Chapter 10: Terms, Luna

The scrap of paper lay on the lodge table, where Bram had thrown it.

Return what's mine. Garrick's hand, the same hand that signed my wedding vows.

"He means the land," Bram said. "Or he means you."

"He burned a village to say it."

"Ashfall burned it. He only sent the words."

Hester cleaned the gash, packed it with herbs, and wrapped his ribs in linen.

Then she looked at the two of us and pointed at me.

"Salve on the burns, twice before dawn. He won't sleep and he won't stay still, so sit on him if you have to."

"Hester," Bram said.

"I'm seventy-one. I'm going to bed."

She went, and the door clicked shut behind her.

His bedroom was the biggest room in the lodge and the barest.

One lamp, one bed, a stack of ledgers on the floor, and the smell of cedar and him.

He sat on the edge of the mattress in a pair of loose trousers, with his chest bare and the linen pale against his skin.

The blisters along his left side had gone angry red.

I knelt in front of him with the jar of salve and my sleeves pushed up.

"Hold still."

"I am still."

"You're breathing at me."

"It's a habit," he said.

I smoothed the salve over the first blister.

He drew in a sharp breath, and his stomach muscles flexed.

My fingers moved down along the burn, slowly, past his ribs, to the hard line of his hip.

He didn't say a word.

I could feel him watching my hands.

"The terms," he said, finally, rough. "No touching."

"Nobody's watching," I said. "You told me that yourself."

His eyes lifted to mine.

The lamp threw gold on the scar along his jaw, and on his mouth.

"Cora."

"You pulled a roof off me tonight."

"A beam."

"You got hurt in my place."

"That's the job."

"It isn't in the contract," I said.

I put the jar down on the floor.

Then I put both hands on his shoulders, and pushed him back onto the bed.

He let me.

I climbed over him, one knee on either side of his thighs, careful of his left side, and looked down.

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