Chapter 19

Noa’s POV

“Don’t touch the cup,” I said. “Nobody touch the cup.”

The north tower room was too hot and too bright. Somebody had turned on every lamp. Gideon Stone lay half off the bed, tangled in the blankets, with the brass handbell on the floor by his limp fingers and a teacup tipped over on the side table. A brown stain spread across the white cloth under it.

His face was blue around the lips.

Asher was on his knees beside the bed before I’d even cleared the doorway. He had flour in his hair. So did I. Neither of us had stopped to wipe it off.

“Grandfather. Grandfather, can you hear me?”

Gideon’s eyes were open a crack. Gold. Dull. He was breathing in short, ugly little pulls, as though there was a weight on his chest.

I bent over the cup. I didn’t touch it. I breathed in.

Mint. Honey. Valerian, the sleeping herb. And under all of it, so faint I might have missed it if I hadn’t had my nose in Asher’s poison every night for a week, a bright, cold, metal bite.

“Silver,” I said. “In his tonic.”

Asher made a sound I had never heard a man make. It wasn’t a word.

“Who brings his tonic?” I asked.

Micah answered from the doorway, where he had his hands braced on both sides of the frame as if he could hold the whole tower up. “The kitchen used to. Since he woke, Simon said he’d make it special. Every night at ten. For his heart.”

Every night at ten. While I was in the kitchen with my hands on Asher’s ribs.

I pushed the thought away. There wasn’t time.

“Lift him,” I said. “Flat on the bed. Get the pillows out from under his head.”

Asher lifted him like he weighed nothing. I climbed up onto the edge of the mattress, still in my floury apron, and laid my palms flat on the old man’s chest.

It was like putting my hands in a river in winter.

The silver wasn’t in a wound. It was everywhere. In his blood. In his breath. It had gone all through him in the hours since ten o’clock, thin and cold, the way ink goes through water. And his heart, his old tired heart that had only just started beating strong again, was stumbling under it like a man walking through deep snow.

I began to hum.

The heat came. I pushed it in. The cold pushed back.

I pushed harder.

Half, said Ora. She was so faint. She was so tired. The meadow had burned her clean, and now this. Noa, remember. Half.

Half won’t be enough.

I know.

He’ll die.

I know. I know. But you could too.

I opened my eyes. Asher was watching me across the bed. He had seen it in my face. He knew.

“Noa,” he said.

“I have to.”

“Term ten.”

“I know what term ten says.”

“I’ll break term five. I swear I will. I’ll never let you touch my ribs again.”

“Then you’ll be very sorry, and very sick.” I held his eyes. “He’s your grandfather. He’s the only one on that council who’s ever stood up for me. And this is my choice, Asher. You said together. Together means you let me choose.”

His jaw locked. His eyes went gold, then brown. I watched the war go across his face.

Then he reached over the bed, and laid his hand on top of mine, on his grandfather’s chest.

“Then don’t do it alone,” he said. “Take from me too. I can feel the bond again. Since the meadow. If there’s anything in me you can use, use it.”

“I don’t know if it works like that.”

“Then find out.”

I closed my eyes. I hummed. And I reached, the way I had reached for Ora in the meadow, not down into myself but sideways. Along the thin new gold thread that ran from my chest to his.

It was there. Fine as a hair. And at the far end of it was heat. Not mine. His. Big and steady and stubborn, like a banked fire that won’t go out.

I pulled.

He grunted. I felt his hand tighten over mine. And the heat came down the thread and into me and through me and out through my palms, and Gideon’s chest jumped under my hands like he’d been struck by lightning.

The cold cracked.

I felt it go. Not all at once. In pieces. Like ice breaking up on a river in spring, one chunk at a time, floating away. I pushed, and Asher pushed with me, and the old heart under my palms caught its rhythm, stumbled, caught it again, and began to beat. Steady. Steady. Strong.

Gideon took a breath. A real one. A long, deep, whistling breath that went all the way down.

Then he coughed, and opened his eyes, and said in a voice like a rusty hinge, “Who put flour on my blanket?”

Micah laughed out loud from the door. It sounded like a sob.

I let go.

The room spun. I put a hand down on the mattress to keep from falling off. It held. I was still sitting up. I was still awake. My head was ringing like a bell, and my arms felt like they belonged to someone else, but I was still there.

Asher was swaying on his knees beside the bed. His face was gray. Sweat ran down his temple. He looked at me across his grandfather’s body.

“Did it work?” he whispered.

