Chapter 9: What He Kept

Mathis's POV

She slept hard, and I sat beside her and listened to her breathe.

The shift had taken everything out of her.

Her shoulder was bandaged in clean cloth, and fever had come up in her skin, so she lay on her side with her knees drawn up under my coat.

Her hair had come loose from its knot.

Three years I had waited to see that hair on a pillow, and now it was here, in a canvas tent in a cold grove, on a night I had no right to be happy.

I kept my hands to myself.

It was harder than the war had been.

The stone lay against my chest on its cord, warm from my skin.

I had worn it since the night her father died.

I drew it out and turned it in the lantern light.

Half a ruby, cut flat down one side.

The other half hung in her pocket, in her coat, three feet from my hand.

For three years I had told myself she would come, and the month the vow ended, she did not.

Then she stood at the Silverfang gate with her chin up in a grey dress and let her scent out, and my knees nearly went.

That scent.

I had smelled it on her father's coat, and I had smelled it in my dreams ever since.

She turned and caught my eye, and the whole yard was on its knees.

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