Chapter 9: The Tin

Kestrel's POV

I did not sleep in the loft.

I lay on Ida's quilt with my eyes open and felt his arm under my ribs, over and over, until the window turned grey.

I told myself it was the cord.

I told myself the warmth that had climbed my arm in the cellar was only his body making a mess of the thread.

Then I rolled over and pressed my face into the pillow, because I did not believe myself.

Joss slept on a bench by the cottage door with his boots on and his jacket over his face.

He had refused to go back to the Alpha's house.

"I'm a guest," he had said, and put his feet up on the stove. "A guest sleeps where he likes."

At first light, the cottage door opened, and Joss was on his feet with his hand on his belt before he was fully awake.

It was Ida.

She had her bag over her shoulder, a shawl pulled over her head, and both arms wrapped around something against her chest.

"Shut the door," she said.

Joss shut it.

Ida went to the table and laid down a small tin.

It was dented at one corner, with a worn painted lid.

"Alpha's kitchen," she said. "High shelf over the stove. Maud went upstairs at four. I walked in and said I needed yarrow."

I came down the ladder with my hand on the rail.

"You're sure it's hers?"

"It's got her initials scratched under the lid. She's had it twenty years."

She opened it.

Black leaf, tight and curled, the kind that comes from a shop in town.

Ida tipped a spoonful out onto a clean white cloth and spread it with the back of a knife.

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