CHAPTER FIVE
1067 Words
The sirens are everywhere.
They layer over each other, pack warning calls building into a wall of sound that travels up through the soles of my feet. I stop in the center of the field and turn in a slow circle. Lights are going on in windows. I can see figures moving in the packhouse, and then the outer doors open and warriors start pouring through them.
A patrol leader barks orders from the packhouse steps. "Rogue breach at the northern border! All civilians inside! Warriors to positions!"
Northern border.
That is three hundred meters from my shed.
I start running before I have a plan. I am moving against the flow of people heading toward the packhouse and I keep my head down and duck through gaps, cutting through the garden and around the equipment yard. Someone shouts at me to get inside. I pretend not to hear.
The field is dark and the sirens are still screaming and I reach the shed door and push it open.
He is not there.
I stand in the doorway and look at the empty cot and the folded sheet and the cleared surface of the table and something cold drops through me.
He is already gone.
The cot is made. He did not have to do that. He made it anyway.
I stand there for too long. The sirens are fading now, cycling down, which means they've contained whatever crossed the border or lost it entirely. I should go back. I should be where I am supposed to be.
I turn to leave.
He is standing in the doorway.
I make a sound I am embarrassed by and he steps through quickly, pulling the door shut behind him.
"You're still here," I say, which is not the question I mean to ask.
"There were warriors between me and the border." He is moving carefully, one hand pressed to his side, but his eyes are alert. "I went into the treeline and came back."
"You reopened something," I say, nodding at his hand. "Let me see."
"Maya—"
"Let me see, Kael."
He lets out a breath and sits on the cot. I pull back the edge of his shirt and yes, one of the lower bandages is dark and wet. Not catastrophic, but it needs to be changed and he should not have been running on it.
"This is why I said not to leave yet," I say quietly, pressing a clean cloth against it.
"I know."
"Do you?" I look up at him.
He looks back at me. He is very close, this angle, both of us leaning toward the wound. I can see the line of his jaw and the small scar at the corner of his mouth and his eyes, which up close are not simply gray but a layered gray, like stone under moving water.
I look back at the wound.
"The sirens have stopped," I say. "They either caught what crossed the border or it's gone."
"Gone," he says. "Whatever crossed that border came in and went back out."
"How do you know?"
A pause. Just a fraction too long. "I was in the treeline. I saw the direction the warriors were tracking."
I file that away.
"Mira will move faster now," I say, tearing a strip of clean cloth. "A rogue breach gives her the excuse she needs. She's going to claim I let something in."
"Then you need a stronger defense than denial."
"What does that mean?"
"It means someone who can speak for you. Someone with rank."
I think of Dorian. I think of the way he stepped back when I told him I was late to the selection. The way something shuttered behind his eyes.
"I'm not sure the person I'd ask has the courage for it," I say.
Kael watches me while I tie off the new bandage. He does not ask who I mean. He seems to already know, or to not want to know, which might be the same thing.
"When this is over," he says, "you need to go somewhere that does not require someone else's courage to keep you safe."
I sit back. "You sound very certain about what I need."
"I'm often right."
"You're often infuriating."
Something happens at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. A suggestion of one, there and gone before I can be sure.
"Sleep," I say, standing.
"You keep telling me to sleep."
"You keep needing it."
I move toward my pallet and then I stop. There is something underneath the chair. A small piece of cloth, folded. Not mine. I pick it up and turn it over. It is a handkerchief, very fine fabric, with something embroidered in the corner. A crest. I cannot make it out in the low light.
"Kael."
"Mm."
"Where is this from?"
Silence.
I look up. He is lying on the cot, eyes on the ceiling. He does not answer for five full seconds.
"Old habit," he says finally. "I carry them."
"The embroidery—"
"Go to sleep, Maya."
I look at the cloth in my hands. The crest in the corner is delicate and precise, worked by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. It is not the kind of handkerchief a wandering wolf carries. It is not the kind of handkerchief anyone in this pack has ever owned.
I fold it carefully and put it back under the chair.
In the morning I will think more clearly. In the morning I will ask better questions. In the morning I will figure out who exactly has been sleeping on my cot for the past five days and why the answer to that question has started to feel like it might change everything.
In the morning.
But sometime in the night, before dawn comes, there is a sound outside the door. Not wind. Not animals.
Footsteps. Deliberate ones. Two sets, maybe three, circling the shed slowly, and then stopping.
I lie completely still on my pallet, my eyes open in the dark.
Across the room, I hear Kael's breathing change.
He is awake too.
Neither of us speaks. Neither of us moves. We wait in the dark and listen to the footsteps settle into position outside the only door, and I understand with a clarity that is almost peaceful that by morning, nothing will be the same.
- Writer
