Mag-log inSAYAThe slam shook the iron under my hand, and no one breathed. Six guards stood frozen in their half-circle. One had gone the colour of ash. Another had drawn his blade halfway and stopped, as though he'd forgotten what it was for. No one said her name. We all stood listening to the silence below, and it was the loudest thing I had ever heard. "That was her," someone whispered. "Wasn't it?" "Don't." Then footsteps pounded down the lane. Alpha Darius came first, still bandaged from the camp, his face grey and set. The Luna was locked to his arm, with a shawl clutched at her throat, and a healer trailed them with a bag no one had asked for. The lane was narrow and shadowed, the stone damp even at midday, and with so many people crowded into it, the air felt too thin to breathe. "Saya." The Luna caught my sleeve. "Thank the Moon." "What happened?" "She came an hour ago." Darius's voice was low and rough. "She took the keys from the guard on watch and said she wanted to see
SAYA Mum was already in the kitchen when I came down, which meant she hadn't slept either. She put a cup of tea in front of me and watched me drink it. My father sat by the hearth with his bandaged wrists on the armrests, pretending to doze. "I won't tell you to stay away from him again," she said quietly. "But I want to be told things, Saya. Where you are, and that you're all right. Can you do that for me?" "Yes." A knock came at the door. A young warrior stood on the step, out of breath. "Alaric sent me. The Packkeeper is awake." My father opened his eyes. "Then go. That man risked his life for you." Mum's hand went still on the table then she squeezed mine once and let go. Cassian was sitting on the edge of the infirmary bed, fully dressed and grey around the mouth. Alaric stood against the wall, looking like a man who had already lost an argument. "Walk with me," Cassian said. "You can't stand." "I can't breathe in here, Saya. I’ve been stuck within these four walls and
CASSIAN She was gone when I woke. I knew it before I opened my eyes. The bond had a different weight when she was near, a warmth against my ribs like a hand held just above the skin. Now it was a thread pulled taut across the compound, and the emptiness of it was worse than the wound. "You're awake. Good." Alaric sat beside the bed with his staff across his knees, exactly where he must have been all night. “Where’s she?” I voiced my thoughts before I even realized it. “She was here the entire time you were asleep,” he replied. “She barely left your bedside. I had to convince her to get some rest before she exhausted herself completely.” I closed my eyes. Under the pain, something stirred that I had not allowed myself in a very long time."There's something you should hear before Saya tells you herself," Alaric said.I frowned. "What is it?""Her mother knows something.""About what?""About the two of you. Your bond. Or something very close to it."I pushed myself up against t
SAYA My mother did not sit. She filled the kettle, set out two cups, and put the kettle down again without lighting the fire. "Mum." "Give me a moment." She pressed both palms flat on the table. "I have said this speech in my head every night since you were eleven. It sounded better there." "Since I was eleven?" "Since the night you came down at dawn and told me you'd been running in your sleep." Her mouth trembled. "You said you were chasing someone and could never catch him. You were so cheerful about it. I smiled and made your breakfast, and I went upstairs and was sick." I sat slowly. The lamp hissed on the table like a foreboding of what was to come. "There was a woman in my mother's family," she said. "My great-great-aunt. Her name was Veyra. I grew up on her story the way other children grow up on fairy tales, except nobody ever told it as one. My grandmother whispered it every night and my mother stopped her." "What happened to her?" "She dreamed." My mother'
SAYAThe healers gave him until midnight.If the fever hadn't broken by then, one of them told me quietly, it wouldn't. So I sat beside his bed with a cold cloth in my hands, watching lamplight shiver on the wall, and counted his breaths the way I once counted tracks, as though the right number might tell me something.Somewhere across the compound, my mother would be sitting with her fingers knotted in my father's sleeve, as she had been since we arrived at the boundary stones, as though he might come loose if she let go.I wrung out the cloth and laid it across Cassian's forehead. His skin burned under it. At the back of my mind, my wolf paced and whined, and for the first time I couldn't tell which of us was more afraid.When the lamp had burned down a finger's width, I couldn't breathe in there.Outside, the night was cold and clean. The compound lay quiet beneath a thin moon, the training grounds a pale scar in the dark. Near the well, something shifted on the low wall. A figure
SAYAThe lantern guard never finished his sentence.I hit him low, and the flask spun into the mud. Elara had her knife at the second man's throat, but he twisted free and slammed an elbow into her ribs. He got half a yell out before I drove my hilt behind his ear. At the east end of the rope came two thumps and a grunt: Kellan and Joren, stood over the others.On the bank, a bowstring sang. A rogue who had turned toward the stream dropped without a cry. Cassian lowered the bow, grey as ash, and reached for another arrow.Four guards down with no alarm while the speech at the fire rolled on.I reached my father first, and my knees gave out. I dropped beside him and my arms went around his neck before I had decided anything."Easy, little tracker." His bound hands pressed against my back, and his voice cracked. "I've got you.""I thought..." I couldn't finish. "I saw them drag you off, and I couldn't...""I know. I saw you try." He drew back and looked at my face, then at the blood on







