Chapter 6

Asher’s POV

“Get out, Noa,” I said again. “Please.”

She didn’t. She stood in the dark hallway in a faded gray nightgown, her brown hair loose around her shoulders, and gold light rolled slowly up her arms like water filling a glass.

I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life. And I had never been so afraid.

“You’re bleeding,” she said.

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s on the floor.”

“It’s happened before.”

“Then it will happen again.” She crossed the hall in three quick steps and dropped to her knees beside me. Her hand landed on my shirt. Hot. Sure. My whole body jerked like she’d touched a live wire. “Stop talking. Where is it?”

“Noa.”

“Where?”

I let out a breath. “Left side. Under the ribs.”

She tore my shirt open.

Buttons pinged across the floor. The lamp flickered. Cold air hit my skin, and she went still. Because there it was, in the dim gold light. A long, ugly gash that had never closed, black at the edges, lined with veins that crawled outward like frost over glass. Silver poison. Three years of it. It had spread over my ribs like a hand.

She didn’t flinch.

“How long?”

“Three years.”

“And nobody...”

“Four people know. Now five.”

“You’ve been bleeding to death for three years and telling no one.” Her voice cracked. She dashed the back of her hand across her eyes. “You idiot.”

“Micah says the same.”

“Micah is right.”

She pressed both palms against the wound.

The heat was extraordinary. It poured into my side, flooding every nerve, and I heard myself groan. It didn’t hurt. It was the opposite. It felt like being lowered into a warm bath after a winter in the snow. The black veins shivered. Ari raised his head inside me and let out a long, shaking sigh.

Noa began to hum.

It was one low note, then two. A tune with no name and no words, older than any song I knew. It wrapped around me like a blanket. The lamp stopped flickering. The hall went warm. And under her hands, slowly, the black veins drew back.

I stared at her face. Her eyes were closed. Sweat shone on her forehead. Her lips trembled with each note. The gold in her skin was so bright it lit up her cheekbones, and a single tear ran down and dripped off her chin onto my chest.

She was in pain. I could see it. Every inch the poison left me, it seemed to move into her.

“Stop,” I said. “You’re hurting.”

“I’m fine.”

“Noa. Stop.”

“No.” She opened her eyes. They were brown and fierce and swimming. “You don’t get to decide that for me. You’ve decided enough.”

The words hit like a blow.

I let my head fall back against the wall.

“I know,” I said.

“Do you?”

“I rejected you to keep you alive.”

Her hands stopped moving.

“What?”

I told her. It came out in pieces. Section nine of the council law. Vane’s daughter. The challenge that would have thrown an unshifted girl into a ring with a trained fighter and ended in ninety seconds. The silver in my side, and the year the healers had given me. I told her the whole ugly plan, and how it had looked so clear and clean at the lake, and how much I hated it now.

She listened without speaking. Her palms stayed on my ribs.

When I finished, the hall was silent.

“So you threw me away in front of my whole pack,” she said slowly, “to save me.”

“Yes.”

“You humiliated me. You let my sister laugh.”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t think to ask.”

“There was no time.”

“There’s always time.” She was shaking. “There are three seconds between a bond and a rejection. You could have said, Not here. You could have said, Wait. You could have taken my hand and walked me into the trees and whispered, Trust me.”

“And Vane would have watched.”

“Then we’d have been careful together!” Her voice cracked in the empty hall. “That’s what a bond is. It’s not a decision you make for someone. It’s a decision you make with her.”

I had no answer. She was right. She was so completely right that it stole the air from my chest.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I know you are.”

“It isn’t enough.”

“No. It isn’t.” She wiped her face on her shoulder. “But it’s a start.”

For a long moment we stayed like that. Her hands on my skin. My eyes on her face. The golden light thinning around us until only a warm glow was left. I could hear her breathing, and my own, and the slow, steady beat of two hearts that should never have been in the same room.

My hand rose on its own. It closed around her wrist.

Her pulse jumped under my thumb. She looked down at my hand, and then up at me, and I saw her lips part.

The bond flared. I felt it. Not the whole thread, that was gone. But a spark, a live coal in the ashes. Heat rolled through me. Ari rose up so fast it made me dizzy, and every muscle in my body wanted to pull her against me and never let go.

“Asher,” she breathed.

“Yes.”

“Let go.”

I let go.

She snatched her hand back and held it against her chest. Color flooded her face. She scrambled backward and sat on her heels a foot away, breathing hard.

“You rejected me,” she said. Her voice shook. “You don’t get this. Not yet.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

“I know, Noa.”

She nodded once, sharply. Then she lifted her chin and looked at the wound, all business, as though nothing had happened.

“It’s better,” she said. “It’s not fixed. It’s going to take time. Weeks, maybe. Every night, with bread, and my hands, and you sitting still.” Her frown deepened. “But there’s a problem.”

“What?”

“It shouldn’t smell like that.”

I stared at her. “Like what?”

“Fresh.” She bent low over my ribs, nose almost touching the edge of the gash. Her nostrils flared. “This poison is three years old. It should be old. Dead. But the outer edge is new. Silver dust, Asher. Fresh dust. It’s been added over and over, in little doses.”

Ice slid down my spine.

“That’s not possible.”

“It’s in the wound. It’s in your shirt. I can smell it on the collar.” She held my eyes. “Somebody is feeding it. Every night. Every week. Just enough to keep it alive.”

“Nobody touches me.”

“Somebody does.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Who changes your bandages?”

The hallway went cold.

Leah had said, from inside this house. I had thought she meant a councilor. A guard. A stranger with a knife in the dark.

Not this.

“My healer,” I said. My mouth had gone numb. “He’s done it since the first week. Every morning. He says it’s the only way it doesn’t get infected.”

“What’s his name?”

I could hardly say it.

“Doctor Simon Vane,” I said. “Councilor Vane’s brother.”