Chapter 6: The Flask

For three days nothing happened, and I learned how loud nothing can be.

I sat in the chair across from Lenora's bed from dawn until the lamps went out.

I tasted every cup, every bowl of broth, every spoon of porridge before she did.

Everything was clean.

Caleb sat in his chair on the other side and never once looked away from her, and I tried not to feel what that did through the cord.

On the second night, Ida pressed two fingers to Lenora's gums.

"Pink," she said, and her voice was careful. "Pinker than the day she came."

"She's getting better," Caleb said.

"She's getting clean, Alpha. That's not the same thing."

He looked at me across the bed.

I looked back and said nothing, because Maud was in the room.

Maud was always in the room, knitting, and smiling at me when I drank.

On the third evening I was sitting with my back to the window when the door banged open.

It was the broad man from the mill, and two others behind him, and a boy who could not stop staring at his own boots.

The man held up a small dark flask by its cork.

"Found it," he said. "In the stable at the clinic. In her saddlebag."

He pointed the flask at me.

I stood up.

"I don't have a saddlebag," I said. "I haven't ridden in a year."

"Ida's boy says it's yours. Left in the stall since the night you came."

Ida pushed past the men and snatched the flask out of his hand.

She pulled the cork, sniffed, and her face went hard.

"Wolfsbane," she said. "Tincture. Strong."

The room went silent.

Then Maud made a small, broken sound.

"Oh no," she said. "Oh, no, no, no. Not you. I stood up for you."

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