Chapter 4: Through the Door

The pain began after midnight.

Maeve had warned me, in the hour she sat on the end of my bed grinding dried root into a paste.

Ten years of wolfsbane did not leave a body politely.

She had left me a bucket, a jug of water, and a strip of leather to bite down on.

I did not need the leather until the cramps hit.

They came in waves from the base of my spine, each one worse than the one before.

I curled on my side on the floor with my forehead on the cold boards and breathed through my teeth.

My skin crawled.

My ears rang.

And then, under the ringing, I heard the house.

Footsteps on the stairs.

A pipe knocking in the wall.

A man snoring two rooms away, and a baby turning over in a crib at the far end of the hall.

I had not heard anything that clearly in ten years.

The air smelled of woodsmoke and old coffee and the wolves who lived here, each with their own edge of scent.

Then I smelled Bram.

He was just outside my door.

He had not left.

I pressed my forehead harder against the floor.

*Wynne.*

It was not his voice.

It came from inside my own head, thin and rusty from disuse.

*Wynne. It's me.*

I stopped breathing.

"Briar?" I whispered.

*You burned the papers.* She sounded close to laughing. *I felt the heat from here. I didn't think you would.*

Tears ran sideways across my nose and dripped on the floor.

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