.

"You can't hear me," I said. "That's the problem."

He nosed my chin, once.

I fell asleep with my face in his fur and my hand wrapped in it.

I slept better than I had in seven years.

I woke to bright light coming through the cracks in the barn wall and the sound of a rooster in the yard.

The fur under my hand had changed.

It was skin.

I opened my eyes and found my face pressed against a man's bare shoulder.

Cassian lay stretched out beside me in the hay with no clothes on and one arm thrown over my waist.

His eyes were closed, and his black hair was full of straw.

The long scar across his palm lay against my ribs.

I didn't breathe.

Then his hand tightened on my waist, and his eyes opened.

He looked at my face.

He looked at the hay, and the loft, and himself, and I watched him work out where he was.

His hand didn't move off me, and neither did mine off him.

"Linnet," he said, in a voice thick with sleep. "What did I do last night?"

"You came in, and you lay down," I said. "That's all."

"I don't do that."

"I know. I saw you come up the ladder."

His jaw set, and his eyes dropped to my arm, where the quilt had slid away.

In the daylight the black lines were plain, thick branching lines that reached all the way to the elbow.

He sat up fast and took my wrist in both hands.

"What is this?" he said.

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