The Border Stones

My mother ran past me without a glance.

I stood there with my pulse pounding in my ears while Marian Vale scooped Lila off the floor. Cael appeared, then my father. They fussed and murmured and carried her to the carriage like a queen.

“What did you do?” Mother snapped over her shoulder.

“What did you say to her?”

“Nothing,” I said.

“Then why is she shaking?”

Because she is faking, I wanted to say. Because she walked like a wolf in the hall.

But who would believe me? I was the ox. I was the liar who pretended to be weak. I closed my mouth, and my mother took that as an answer.

“Go home and stay in your room,” she said. “We will talk about your behavior in the morning.”

I walked home alone. The family carriage sped past me, splashing mud on my skirt, and no one looked back.

That night, I lay in my narrow bed in the attic and counted my plans.

The pack border was two miles north. Beyond it lay the free forests, and beyond those, towns where nobody knew my name. If I reached the stones, I could cross.

A wolf without a pack was a rogue, but a rogue could live.

Could I make two miles on legs like these?

I had to. Because the fourth round was scheduled for the day after tomorrow.

I waited until the house went quiet. Lila had been put to bed in my mother’s room, as she always was after a bad spell. Her yellow room stood empty on the second floor, with its thick rugs and silk curtains.

I took a candle and crept down the stairs.

I am not proud of what I did next. I lit the corner of the rug in Lila’s empty room and watched it catch. I made sure the door to the hallway stood open and the window was latched. I made sure nothing near it could spread. The fire was small and bright and loud with smoke.

Then I ran out the kitchen door, shouting “Fire!” at the top of my lungs.

Lights flared behind me. I heard my father roar. I heard Mother scream Lila’s name. In the chaos, a gray shadow slipped through the garden gate and into the trees.

I ran.

I had never run so hard. My lungs burned, and my legs felt like wet rope. Branches clawed my face. Twice I fell and forced myself up, tasting dirt and blood. Behind me, the smoke made a pale smear against the stars.

The ground sloped upward. The pines thinned. And there, ahead, I saw the border stones rising out of the mist like old gray teeth.

Ten steps. Nine. Eight.

I reached the nearest stone and slapped my palm against it to steady myself.

It hummed.

I felt the sound rather than heard it, a low note that traveled up my arm and into my chest. Silver light bloomed beneath my fingers and ran along the carved lines of the stone. One by one, the others lit, ringing the hilltop like candles.

“What is this?” I whispered.

The stones answered with a pulse of warmth. It felt like being recognized. It felt like a voice saying my name from a long way off.

Then the power came for me.

It rushed through my body, bright and hot, and my starved blood could not hold it. My vision narrowed to a bright tunnel. My knees went soft.

The last thing I felt was the cold earth against my cheek and a tug in my chest, as if a thread had tightened and someone far away had pulled.

***

I woke to the smell of dust and old wood.

Rafters. A slanted ceiling. My own thin blanket.

The attic.

I had tried so hard to escape this room, and here I lay in it again. My head ached. My wrists were bandaged.

A stranger’s healing salve stung my palms where they had touched the stone.

Faces ringed my bed. Mother, Father, Cael. Their eyes were wide, and their skin looked gray in the lantern light. For one dizzy moment, I let myself hope.

They found me. They saw how close I came to dying. They finally understand.

“Sera,” Father said.

I swallowed. “Yes?”

“Do you have any idea what you have done?”

My hope cracked in half.

“Your sister nearly died of fright,” Mother said. Her voice shook, but not with sorrow. “She woke to smoke and screaming. Her heart stopped twice. The healer worked for hours.”

“I wanted to leave,” I said, hoarse.

“Leave?” Cael actually laughed, a short and disbelieving sound. “Where would you go?”

“Anywhere. I was dying.”

“Don’t be dramatic,” Mother said. “You gave blood three times. People give blood every day. What was Lila supposed to do, Sera? Die so you could feel comfortable?”

“I would have died.”

“If you leave, what will your sister do?” Mother’s voice rose. “How can you be so selfish?”

The word hung in the air.

I looked at my father. He met my gaze for the first time all week. His eyes were full of disappointment, and I understood it was not for what Lila had suffered. It was for me. As if I were the one who had failed them.

Cael shook his head slowly, the same way. As if I had broken a family plate.

My heart died.

I do not know how else to explain it. It did not shatter. It did not burn. It simply stopped, like a candle in a closed room, and the dark that followed was strangely peaceful.

They had been given every chance to love me. They had chosen not to.

“Get some sleep,” Father said. “We have a guest in the morning. A very important guest. You will stay out of sight.”

“Who?” I asked, because my voice still worked.

“None of your concern.”

They filed out one by one. Cael lingered at the door.

He opened his mouth as if to say something, then thought better of it and shut the door gently behind him.

I lay in the dark and stared at the beams above me.

I had one chance left. In the morning, when the house was busy with its important guests, I would try again.

Not the border this time. Another way. Anyway,

Far below, a horn sounded in the night. It was a deep, rolling note, and the whole house trembled as if the walls themselves knew what it meant.

I had heard that horn only once in my life, at a parade, when I was a child.

It belonged to the royal army of the Lycan King.

And in the center of my chest, the thread pulled tight again.