Chapter 2
1230 Words
My room still smelled like his mother's cedar sachets. I'd never liked them. I'd never said so either.
Four hours until dawn, by my best guess, and nowhere yet to spend them.
I pulled the small trunk out from under the bed and started with what mattered: my healer's kit first, rolled tight the way I'd been taught, then two changes of clothes, sturdy ones, nothing Elena had ever approved of for public wear. That was the whole inventory. Two years married into this house and I owned less than I had the day I arrived. I'd spent that time building myself into something useful instead of something that accumulated things. Useful things travel light.
The dizziness hit while I was kneeling over the trunk, a gray wash that tilted the room half an inch to the left. I put a hand flat on the floorboards and waited it out, breathing slowly through my nose until the walls settled back where they belonged.
"Not now."
My other hand went briefly to my stomach.
Six weeks. Maybe seven.
The dizziness passed. I kept packing.
The kit's clasp was already undone when I reached for it. I stopped, staring at it for a moment. I ran back through my morning, trying to remember if I'd left it that way.
I hadn't.
I never left it that way.
Someone had been through it.
Nothing was missing. That bothered me more than if something had been stolen. Whoever had opened it hadn't been looking for something they wanted to take. They'd been looking for something they hadn't found.
I closed the clasp and slid the kit into the trunk.
A knock came at the door.
Elena was already inside before I could answer.
"You're leaving tonight."
"Yes."
"Where?"
"I haven't decided."
She smiled the way she smiled at guests who had overstayed a dinner party. "The Calloway debt is the reason you came into this family, Wren. I'd hoped that would have bred a little more gratitude for the arrangement."
"I paid the debt with two years," I said. "I don't think I owe interest."
Her expression barely changed.
"You entered this house with nothing," she said, her voice gentler now. Somehow that was worse. "The Voss name gave you standing. Comfort. Security. This family doesn't let go of what belongs to it easily. You'd do well to remember that before you decide anything is fully behind you."
I held her gaze.
She hadn't asked where I was going because she cared. She wanted to know whether I had somewhere else to go, whether I'd made plans she didn't know about.
She didn't know about the child.
And she couldn't.
"I'll take the east wing arrangement off the table," she added. "Stay through the season. No one would think less of you."
"I would."
For the first time, the smile disappeared.
She studied me for another moment, then turned toward the door.
"Think carefully before you make yourself entirely alone, Wren."
The door closed behind her.
I waited until her footsteps faded before I let out the breath I'd been holding.
She suspected something.
Maybe not the pregnancy. Not yet. But she'd noticed the change in me. That was enough.
I finished packing faster than I needed to.
At the bottom of my mother's old case, beneath a folded shawl I hadn't touched in years, I found a small tin box I didn't remember packing myself. Inside was a strip of pressed herbs gone brittle with age, and beneath it, a scrap of vellum covered in her handwriting. Most of it was ordinary dosing notes I recognized from my own training.
One line wasn't.
It had been underlined twice, the ink darker than the rest.
If it resists you, it is not gone. It only sleeps, same as mine did, until it was needed.
I read it twice.
My mother had never mentioned having a gift of her own.
I folded the vellum small enough to fit inside my glove and slipped it into my pocket.
When I stepped into the hallway, Ivy was waiting.
She had her arms crossed, her expression caught somewhere between curiosity and discomfort.
"You're really just going?" she asked.
"Yes."
"I thought you'd..."
She stopped.
I didn't help her finish.
"Fight?" I asked. "Cry?"
Her jaw tightened.
"Something like that."
"I'm not angry at you, Ivy."
"You should be."
"Maybe."
I walked past her.
She didn't follow.
At the stairs, I glanced back once. She was still standing there, watching me leave with an expression I couldn't quite read.
Good.
Let her wonder.
Two guards stood at the outer gate when I reached it. Neither moved to open it.
One glanced toward the house.
The other kept his hand on the latch.
I stopped.
Corwin's ruling had been clear. The pack wouldn't delay my departure. Apparently, nobody had told the men at the gate that they weren't supposed to make me prove it.
"Open it," I said.
The older guard hesitated.
Before I could say anything else, Julian's voice came from behind me.
"Wren."
I turned.
He was hurrying across the yard, his coat only half on, as if he'd left the house without deciding what he intended to say when he caught up with me.
He looked at the guards.
"Open the gate."
They obeyed immediately.
Julian came to a stop in front of me, breathing slightly harder than usual.
"You don't have anywhere to go," he said.
It wasn't cruel.
That almost made it worse.
He said it with the same certainty he'd always had about the shape of my life, as though he couldn't imagine me existing outside the boundaries he'd helped build around me.
"I'll manage."
"Take money, at least."
He reached into his coat.
I stepped back.
His hand stopped.
"No."
"Wren..."
"Because this is already over."
Something shifted behind his eyes.
He still didn't understand.
He thought he was watching his unwanted wife walk away.
He had no idea I was taking something with me that would change everything.
I turned before he could say anything else.
Outside the gate, the road went dark fast. The pack lights faded behind me, replaced by bare trees and frozen ground. I walked until Ashgrove was little more than a pale glow between the branches.
Then I stopped.
My hand went to my stomach.
Six weeks. Maybe seven.
I had stopped counting too carefully.
Not Julian's heir.
Just a life that hadn't asked for any of this, depending entirely on me to get it somewhere safer than here.
Nobody in that house was deciding anything about this child.
Not tonight.
Not ever.
I started walking again.
The cold bit through my coat, but I welcomed it. It kept me awake. Kept me moving.
Then I saw the prints.
They crossed mine near the edge of the road, fresh and deep in the frost.
Too large to belong to a human.
I crouched and touched one.
Still fresh.
My pulse picked up.
I straightened slowly and looked toward the tree line.
Nothing moved.
The forest was silent.
Too silent.
I took one step backward.
A branch snapped somewhere to my left.
I froze.
Another sound came from behind me.
Breathing.
Slow.
Heavy.
Close enough that I could hear it between my own breaths.
I didn't run.
Not yet.
Whatever was out there wasn't moving.
It was waiting.
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