Chapter 11

Noa’s POV

“Don’t sit up,” said Gideon Stone. “You’ll fall over, and I’m too old to pick you up.”

I sat up anyway.

The room tilted, then slowly came back level. I was in my own bed in the east wing, under three blankets, with the curtains half drawn and the river glinting gray outside the window. The light said afternoon. My mouth tasted like pennies.

Gideon sat in a chair by the bed. He wore a heavy wool cardigan, a scarf, and slippers, and he had a cane across his knees. Yesterday he had been a gray shape in a mountain of pillows. Now he was thin and wrinkled and very much awake, and his gold eyes were watching me the way a hawk watches a field mouse that has surprised it.

“Where’s Asher?” I said.

“Outside your door. Pacing. He’s been doing it for six hours. I sent him out because he was breathing too loudly. Old Hannah from the village came and went. She said you need sleep and soup, and that she has never seen anything like you in sixty years of healing.”

“Is he all right?”

“He’s better than he’s been in three years. Which is more than I can say for you.” He tipped his chin at the mirror on the wall. “Have a look.”

I looked.

My face was pale. My eyes were tired. And at my left temple, a lock of my hair had gone silver. Not the soft gray of an old woman. A hard, bright, metal silver, like a fishing lure.

I touched it. It felt like ordinary hair.

“Oh,” I said.

“Yes.”

“That’s from him.”

“That’s from what was in him.” Gideon leaned on the cane. “A Hearth doesn’t make sickness disappear, child. Nothing does. She takes it. She carries it. And her wolf burns it off, a little at a time, the way you’d burn old wood in a stove.”

Ora stirred inside me, very faintly. She felt heavy. Sleepy. Like a dog after a long run in the snow.

Tired, she said. Give me a minute.

“How long does it take?” I asked.

“Depends on how much you take in one go. A little every night, and a long run at dawn, and your wolf will keep up. A lot at once, and she won’t.” He watched my face. “Then it stays.”

“Stays where?”

He reached out with one bony finger and touched the silver lock, very gently.

“There,” he said. “To start.”

A cold drop slid down my back.

“And after the start?”

“The last Hearth Wolf lived three hundred years ago. Her name was Abigail. She came to Ironwood the same way you did, half dead from a broken bond and gold to the bone. The Alpha back then was a hard man with a bad wound and a council that loved him too little and needed him too much.” His voice went quiet. “She healed him every night. She never said no. By the end of the second winter her hair was white as frost, and her wolf had stopped answering her, and she could no longer warm a cup of milk with her two hands.”

“What happened to her?”

“She died in the spring.” Gideon looked at the window. “And the Alpha lived another forty years. And a councilor named Josiah Vane wrote section four of the Charter, so the pack would never be without a Hearth again, if the moon ever sent one.”

I didn’t say anything for a while.

“That’s a terrible story,” I said at last.

“It is.”

“Why are you telling me?”

“Because my grandson is a good man and a fool, and he would let you pour yourself into him until there was nothing left, and he would only notice when you fell over.” His gold eyes came back to me. “And you are a good girl and a fool, and you’d let him.”

“I’m not a girl. I’m twenty-four.”

“I’m ninety-one. Everyone’s a girl.”

That made me laugh. It hurt my ribs.

Gideon smiled a little. Then he took a folded paper from his cardigan pocket and put it on the blanket.

“Half,” he said. “Every night, half of what you think you can give. Then you stop. Then you run at dawn and let your wolf burn it off. If you do that, you’ll heal him in the end. Slower. But you’ll both still be standing.”

“And if I can’t stop?”

“Then you’ll find out what Abigail found out.”

He pushed himself up on the cane. It took him two tries. At the door he paused, and looked back at me over his shoulder, and for one second he looked just like his grandson. The same hard jaw. The same trouble in the eyes.

“He wrote you a note,” he said. “I told him it was a coward’s way of talking. He did it anyway.”

