Chapter 17

Chapter 17

ELENA

A week passed.

My body healed faster than any human body should. The stab wound closed into a pink line. The black lines of poison faded, then vanished, until the skin on my side was smooth and pale again. Hilda said it was the bond. Kade's healing pouring into me, day and night, like a river that never stopped.

I tried not to think about that.

I tried not to think about a lot of things.

Life in the pack was strange. After the ring, things had changed. Not all the way, but some. A few of the younger wolves nodded to me in the halls now. One of the cooks, a round-faced woman named Bess, started saving me warm bread with honey in the mornings. A little girl with a gap in her teeth followed me around the garden for a whole afternoon and asked if it was true I beat Vera with only a tiny knife.

"It's true," I told her.

"Were you scared?"

"Very."

She thought about that for a long time. Then she said, "My mama says being scared and doing it anyway is the bravest kind," and ran off to play.

But not everyone was kind. Some of the warriors still stopped talking when I walked past. Brand, the big one with the scar on his nose, stared at me across the dining hall every night like he was thinking about my throat. Once, I found a dead crow on the step outside my door. Hilda threw it away and said it was probably a fox. We both knew it wasn't.

I was a human in a house full of wolves. They could hear my heartbeat through walls. They could smell when I was afraid. They moved so quietly I never knew someone was behind me until they spoke. I jumped at every shadow. I slept with a chair pushed against my door.

And the whole time, I carried a secret I couldn't tell.

I tested it on the fourth day.

I was alone in my room. I had taken paper and ink from the library, and I sat down at the small desk by the window. I dipped the pen and held it over the page.

I told myself to write something easy first. My mother's name.

Martha.

The letters came out clean and smooth.

Then I tried to write, The man who burned Willowbrook was—

My hand stopped.

It didn't just stop. It cramped. All five fingers curled in on themselves like claws, so tight and so sudden that I cried out. The pen jerked out of my grip. The ink pot tipped over and black ink spilled across the page, across the desk, dripping onto the floor.

I sat there holding my twisted hand against my chest, waiting for the pain to pass. It took a long time.

When I could move my fingers again, I tried something different. I didn't write. I just stood in the middle of the room and said it out loud.

"Silas."

Or I tried to.

The moment I thought the word, my throat closed. It clenched shut like a fist. I couldn't push the word out. I couldn't push anything out. Not even air.

I couldn't breathe.

I fell to my knees, clawing at my neck. Black spots danced in front of my eyes. My chest was burning. I thought I was going to die right there on the floor.

I stopped trying. I let go of the name. I thought about something else. Anything else. The little girl in the garden. Warm bread with honey.

My throat opened. I dragged in a huge, wheezing breath, then another.

I lay on the floor for a long time after that, staring at the ceiling, tears running sideways into my hair.

The curse was real. It wasn't just silence. If I pushed too hard, it would kill me.

After that, I stopped testing it.

I started thinking instead.

Every night, when the house was quiet, I lay in bed and went over everything. Every word. Every look. Every moment since I woke up in that strange bed with the mark on my wrist.

Kade stood by the ring while Silas handed me the dagger. Kade frowned. Kade said, Take it.

Who do you think told me to give you that dagger?

Kade saw the silver pin, and his face turned white. He didn't ask where I found it, not really. He just told me to hide it. Show no one. Anyone.

Why? What did it mean to him?

Kade wouldn't tell me who burned the village. Every time I asked, he said, not yet. I don't know yet. I'm going to find out.

But he knew. I had felt it through the bond. That small, dark knot of something he was hiding. Something he didn't want me to see.

And Silas. Silas, who had stood beside him since they were children. Silas, who sat at his right hand. Silas, who clapped him on the shoulder and said, She's all yours, brother.

And Kade had smiled.

I thought about the graves. The flowers. The way Kade knelt in front of my mother's marker and whispered that he was sorry.

Maybe he was sorry. Maybe he felt guilty. That didn't mean he wasn't part of it. People could be sorry for the things they did. It didn't bring the dead back.

Maybe he saved my life in the cellar because my mother saved his, a long time ago. One life for one life. A debt paid. And now I was just a problem. A human who remembered too much. A human who was tied to him forever.

Maybe Silas cursed me so Kade wouldn't have to get his own hands dirty.