All Chapters of The Severer's Bargain : Chapter 41 - Chapter 50

BRIARWe rode out at dawn, with a map covered in ink and not nearly enough certainty underneath it. I keep thinking of Talia's empty chair by the fire. I keep riding anyway. Dawn came up thin and colourless over Ashgrove's eastern wall, the kind of grey morning that hadn't yet decided whether it meant to clear or close in further, and I stood in the courtyard with a cup of tea gone cold in my hands, watching my own breath cloud pale in the chill. Frost still silvered the cobblestones underfoot, crunching faint and brittle beneath Fenn's boots as he crossed to check the last of the saddle straps, his sandy hair dark with damp from the morning mist already settling over the yard."Tracks hold for the first six miles," he said, not looking up from the buckle he was tightening. "After that, the quarry road forks three ways. Whoever laid this trail knew it would." "Three ways." Ronan's voice was rough, scraped thin by two sleepless nights. He was already dressed for the road, dark circle

BRIARThe second morning on the granite shelf dawned bitter and still. Frost furred every blade of grass in the clearing, and our breath fogged thick every time we spoke. I'd slept poorly, if at all — curled close to the fire's dying embers with Ronan's coat draped over my shoulders and his arm a steady weight across my waist. I woke to hoofbeats on hard ground. Still distant, but closing fast. Ezra's party found us within the hour, horses blown hard, lather drying pale and crusted along their flanks, Grier slumping half out of his saddle the moment he drew rein, exhaustion carved deep into a face that had gone grey and hollow since I'd last seen it properly lit by firelight rather than this thin, unforgiving dawn. He didn't waste time on pleasantries. He reached into his coat and pulled out a small, tightly folded square of paper. The edges were soft from handling. In one corner, a dark smear — ink, or maybe blood. "Mira's contact came through," he said, voice rough with three d

BRIARFenn left before first light. He was already shifted, a dark shape swallowed whole by the mist still pooled thick in the valley. The rest of us broke camp in a silence that begged to be filled with ordinary talk. I sat close to the last embers of the fire, both hands wrapped around a cup of tea that had gone cold before I'd managed more than a sip. The eastern sky lightened by grudging degrees, black bleeding into that bruised, miserable grey that comes just before true dawn. Ronan paced. He didn't pretend otherwise. Didn't mask it with busywork like Ezra, who was checking and rechecking the same maps, or Grier, who had found four separate reasons to inspect the same saddle strap. Ronan just paced the narrow perimeter of camp, hands clasped tight behind his back, jaw locked. Every few steps his nostrils flared as he tested the wind. Once his knuckles went white and I saw it — the faint, telltale lengthening at the tips. Claws threatening to break through. He forced his han

BRIAR We made camp in a hollow a mile and a half south of the lodge. Ezra said the wind was in our favour. A human nose would catch nothing. A wolf's nose, very little. It should have felt safe. It didn't. The pine-and-earth paste we'd smeared on our skin had dried to a crust. It cracked along my forearms. It itched like hell. I scratched until the skin underneath turned raw and stinging — because at least that was something for my hands to do. Dusk fell like a lid. That last red seam in the west thinned to a thread, then went out. The cold turned sharp enough to bite. The horses' breath plumed in thick white ropes. Grier stood with them, one broad palm flat on the mare's neck, murmuring low nonsense. Not really for her. For himself. Ezra took the hooded lantern out of his satchel. Looked at it. Put it away again. He started to pace. Stopped himself. Started again. His chestnut hair was sticking straight up — the way it only did when he'd spent an hour dragging his hands throug

BRIARWe found shelter at dawn, nine miles from the lodge. A shelf of grey limestone jutting out over a nameless brook like a lip. We'd walked the last three miles in the water itself, leading the horses up the streambed so the cold would scrub the trail off their legs. My boots were numb. My horse's legs were shaking. I had led Ronan's horse all night. He couldn't close his hands around the reins. He didn't argue when I tied his lead rope to my own saddle. He just let me do it. That frightened me more than any fight would have. Ezra built a fire no bigger than a soup bowl and smothered it half under wet moss, so it smelled more than it burned. Thin, bitter smoke that clung low and went nowhere. The hollow smelled of wet stone and crushed fern, of horse sweat and old blood, and underneath it, something sweetish I refused to name. Frost furred every blade of grass beyond the overhang. Our breath came out in white ropes. "Hands," Ezra said. Ronan held them out. He'd wrapped the