Carefully, I slide the photograph back under the book, exactly as it was. I sit on the edge of the bed. Wolf's claws click against the floorboards as he wanders in and collapses at my feet with a groan. Through the open door, I hear the creak of the armchair as Afon adjusts his bulk.
I lie back and stare at the ceiling and think about the woman in the blue sundress who laughed at something I'll never know.
It takes me a long time to fall asleep.
6
CAROLINE
The scream rips me out of sleep.
I jolt upright in the bed, heart slamming against my sternum. At first, I have absolutely no idea where I am. Dark room. Unfamiliar ceiling. The smell of woodsmoke and pine and cold, cold, cold.
Then it comes again: a raw, guttural sound from beyond the bedroom door, not quite a word and not quitenotone. It's the kind of noise that lives in the basement of a person's throat, dredged up from somewhere primal and terrible.
It doesn't sound like Afon.
It sounds like an animal being hurt.
Wolf is already on his feet, whining, his nails skittering against the floorboards as he noses at the gap beneath the door.
"Afon?" I call out, but my voice comes out sleep-thick and useless. I throw the quilt off and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The floor is ice against my bare feet. "Afon!"
No answer. Just another groan. It's lower this time, more strangled, like he's choking on something.
My brain, helpful organ that it is, immediately presents me with every worst-case scenario. Intruder. Heart attack. Stroke. Bear.
Bear?!
I lurch off the bed and half-run toward the door, my sprained ankle be damned, because Afon Satyrin might be a grumpy, promise-breaking hermit who picks people up and puts them on counters without their consent like a living Elf on the Shelf, but he's also the only person within a fifteen-mile radius who knows how to keep me alive, and I'm not about to let him die on me before he tells me what I came here to?—
Oh, shit.
My left foot catches the leg of the dresser.
The ankle—the same stupid, already-swollen ankle that got me into this mess—buckles sideways at an angle that ankles were never meant to achieve. A white-hot bolt of pain rockets up my leg and detonates somewhere behind my kneecap. I go down hard, my shin cracking against the floor, and I hear myself yelp like I'm now the animal under duress.
Wolf barks.
And from the other room, the sounds stop.
There's a beat of silence. Then the heavy, disoriented thud of someone lurching to their feet.
"… Caroline?"
His voice is hoarse and wrecked. Like someone dragged it across gravel.
"In here," I manage from my position on the floor, which can best be described as "crumpled." My ankle is throbbing with its own separate heartbeat, faster than mine, angrier than mine. I'm cradling it with both hands and trying not to cry. "I'm fine. I just, I heard you, and I thought?—"
The bedroom door bangs open. Afon fills the frame, backlit by the dim orange glow of dying embers from the fireplace. He's in a T-shirt and the same black jeans he's worn every day since I arrived, and his chest is heaving like he just ran a sprint. His eyes are wild.
"What happened?"
"I fell. Again." I gesture weakly at the dresser. "Your furniture attacked me. It must have been friends with the tree root."
He strides over and kneels in front of me. The shift from disoriented nightmare beast to clinical is so fast it gives me whiplash.
"Ow. Ow.Ow!"I protest when he cups my damaged appendage.
