Chapter 21: Midwinter Morning

Conall's POV

The shed at the logging road gate smelled the way it had smelled the night Catriona drank, of smoke and bitter root and old wool.

It was seven in the morning, and the snow outside the window was blue.

The old woman sat on a stool by her stove, with the jars behind her.

I put the vial on her counter.

She looked at it and did not touch it.

"You paid me four times what it's worth," she said.

"It wasn't a price."

"No." She nodded slowly. "I saw that."

"Tell me what it does."

"You know what it does. You drink it, and the thread is cut from your side too. Her sleep, her fear, her hands on a stove.

"All of it goes quiet.

"For both of you."

"And if I don't?"

She scratched her chin.

"Forty years I've sold the second vial," she said.

"Men took it to stop the hurting. Women took it so they'd never be looked for.

"Not one ever came back and put it on my counter."

"Answer me."

"I am," she said, and held up one crooked finger.

"A cut thread grows back only if the other half stays open.

"Yours has.

"The drinker is the only one who can wake her own end of it.

"It takes nothing but wanting to.

"You can't do it for her. You can't ask her to, either, not and have it be hers.

"You can only sit on your end and be there when she does."

I leaned both hands on the counter.

The wood was worn smooth in two places where other people's hands had gone.

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