Chapter 15: Just a Scar

Cerys had pulled her collar over the bite again before she noticed what she was doing.

Rhys was gone. She had heard him reach the end of the passage, and she had let him keep walking. Still, her fingers stayed hooked in the fabric, tugging it higher each time it slipped. The shirt was cutting into her good shoulder now, while the scar remained stubbornly visible above it.

When Elis appeared at the door, she let go so quickly that the collar dropped.

“Is this a bad time?” he asked.

“No.” She looked at the chair Rhys had put back beside the bed. “He left.”

“I heard.” Elis stayed by the doorway. “I came to see how you're healing. I can come back.”

Cerys almost said she was tired. She was, but she knew what would happen if he left: she'd sit here thinking about Rhys's hand reaching for her neck and the look on his face when she'd stopped it. She'd already spent too much of the day imagining a better way to end that conversation.

“Stay,” she said. “I'd rather find out whether I'm improving.”

Elis came in, leaving the chair where it was. Cerys eased her collar down enough for him to see her shoulder. She kept her hands in her lap while he looked. There was no reason to hide the wound from him. He'd seen it when she could barely lift her head.

“The other injuries are doing better,” he said after a moment. “The bite is healing, too. It's likely to leave a scar.”

She looked toward the small patch of skin she could see without turning. The jagged edge sat higher than most of the marks she'd carried home before. She couldn't remember the teeth that had made it. She could remember Rhys staring as if its position told him something she should have known.

“Will it always look like this?”

“I don't know exactly how it'll settle.” Elis glanced up at her face. “I don't want to promise you'll barely see it.”

“I wasn't asking you to.”

“All right.”

She wished he'd argued. It would have been easier to be annoyed with him for treating her as fragile than to sit with an answer she couldn't change.

“Rhys asked who bit me,” she said.

Elis didn't look surprised, though he gave her the same attention he'd given her when she'd told him she wanted to write to hydroponics. He waited for her to finish.

“He asked whether I remembered. Then he wanted to look at it again.” Cerys caught the collar between her fingers. “He wasn't worried about how much it hurt.”

“What was he worried about?”

“Where it is,” Cerys said.

The words came out smaller than she'd intended. She had been furious with Rhys for treating her scar like a question about their relationship. Telling Elis made her feel suddenly exposed, as if she'd brought Rhys back into the room herself.

Elis looked at the bite once more. He didn't lean closer.

“I can tell you what I'm seeing,” he said. “An injury that's healing. I can't tell you who caused it.”

“I know.”

“And I can't tell you what someone else will decide it means,” Elis said.

That was the part she'd been trying to avoid. When she went back among the pack, people would see the scar. Some would ask; some would pretend they hadn't noticed it. She could imagine herself pulling her collar up for every one of them, waiting to find out whether they were looking at a wounded wolf or at something they thought belonged to someone else.

“I don't want to spend the rest of my life explaining it,” she said.

“Then don't.”

She looked at him sharply. “You make that sound easy.”

“I didn't say easy.”

His answer irritated her for the length of a breath. Then she saw that he wasn't waiting for her to agree. He had given her what he knew about the wound. He wasn't trying to give her an opinion about what she ought to do with the rest of her life.

“It's just a scar to you,” she said.

“It's a scar on someone who keeps trying to work when she can barely sit up. I have opinions about the second part.”

“You always do,” she said.

“I'd have fewer if you stopped giving me reasons.”

Cerys glanced at the page beside her pillow. Her coworker had corrected her instructions, made a good decision without her, and then sent word that he wanted her back when she was ready. She'd managed to write him two sentences in return. She hadn't asked Elis to bring the page downstairs today. For once there was nothing on it she needed to change.

“I'm not writing any more instructions,” she said.

“I noticed,” Elis said.

“I'm also not getting out of bed to prove I can.”

“Good.”

He sounded relieved, not triumphant. She wished she didn't notice the difference so clearly.

Cerys shifted her good arm and tried to let the shirt fall where it belonged. The collar caught on her shoulder. She tugged it up instead, an automatic, useless motion.

Elis's eyes dropped to the fabric.

“What?” she asked.

“The shirt,” he said.

“What about it?”

“The shoulder seam is halfway down your chest.”

She looked. He was right. In trying to cover the bite, she'd dragged the entire shirt sideways. One sleeve had bunched under her arm, while the other hung loose enough to fit both her hands.

For a second she stared at the ridiculous thing she'd done. Then she laughed.

It caught at the tender places in her ribs, and she stopped long enough to breathe. Elis looked faintly alarmed until she waved him off. The shirt was still crooked. She laughed again, properly this time, with no effort to make it sound like she was feeling better for his sake.

“I've been fighting with it since Rhys left,” she said.

“I was beginning to think it had won.”

“It has.”

“Then I'd leave it alone. It looks exhausted,” Cerys said.

She pressed her good hand over her mouth. He wasn't trying to coax a smile out of her. He seemed genuinely offended on the shirt's behalf, and that made it worse. By the time she managed to settle, her collar had slid down again. She hadn't noticed. Rhys had gone with whatever he believed about the bite, but she had spent several minutes thinking about a badly twisted shirt instead of his face.

Elis moved the chair away from the edge of her bed, where it wouldn't catch her when she needed to get up later. He didn't sit in it.

“You can go,” she said, “if you've finished telling me my clothes are incompetent.”

“I didn't say they were incompetent. I said you were being unfair to them.”

She looked up at him. He'd seen her at her worst, yet she found herself wanting him to stay for no better reason than that she liked talking to him. She had no idea what to do with that. It was pleasant enough not to demand an answer.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For the check?”

“For not asking who bit me.”

His expression softened, but he didn't make a speech about it. “You're welcome.”

After he left, Cerys straightened the sleeve and let the shirt settle against her skin. The collar came to rest below the uneven scar. She could pull it up again before anyone saw. Rhys might come back another day and look at her with that same wounded accusation. Other people might stare.

Her fingers hovered at her neckline.

Then she reached for the page from hydroponics instead. She left the collar where it was.