Bring Him to His Knees
Nora is quiet a long moment, cleaning her hands on a cloth, not meeting my eyes.
“His name was Callum,” she says finally. “He was Unbound too. Older than me by a long way. He’s spent decades looking for others like him — like your mother was, like you’re about to become. I imagine he heard about the rejection the same way half the county did, and he came because he recognized what it meant faster than anyone else could have.”
“What does it mean?”
Nora sets the cloth down and finally looks at me directly, and there’s something in her face that might be sympathy, or might be the particular caution of someone about to hand over something dangerous.