My Sister Faked Blindness, So I Destroyed Them All novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Boot Knife

In the lower-farm cabin Keeva keeps a strip of the wolfsbane belt as proof, and at dawn her brother demands her greenhouse or Bram's hand.

The cabin was one room at the end of the lower farms, with a stove, a table and a single narrow bed.

I had counted its floorboards for a year, in my first life.

I knew which one creaked.

Bram carried my bag in and set it on the bed without opening it.

Then he put the belt on the table, wrapped in a clean cloth, and stepped back from it.

"Nobody touches that with bare hands," he said. "Not me, not you."

"You'd know," I said.

He turned and looked at me.

I kept my hand on the knife hidden in my boot and my eyes on his face.

"I'll take the porch," he said. "You keep the bed."

"Separate beds," I said. "A year and a day. You don't touch me."

"I wasn't going to."

"You'll forgive me if I don't take your word for it."

He nodded slowly.

"Boot's a bad place for a knife," he said. "It cuts you when you run. Put it under the pillow."

My mouth went dry.

"I don't have a knife."

"All right," he said, and went to the stove.

I stood in the middle of the floor with my heart going hard.

In my first life, he had never once talked to me this way.

It was a trick, I told myself.

A man who wants a woman to relax lets her keep her knife.

He took a pair of iron tongs off the wall, lifted the cloth, and carried the belt to the stove.

"Wait," I said.

He stopped with the door of the stove open.

"Don't burn all of it."

I took the knife out of my boot, since he had already seen it, and cut a strip from the end of the braid.

The leather smoked where the blade touched it.

I dropped the strip into an empty jam jar and screwed the lid on tight.

Bram watched me do it.

"Someone handed you a belt that kills wolves in front of the whole pack," I said. "I'd like to keep a piece."

"So would I," he said.

He put the rest into the stove, shut the door, and opened both windows.

The smell of burning wolfsbane rolled thin and bitter across the room.

He stood in the draft with his back to me, breathing slowly through his nose.

"Your sister made that?" he said.

"She says she did."

"She's blind."

"So everyone says."

He turned and looked at me, and I saw him decide not to ask.

"Give me your hand," he said.

"No."

"The burn is going to blister. I have salve."

"I'll do it myself."

"You can't wrap your own palm," he said.

He stood there with the little tin in his fist and waited.

He did not step closer.

I thought, here it comes.

I held my hand out stiffly.

He knelt on the floor by the bed so his head was lower than mine.

His fingers were enormous and rough, and they shook a little when they touched the burn.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It's going to sting."

It did.

He wrapped the gauze around my palm three times, neatly, and tied it off without pulling.

My wolf pressed against the inside of my skin, quiet and warm.

She wanted me to lean into him.

I took my hand back.

"You broke a foreman's jaw," I said.

"I did."

"Everyone says you enjoyed it."

His shoulders went tight.

"He was beating a boy with a pipe," he said. "The boy was eleven. I took the pipe off him and he fell against a post."

"That isn't what the report says."

"The report was written by the foreman's brother."

He stood up and went out onto the porch, and the door closed softly behind him.

I lay down on the narrow bed in my boots with the knife under the pillow.

I listened for the footsteps I remembered.

Nothing came.

Somewhere past midnight, I heard him shift on the porch boards, and the old boards creaked once, and he stayed where he was.

At dawn I was awake and dressed when the knock came.

It was not Bram's knock.

It was three hard raps.

Bram opened the door.

Tobias stood on the step with two of my father's guards behind him and a folder under his arm.

He looked past Bram at me and smiled.

"Morning, little sister. Sleep well in your new home?"

"Get off the porch," I said.

"I'm here on Dad's orders." He held up the folder. "The greenhouse is Dahlia's now. The keys, the deed, the seed accounts. Sign the transfer."

I was furious and afraid at once.

The greenhouse was the only good thing I had.

"No," I said.

"Then Dad's order covers him too." Tobias nodded at Bram. "Your clause protects you from your mate, Keeva. It says nothing about him."

He looked at Bram's hands, the scarred knuckles hanging open at his sides.

"The hand that broke the foreman's jaw is the first thing the guards will take," Tobias said. "Sign, or we start with the right one."

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