Chapter 7: Cold Coffee

The fox opened one amber eye, saw me looking, and was a man again before I could blink.

He sat up on the bearskin with the blanket slung low around his hips and his hand over his face.

The bite on his shoulder had closed overnight to a raised pink line.

My back had stopped hurting.

I lay there naked in the grey light and waited for him to say something.

"The door was open," he said into his palm.

"I noticed."

"I didn't open it."

"The fox did."

"There is no fox. There's me, and there's whatever happens to me."

He dragged his hand down his face.

"I sleepwalked out of my own skin and onto your chest, and you let me."

"I liked it."

He went still.

When he looked at me, his eyes had changed again.

They had gone flat and clean.

"Last night was the run," he said. "The blood, the fight. Men do things after a fight."

I sat up and pulled the bearskin over my chest.

"Do they."

"You were hurt. I was not myself. It was a mistake and I'll take the blame for it."

"You told me not to leave."

"You told me."

I stared at him.

He was right.

I had said it first.

The humiliation came up my throat, and under it came something sharper.

He believed it.

He sat on a fur rug in the ruins of the fire.

He honestly believed this room had held an accident of adrenaline.

Or he was terrified, and said it so I'd hate him before he lost his nerve.

I didn't care which.

"All right," I said.

His brows twitched.

"All right?"

"You've decided what it was. Fine."

I stood up with the bearskin around me and found my slip on the hearth.

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