I pressed my hand to the glass, traced the pattern of frost. “What happens now?”
He shrugged, but there was purpose in the way his jaw set. “Now? We survive. Together.”
I nodded, and the word felt like a promise.
Behind us, the fire flickered back to life, casting long shadows on the walls. The wolf on his skin bared its teeth, but this time, I didn’t flinch.
I stared back, unafraid.
***
The snow slid from the thatch with wet plops. I counted each one, thirteen so far, like counting heartbeats. Moab's knife clicked against the wood as he shaved tinder, his scarred knuckles flexing with each stroke. He unwrapped a parcel ofdried meat, cut it into five identical pieces, and laid them in a perfect line beside his other possessions: a compass, a strange metal flask, and the small glass bottle of clear liquid that smelled like nothing in my world.
I shifted my ankle and winced. The skin had faded from angry red to a mottled purple, but it still pulsed with each heartbeat. I pulled my hair back, twisting it into a knot at my neck, and breathed in the sweet woodsmoke.
"What is that?" I pointed to the glass bottle he'd used on my wounds.
"Antiseptic." His mouth quirked at the corner when I stumbled over the word. "An-ti-sep-tic. Kills the bad things you can't see."
"Like evil spirits?"
"Something like that." He didn't laugh at me.
The high whinny of a horse cut through the air, followed by the hollow thud of hooves on frozen ground. My stomach dropped as if I'd been thrown from a cliff. Moab's head snapped toward the sound, his body transforming in an instant. Gone was the man who'd shared his food. In his place stood something wild, knife already in hand, shoulders hunched forward like a predator about to spring.
“No—” I hissed, barely above breath, and found myself clutching at his sleeve. The feel of the leather against my skin was so real, so dense and alive, that I nearly forgot the world for the second it took to realize he was truly there, not a fevered vision or a trick of the storm.
“They’re looking for you,” he said, voice a warning, eyes gone dark and flat.
“I know them,” I whispered, my own breath loud in my ears. “If they see you—if you open the door—you’ll doom us both. You look like a demon to them.”
He bared his teeth, but it wasn’t a smile. “I’ve been called worse.”
Another sound, a man’s voice, shouting not in anger but in command. I heard my own name, broken by the thickness of the local tongue. “Lady Scarlette! Come forth, and all will be forgiven! On the authority of the new Lord, Sir Aldric, you are called to return!”
A jolt of pure horror made my vision tunnel. I dug my nails into Moab’s jacket, hard enough that I expected him to shake me off, but instead he held perfectly still, letting me anchor myself. His own hands were at his sides, fingers curled and ready.
“They’re coming here,” I breathed. “They’ll look in the windows. They’ll search.”
He nodded. “Then we hide.”
I glanced around the room, mind scrambling for what little I remembered from childhood games. “Behind the pelts,” I said, pointing to the cluster of animal skins that hung from the crossbeam near the hearth. It had been a meat locker once, when the old earl hunted here; the skins were thick, stiff with years of dust, but they made a curtain heavy enough to hide behind.
Moab moved first, tugging me by the elbow so I nearly tripped over my own foot. The movement sent a lance of pain up my leg, but I bit it back, swallowing any sound. He pressed me into the corner behind the curtain of furs, then wedged himself between me and the room, a barrier of warmth and muscle and animal scent.
The moment the pelts swung shut, the world shrank to the space between our bodies. My chest rattled with every breath. I could smell the smoke clinging to his hair, the metallic tang of sweat under the sharp sting of antiseptic, the faintest undertone of blood from the still-healing cuts on his hands. I tried not to think of how close we were, how his thigh braced my knee, how my face was nearly buried in the crook of his arm. It was as ifwe had been thrust into a confession booth, the kind where even breathing might betray your secrets.
Outside, the voices grew louder. Men dismounted, boots crunching on the frozen leaves. I heard the scrape of a sword drawn free, the easy arrogance of men who believed themselves the only law in the world.
“Is she here?” one of them called, a rough, familiar voice. “Check the shed, and the pit behind.”
“They say she’s gone mad,” another voice answered, this one higher, fretful. “That she runs barefoot in the woods, howling. If she’s taken the devil into her, I want nothing to do with it.”
“Hold your tongue,” barked a third—Sir Aldric’s, I realized, though I’d only ever heard it in the echoing marble of my father’s hall. Here, it was stripped bare of civility, all command and no mercy. “Brother Tomas says the circle was active again. There’s been a death at the Weatherby place. The Widow’s neck broken like a hen’s. The marks are clear—witchcraft, or worse. We will find her.”
A silence, sharp as the edge of a blade, then the cautious shuffling of boots outside the door.
Moab tensed, every muscle taut as a wire, one arm braced against the wall and the other angled to shield my body. I felt his breath on my temple, the warmth of it an anchor in the rolling sea of my fear.
