Chapter 9: Your Rule

They left him on the border stones, on his side of the line, the way Enid had ordered.

By dark he hadn't come to the gate for water, and he hadn't shifted.

Odette packed a kit into a canvas bag and set it on the kitchen table in front of me.

"Boiled cloth, salve, tape and willow bark," she said.

"If I send a man up there, Enid calls it an invasion. If you go, it's a girl visiting her family."

"He's not my family."

"Then it's a girl visiting."

"The terms say he can't touch me."

"I notice they don't say a word about you touching him."

I looked at her.

She looked back over her glasses, perfectly serious, and handed me the bag.

Dorian was waiting on the porch with his arms folded.

"I'm your witness," he said. "I saw you leave the yard at nine. I won't see anything else until morning."

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me," he said, and looked at the dark hill.

"I'd like to kill him a little less than I did this afternoon. That's the only reason."

Garrick had dragged himself two hundred yards down the Blood Moon side to an old ranger's line cabin.

It had one window and a woodstove.

I followed the trail of dark drops through the frost.

The door hung open.

He was on the floor against the wall, in his jeans, with his shirt in a ball beside him.

His whole left side was a purple and black mess, one rib standing wrong under the skin.

His lip was swollen shut at the corner.

He lifted his head when I came in and tried to stand up.

"Don't," I said.

"You shouldn't be here."

"I know."

"The terms."

"They say you don't touch me."

I dropped to my knees next to him and opened the bag.

"They don't say I can't touch you."

"Tilda."

"Be quiet."

I wet the cloth and pressed it to his lip.

He flinched once and then held perfectly still.

I cleaned the cut.

I worked down his jaw and over his throat.

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