Chapter 5: The Doorway

Caly's POV

The bee got me on the neck, under the jaw, at ten past noon.

I had been standing in the orchard with my veil pushed up, because the day was warm for the end of September and I had thought the girls were calm.

One of them was not.

I slapped at it and felt the hot needle go in.

"Don't," said a voice behind me. "You'll pump the venom."

I stood very still.

Ned McCracken came up the terrace on foot with his hands empty.

I had not heard him on the grass, and I should have.

A man that size does not walk quietly by accident.

"I know what I'm doing," I said.

"Then do it."

I put my fingers to my neck.

The stinger was a black thorn in a red lump, and I could not see to get under it.

He stopped in front of me.

He was close enough that I had to tip my head back to look at his face, and he did not look at my eyes.

He looked at the sting.

"Turn your chin," he said.

I turned my chin.

His thumb came to my skin below my ear.

It was rough and hot and very steady.

He put the nail against the edge of the stinger and scraped sideways, once, the way a man scrapes a splinter off a board.

It came out.

His thumb stayed where it was.

It lay along the line of my pulse, and I felt my pulse hit it, hard, three times.

I could not look away from his hands.

They were the biggest hands I had ever seen on a man, scarred across every knuckle, and they were being careful.

"There," he said.

His voice had dropped.

His thumb did not move.

I told myself he was checking the swelling.

I told myself I had not noticed the sound he made in his chest when my pulse jumped under his hand.

It was low and brief, and it was not a word.

Behind him, at the end of the terrace, his beta stood with three of his men, watching.

Ned took his hand away.

"It will swell," he said, loudly, to the terrace. "She'll want ice."