Chapter 13: Reaching

I stood outside the pavilion with the cold coming up through my boots and six words going around my head.

Six words would free him.

I could not make my mouth shape them.

"Don't tell him yet," Odessa said.

She pushed herself up off the crate with a grunt, and her stick scraped the gravel.

"He's bleeding," I said.

"He's bled for three years. A few more days won't finish him. The wrong word said under the Moon might."

"What does that mean?"

"It means find out why your mouth won't open before you open it."

She limped away between the tents and did not look back.

The pavilion flap lifted behind me.

Ronan stood in the doorway in his trousers and an open shirt, with the sling hanging off one shoulder.

His hair was wild.

His expression was hollow, searching the empty space where I had been.

"You left," he said.

"I woke before dawn."

"I know. I woke at the same second."

He came down the step slowly.

"For three years I woke up like that every morning," he said. "Reaching for a person who wasn't there."

I kept my face still.

"You vanished without a word, Eira."

"I know."

"I sent scouts to every border. Twice a rogue camp sent me a girl's torn boots and asked me to say whether they were yours."

His voice did not shake, and that was how I knew what it cost him.

"I didn't get to hate you. I didn't get to bury you. I only got to wait."

Keep reading free with an account. Start His Luna? Never, He Rejected Me First from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.