“He’s complaining about the blanket,” I said. “I think it worked.”

Then I looked down at my hands, and stopped.

The silver streak in my hair had fallen forward over my shoulder. It was wider. A lot wider. Two fingers now, maybe three. When I lifted my hand to touch it, the hair beside it came away silver too, a second thin strand I hadn’t seen before.

And in the dark at the bottom of me, where Ora always was, there was only quiet.

Ora?

Nothing.

Ora. Please.

A long, long silence. Then, so faint it was barely there, like a voice through three closed doors.

Sleeping. Let me sleep, Noa. Let me sleep a while.

~

“I’m going to kill him,” Asher said.

It was dawn. Gideon was asleep, snoring like a chainsaw, with Micah in the chair beside him and a guard outside the door who would let nobody in with so much as a glass of water. We were in the corridor at the bottom of the tower stairs. Asher was pacing. I was sitting on the bottom step, because my legs had given up.

“You can’t.”

“I’m going to walk into his rooms and drag him out by his collar and...”

“And what?” I said. “Tell the council? Tell them the pack doctor put silver in the old Elder’s tea? Where’s your proof, Asher? A cup that smelled funny? A Luna with a magic nose?”

“Micah has the jar lid.”

“From a jar I knocked into the fire. Simon will say I did it on purpose. He’ll say I’m a jealous girl from a little pack who wanted to be the only healer in the house.” I rubbed my eyes. “And Reuben will stand up in that council and say his Alpha has gone mad from the silver and accused a gentle old doctor with no evidence. And you’ll have four votes against you. Again.”

He stopped pacing.

“Then what do we do?”

“We get proof.” I pushed myself up on the bannister. “Real proof. The kind that comes from outside this house. Is there anyone you trust who could test that lid? Not a pack healer. Someone outside.”

He thought. “Micah’s cousin. Rachel. She runs a vet clinic in Missoula. She tests water for the county. Silver, lead, everything.”

“Then Micah drives that lid to Missoula today. Quietly. And until she tells us what’s in it, we smile at Simon Vane and we let him think we’re stupid.”

Asher stared at me. “You’re very frightening when you’re tired.”

“I’m very frightening all the time. You just don’t notice because I’m holding bread.”

The corner of his mouth moved. Then it went still again, and he came to the step and crouched in front of me. His eyes went to my hair. To the second streak. He lifted his hand, and stopped an inch away.

“May I?”

“Yes.”

He touched the silver. Gently. With the very ends of his fingers.

“You took from me,” he said. “On the bed. I felt it. Why didn’t you take more?”

“Because you’re still sick.” I swallowed. “And because I could feel how much you’d let me take. All of it. You’d have let me take all of it.”

“Yes.”

“That’s why.”

He didn’t say anything. He just leaned forward and put his forehead against mine, the way the black wolf had touched his nose to mine in the meadow. We stayed like that, with the gray dawn coming up through the tower window and the floor cold under his knees.

Then footsteps came down the corridor. Soft. Measured. Leather soles on stone.

Asher stood up so fast I nearly fell off the step.

Reuben Vane came around the corner in a fresh cardigan, holding a long cream envelope with a wax seal. He stopped when he saw us. His eyes went to the flour on our clothes, to my hair, to the guard at the top of the tower stairs. His face showed nothing but gentle concern.

“I heard the Elder had a bad turn,” he said. “I’m so glad he’s recovered. What a blessing the Luna is.”

“Yes,” said Asher. His voice was like a blade. “A blessing.”

“I won’t keep you. I only came to deliver this. It arrived by courier an hour ago.” Vane held out the envelope. “The Northwest Gathering. Every Alpha from Montana to the coast, once every five years. This year it’s at Clearwater Lodge, in Idaho. In eight days.”

Asher didn’t take it.

“Ironwood doesn’t need to attend this year.”

“Oh, but I’m afraid we must.” Vane smiled. “Every Alpha in the Northwest has heard about the gold moon. Every one of them wants to see the Hearth with their own eyes. If Ironwood refuses to present her, they’ll say we’re hiding a weapon. Some of them will say it’s an act of war.”

He laid the envelope on the bannister beside my hand.

“I took the liberty of accepting on our behalf,” he said gently. “Clearwater has agreed to host the Luna in the lodge’s finest rooms. Kezia’s own pack. And my sister’s house.”

He turned to go. Then he paused, and looked back at me with his mild blue eyes.

“Leah will be so pleased to see you, my dear. She’s been very lonely out there.”