Chapter 14: Silver in the Fever

I took Jasper's knife arm in my jaws before he finished turning.

The blade fell, and I heard the bone in his wrist give.

He screamed, and I dragged him down onto the stones, and I did not let go.

Then headlights swept the ridge.

Three trucks came up the north road, and Crowe wolves poured out of them, the beta in front.

He had been following us since the chain.

They had Jasper's two men on their faces in the snow in the time it took me to spit out a mouthful of Jasper's sleeve.

I shifted back, shaking, and ran across the ring on bare feet.

Mathias lay on his side, a man again, with the knife wound in his ribs dark and wet.

His lips were grey.

"It's silver," the witch said, standing over us. "It won't close while a sliver stays in. I can take it out."

"You gave Jasper the knife," I said.

"I did. I'm old, and I wanted to see what you'd do."

"Get away from him."

She went, without argument.

Odette had pulled herself up on the slab, wrists raw, and she was staring at me with my own eyes.

"Val," she said. "Let me help."

"You can hold the lantern."

She held it.

I found the sliver with two fingers and drew it out, and Mathias arched off the snow without a sound.

Then I wrapped my coat around his ribs and the beta lifted him.

We carried him down to the Crowe lodge and laid him in his own bed, the one where I had asked him three times.

The fever came at midnight.

The silver had been in him too long.

He burned, and he talked, and I sat in the chair with a basin of cold water and listened.

"Don't go over the stone," he said once.

"I'm here."

"You're not. You've gone back across."

I wrung out the cloth and laid it on his forehead.

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