The Wolfless Contract Luna novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Steam

Blackwater had its own hot spring, and Hester decided I needed it.

"Your shoulders are up around your ears," she said. "Go and soak. Bram will show you the path."

"I can find a path."

"Bram will show you," she repeated, in the voice she used on the pups, and shoved a towel into my arms.

So at ten that night I stood at the edge of a pool of steaming black water, under snow-heavy pines, with a lantern on a rock.

And I could not move.

It was the same smell. Sulfur and wet stone.

The same steam curling up around my ankles.

For a moment I wasn't looking at the water. I was looking at Garrick's hand on the small of Imogen's back.

"Cora."

Bram's voice came from beside me, low and unhurried.

"I'm all right."

"You're not breathing."

I drew a breath. It shook.

"It's only a spring," I said. "It didn't do anything to me."

"No. But somebody did something to you in one."

He didn't ask me to explain.

He walked around in front of me, and stood facing the dark trees, with his back to me and his shoulders squared.

"I'll stay right here," he said. "I'll keep my eyes on the woods. Nobody comes down this path but me. When you're in, tell me, and I'll sit on the far rock and not look."

I stared at his back.

He had taken off his coat, and I could see the line of his shoulders under the grey shirt.

He was blocking the path with his whole body.

That was what undid me. Not the words. The way he stood.

I slid off my dress in the lantern light, and the cold bit my skin.

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