All Chapters of Bound To The Wolf I Was Sent To Kill: Chapter 11 - Chapter 16

The night of the ford.She weighed almost nothing.That was the first thing I noticed, carrying her through the gates of Nightwater at dusk with my shoulder bleeding down my ribs and the whole keep gone silent around me. I had held swords heavier than she was. I had carried wounded warriors half again my own size. And yet I could not shake the sense that I was holding something that might vanish if I loosened my grip.Her head lay against my chest. Her hair had come loose and fell across my arm, pale as frost, stained with river mud. Her breath was slow and shallow. Every few steps, the thread between us flared, a hot bright pulse of alive, alive, alive, and every time it did, I stopped breathing for a moment until it steadied."My king," someone whispered.I did not stop. I did not look. "Fetch Ovrin."They parted for me like water.  The healer was an old man, gnarled and fussy and unafrai

I did not see Luca the next day.I told myself I didn't notice. I ate the breakfast someone left outside my door, and I stood at the window watching the black lake move under a low, gray sky, and when the ache under my ribs stirred, faint and restless, I told myself that was only my body missing its own strength.At the third bell, someone kicked my door open."Good morning!" said a voice, cheerful and unrepentant. "I brought clothes. Don't be angry with the door, it's very old and it had it coming."A young woman swept into the room with a tray balanced in one hand and a bundle of cloth under her arm, kicked the door shut behind her with one heel, and put the tray down on my table with a clatter. She was perhaps twenty-four, slight and quick, with auburn hair dragged into a braid that had given up somewhere around her shoulders and a spray of freckles across her nose. There was ink on her fingers. There was flour on her sleeve. And when she turned and lo

I found him in the training yard at dawn.I hadn't meant to. I told myself I'd come down to walk off a bad night's sleep, and that the ache under my ribs was pulling me toward the smell of cold iron and sawdust for no reason at all. That the reason happened to be standing in the middle of the packed earth with a wooden practice sword in his hand was pure coincidence.He was working alone. No tunic, only a plain shirt with the sleeves shoved to the elbow, and the sword moved through the gray light in long, slow forms, like a man who thought better when his hands were busy. He did not turn when I came through the arch. But the pattern hitched, once, and I knew he'd felt me."You're up early," Luca said."Apparently, so are you.""I don't sleep well." A pass, a turn, a downward cut. "I'm told it's a character flaw.""Who told you?""Everyone."I folded my arms and leaned against the post. The morning was raw and cold and smelled of the lake. Up on the wall, a sentry shifted his weight an