Volume One · Chapter Ten · The Weight of a Name

Evelyn returned to the manor before dawn fully broke.

She slipped through the side door, reset the lock, draped her coat over her arm, and walked the corridor back to her room. Her steps were light—light enough that the candle flame at the corridor's end didn't flicker. She pushed the door open, stepped inside, closed it behind her, and leaned against the door panel for a moment.

The room was dark. The curtains hadn't been opened; gray-white morning light was barred outside, only a thin strip seeping through the gap at the bottom, lying across the floor. She waited until her breathing slowed, then walked to the bed and sat down. Unfastened her cuffs. Hung her coat over the chair back.

She sat on the bed's edge for a long time. Then she stood and walked to the windowsill.

Two stones sat on the sill, side by side, roughly the same size. She reached out and touched the first one. Coarse surface—like it had been washed by water many times but never smoothed. The second was slightly slicker, darker in color. She pressed her finger against its edge. Didn't pick it up. Just held it there.

She looked at herself in the window glass. It wasn't bright enough yet—the reflection was only a gray-white silhouette, features blurred, the eyes two darker hollows. She couldn't see her own eye color. But she knew. Amber. Among bloodkind, she was the only one.

Impure.

She'd heard that word when she was very young. Back then, she didn't understand why her eyes looked different from everyone else's—all bloodkind eyes were dark red, deep brown, or nearly black. Only hers shone like a small lamp, especially visible in the dark. She'd thought something was wrong with her eyes. She'd even covered one with a strip of cloth to see if it would change to match everyone else's. It didn't. The next day, when she untied it, that eye was still amber.

Later, someone told her that was the mark of a werewolf bite. That scar on her neck—the old bite mark—that was when she connected it to her amber eyes. She wasn't "pure-blooded." She carried the blood of someone who'd been bitten by a wolf. So she could never fully be bloodkind, and she could never fully be anything else.

She stood at the windowsill a little longer, then walked to the bedside. Reached under the pillow and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She unfolded it, smoothed the creases, and looked at it for a while.

A line drawn on the paper. North to south, a bridge across the middle. A circle south of the bridge. A smaller dot north of it. She stared at that dot for a long time, then walked to the desk, picked up the pencil, and added a word beside the dot.

"Eve."

She set the pencil down and looked at the two characters.

That wasn't her full name. Her full name was Evelyn Kleist—"Evelyn" had been chosen by Aldwin, "Kleist" was the family name, neither of them hers. But "Eve" was. Her mother had called her that when she was small. Short, like a very light sigh, the tone not rising but falling, settling between the root of her tongue and the roof of her mouth—like something dropped from a great height into snow.

She'd never let anyone call her "Eve" again.

Until last night. When she said "I'm Eve" through the iron bars, the two syllables had slipped out on their own. She hadn't been able to stop them. By the time she finished speaking, she realized she'd just given her one real name to a werewolf—a werewolf she'd been sent to kill.

She stood at the desk, facing the paper, silent for a long time. Then she folded it back, tucked it into the book, and slid the book back under her pillow.

She pulled the curtains open. Morning light flooded in, covering the windowsill. The two stones caught the light, their edges and angles sharp and clear in the brightness. She looked at them, then turned her gaze outward—toward the overpass. The gray-white bridge stretched across the morning mist like an old bone suspended in the air.

She didn't know why she'd said that name. But she didn't regret it.

She stood at the window, her hand resting on the sill's edge, her fingertip pressed against the stone's surface. She felt the morning chill seeping slowly out of the stone against her fingertip—thin, like something that didn't speak.

In the distance, at the southern end of the overpass, a slow truck drove past. The sound of its wheels, so far away, reached her as nothing but a faint hum. She listened to that sound, then withdrew her hand.

She would go to that subway station again today. Not to confirm anything. Just to go.

She put on her coat. Fastened her cuffs. Checked the hidden pocket—empty. She wasn't bringing a knife today. She only brought the unopened packet of dried flatbread in her pocket, and a small jar of pickled vegetables she'd bought yesterday.

She pushed the side door open and stepped into the gray-white morning light, heading north.