جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 16

Briony's POV"Whose scent is it?" I asked, my voice lower than I meant it to come out.Kieran straightened, still staring at the doorframe like it might give him more if he looked hard enough. "Not fresh. A few hours old, maybe more. Faint enough that if I hadn't been standing right here I would've missed it completely.""But you know whose it is."His jaw ticked. "I have a guess.""Petra.""I said a guess." He said it fast, like he wanted to hold off naming her out loud until he was sure, but I could see it in his face, he already knew. "Get inside. Bolt the door. I'll send someone to sit outside your window tonight.""I don't need a babysitter.""You need somebody who isn't asleep when the next note gets passed." He didn't wait for me to argue further, already moving down the hall, the tracker jogging to keep pace with him.I went inside like he told me to. I bolted the door like he told me to. I did not, however, plan on staying quiet about any of it, and the second I heard his boo

Briony's POVBy morning I had four guards instead of one, stationed at my door, my window, and both ends of the hallway, and I hated every single one of them on principle even though none of it was their fault."This is ridiculous," I said, watching a fifth wolf get added to the rotation outside the healing house. "I can't walk to the well without an escort now.""You can't walk anywhere without an escort now." Kieran didn't look up from the notes he was reading, spread out across the war room table like they might rearrange themselves into an answer if he stared long enough. "Not after last night.""I threw a fully grown man through a window with my bare hands. I think I can handle a walk to the well.""You barely stayed on your feet doing it." He finally looked up. "You told me yourself. It didn't feel like healing. You don't know what it costs you yet, and neither do I, and I'm not betting your life on a power neither of us understands against wolves who came here specifically to t

Briony's POVKieran came back near midnight, boots caked in mud from the border trail, jaw tight enough that I knew before he said a word that whatever he found out there hadn't settled anything."Well?" I stood up from the chair I'd been waiting in, too keyed up to have actually slept."Multiple sets of tracks. Days' worth, maybe longer." He dropped into the chair across from me, rubbing a hand over his face. "Whoever came through that window last night wasn't the first one scouting that stretch of wall. They've been watching us for a while.""And Halric? What did he say before you got pulled away?"Something shifted in his expression, careful now. "He wrote the treaty clause himself. Forty years back. Pushed the council to leave it open to any Thistlewood daughter instead of naming one specifically."My stomach dropped. "He knew. About the bloodline.""Suspected. That's the word he used." Kieran leaned forward, elbows on his knees. "Said he'd been watching your family for decades, w