The Moon She Waited Under novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: Eighth Moon

I asked him about the promise on the morning of the ninth day, with the letter flat on the quilt between us.

"I promised I'd look after Ilse for the rest of her life," Lucan said. "I meant a roof and a clinic. I swore it at her husband's grave."

"Nothing else."

"Nothing. Ask the council. Ask anyone who was there."

I believed him.

The letter went to Kari and Osric that same hour, and by the eighth moon the north side of the ring was crawling with patrol wolves in the trees, none of them visible.

I climbed the ridge alone, a good forty minutes after moonrise.

I had meant to be late.

I told myself it was to see who would come.

It wasn't.

I wanted to see whether he'd still be there.

The stone ring lay silver and empty in the moon.

Lucan stood in the center of it.

He had no coat on, and the grass around his boots was flattened in a circle where he had paced it all evening.

When he saw me, he didn't speak.

He had been standing there since sundown, and I could tell by the way his shoulders sat that he would have stood there until dawn.

"Haskell's men turned back at the north fence," he said at last. "Our patrol saw them and they ran."

"I know."

"You're late."

"I know that, too."

I walked into the ring.

The heat had been building in me for nine days, and with the full moon on my skin it was no longer a wave.

It was everywhere at once.

My hands were warm and my mouth was dry and every step toward him lit another nerve.

"You waited," I said.

"Yes."

"For how long?"

"Since the sun went down." He looked at me, and his voice was low. "I'll wait longer. I would've waited all night."

"Seven times, I stood where you're standing."

"I know."

"And you were somewhere else."

"I know," he said. "I'll hear it as many times as you want to say it."

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