Yet another marks the doorframe.
The door lies slightly ajar. Heart thudding, I push it wider and step over the threshold. The air inside is cool and smellsfaintly of the forest. I take the stairs heedless of the danger, drawn upward until I enter my bedroom.
My blankets are rumpled, much like I left them, but a prickling awareness skitters under my skin.
Not raiders for nothing has been taken.
Scent,hisscent, earthy and wild.
Yet his is not the only scent. Two more, distinct, reach my nose.
How can I possibly distinguish something so complex?
The three scores on my door…
I touch my fingers to my throat where he licked, feeling a faint tingle there.
A high, mournful howl pulls my eyes to the tiny window. The hair along my arms lifts.
My wolf.
Where does that certainty come from?
Another howl joins the first, and then another takes up the call. Beneath the place where fear should be, something darker stirs.
Chapter Three
EVANTHE
“Evanthe!”
The sound of a familiar voice makes me dash back down the stairs and out through my doorway to the street, where Mistress Nina is approaching. She is escorted by the baker, Master Harry, who lives just past us.
“My sweet lass!” She hurries forward, snatching me close for a hug before setting me away so she can inspect me. “You’re alive. I thought—” Her voice lowers to a whisper. “I thought they’d taken you, or hurt you.”
I catch Harry watching us before he moves on.
“What happened?” Mistress Nina demands. “I was cut off afore I could reach the garrison, and when it was over, I searched and could not find you anywhere.”
“A raider chased me. A wolf…” There was more than one wolf, for I’m thinking about the russet one too. “He killed the raider. Then I—” I am reluctant to confess that I went into the woods, but the softening in her expression tells me she alreadyknows there is more, and I add, “I ran into the woods… and… and the wolf found me.”
An emotion I cannot pinpoint flickers over her face before she drags me in for another hug.
“Don’t mind it, dear. I dare say you were terrified. The wolf was likely only curious. But you have your charm. It marks you as my… apprentice. And the beasts respect the ancient lore.”
My mind spins, trying to put the pieces together. Why did she hesitate over the word apprentice? I begin to suspect that Mistress Nina is more than she seems. That maybeshecalled the wolves…
But no. I must be mistaken.
“He didn’t touch you, now, did he?”
She sets me at arm’s length, her eyes searching mine.
My cheeks heat. I love Mistress Nina well already, and I am lying by omission.
I did not have the charm, and I feel guilty for not confessing as much.
“No,” I say, no longer lying by omission only, now. “He did not touch me.”