He went out. I heard voices in the hall, low and quick. Asher’s, and Gideon’s, and then footsteps going away.

I picked up the paper.

It was written in black ink, in sharp, slanted letters.

Term nine is accepted. Term ten, from me. You take half. Not one drop more. If you break it, I break term five, and you can yell at me all you want. A.

I read it four times. Then I put it under my pillow, and I lay back down, and I looked at the ceiling with my heart doing a slow, stupid dance.

~

Shira called at four.

“Luna,” she shrieked, before I’d even said hello. “LUNA? Noa Bennett! I go to work for one shift and you become the queen of Montana?”

“It’s only a title.”

“It’s only a title, she says. My mother is crying. Your mother has told half of Silverlake that she always knew. Talia hasn’t said a word to anyone, which is new.” A pause. “Are you okay?”

I looked at my hair in the mirror.

“I’m tired,” I said.

“That’s not an answer.”

“I’m learning to fight.”

There was a long silence on the line.

“I’m sorry,” said Shira. “I thought you said fight.”

“In twenty-nine days. A she-wolf from Idaho called Kezia Vane.”

“Absolutely not. I’m coming. I’ll get in the car right now.”

“Shira, no.”

“I punched Danny Ross in the third grade for you, and I will punch an Idaho she-wolf.”

“You can’t come. Not yet. It’s not safe here.” I closed my eyes. “I’ll tell you when.”

“You swear?”

“I swear.”

She sniffed. “Text me every day.”

“Every day.”

“And eat. You sound like a ghost.”

I hung up. I sat for a minute with the phone in my lap. Then I swung my legs out of bed, put on Leah’s sweater and a pair of slippers, and went down to my kitchen, because I had not fed the starter, and the house had not had bread since breakfast.

~

The kitchen was warm. Someone had kept the oven lit.

The starter jar sat on the windowsill where I’d left it. I unscrewed the lid. The paste inside was gray and flat and sad, the bubbles gone. I fed it flour and warm water and stirred it with a wooden spoon.

Nothing happened.

I hummed. One low note.

The paste sighed. A single bubble rose and popped. Then another. Then a slow, sweet, sour smell drifted up out of the jar, and I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.

“Hey there,” I whispered. “Sorry. I was busy.”

“You talk to your jar?”

I spun around.

Dana Marks stood in the doorway. She wasn’t leaning this time. She was standing straight, with her arms at her sides and her face oddly stiff, and there were no friends behind her.

“Hello, Dana.”

“Luna,” she said.

It came out like a word in a foreign language she wasn’t sure how to pronounce.

“You don’t have to call me that.”

“Yes, I do. It’s the law.” Her eyes went to my hair and stayed there. She swallowed. “That’s new.”

“It’s a long story.”

“Is it from healing him?”

I didn’t answer. Dana’s mouth pressed thin.

“My little brother,” she said. “Yosef. His knee. He’s been walking on it all day. He says it stopped hurting after your roll.”

“That’s good.”

“I’m not thanking you.”

“Okay.”

“I’m just telling you.”

“Okay, Dana.”

She looked at the floor. She looked at the starter jar. She looked anywhere but at me.

“That isn’t why I came,” she said. “I came because I was on gate duty, and Micah’s at the north fence, and the Alpha’s in with the council, and somebody needs to know.”

“Know what?”

“There’s a car at the gate. Idaho plates.” Dana finally met my eyes. Hers were wide. “Three Clearwater wolves and a woman with a scar through her lip.”

The wooden spoon slipped out of my fingers and clattered on the floor.

“That’s not possible. The challenge is in twenty-nine days.”

“I know when the challenge is.” Dana’s voice dropped. “She’s not here to fight. Not yet. She said she came to look at the ring.”

“Then why are you telling me and not the guards?”

Dana’s hands curled into fists at her sides.

“Because she didn’t ask for the Alpha,” she said. “She asked for you. By name.”