My Twin Was Meant to Die at Sixteen, So They Spent Me novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Warm Hands

Brynn runs the ridge without losing her breath, and her friend Rowan brings news that Clara collapsed. Brynn pours Hester's nightly tonic onto the cabin floor. Her father appears in the doorway and tells her to put the chain back on.

I ran, because I did not know what else to do with the heat.

It followed me up the creek path and along the north ridge, and my legs kept going when they should have quit.

At the top I stopped and waited to cough.

I did not cough.

I had never been able to run uphill without bending over and wheezing.

Tonight my lungs just filled and emptied, easy, and my heart stayed slow and steady.

"Brynn!"

Rowan came crashing up the path in her boots, with a cloth bundle under one arm.

She stopped three steps away and stared.

"You're steaming," she said.

I looked down.

White vapor was coming off my bare arms into the cold air.

"Is that normal?" I asked.

"On me, yes. I'm a wolf." Rowan pointed at me. "On you, no. You've been cold since we were six."

She handed me the bundle.

It was warm bread, wrapped in a dish towel, and a wedge of cheese.

"My mom says eat," she said. "She also says your father's a fool, but she said it into the stew, so I didn't hear it."

I laughed, and it came out wobbly.

Then I asked the thing I had been trying not to ask.

"Did they stop howling?"

Rowan's face went serious.

"Clara fainted at the table right after you left," she said. "She went down hard. Your mother screamed, and the Beta carried her up to the house."

I put the bread down.

"Is she okay?"

"I don't know. Hester ran up after them with her bag." Rowan swallowed. "Brynn, what did you do at the creek? The whole pack felt something go through the valley. Elders were looking at the sky."

"I took off my chain."

"So?"

"So I've never taken it off. My father made me swear."

Rowan frowned at me for a long moment.

"That's weird," she said. "Why does he check it every night?"

"He says it's a Moon blessing."

"Does Clara's get checked too?"

"Every night. Same as mine."

"But you're the cold one, and she's the sick one," Rowan said slowly. "Huh."

She did not say anything else, and I did not either.

But the word sat between us, and I did not like how it fit.

We climbed to the old hunting cabin at the north boundary.

It had been empty since before we were born, with a stove, a sagging bunk and a window that faced the whole valley.

Rowan lit the stove with a match from her pocket and I sat on the bunk with the bread.

It was the first meal I had ever eaten warm all the way through.

When I took off my other glove, my fingers were pink.

Rowan watched me turn them over.

"You look different," she said.

"Different how?"

"You have color," Rowan said. "You've been the same grey since we were six."

I did not know what to say to that.

So I reached into my jacket and took out Hester's second bottle, the one she always slipped me in case I woke in the night.

It was heavy and brown and sealed with wax.

I held it for a while.

Then I pulled the wax off with my teeth and poured the tonic out onto the cabin floor.

The boards turned dark, and a smell of iron and cold tea rose up.

Rowan wrinkled her nose.

"What was in that?"

"I don't know. I've drunk one every night since I was four."

"And you just poured it out."

"I'd like to know what it was for," I said. "Before I drink another."

Rowan started to answer.

Then she stopped, and her head turned toward the door.

Her nostrils flared.

"Brynn," she said quietly. "Someone's coming up the path."

"One person?"

"One. He's not hurrying."

I stood up.

My heart began to beat fast, and I was glad that it could.

The door opened without a knock.

My father stood in the frame with the moon behind him, no coat, his ring dark on his finger.

He looked at my bare throat first.

He did not look at my face.

"Brynn," he said, very gently. "Put it back on."

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