I woke to the sound of silence.
It wasn’t the heavy, loaded silence of the predator’s den, but the crisp sterile silence of winter morning. The air was cold on my face, but my body was encased in a cocoon of warmth.
I opened my eyes slowly. The ceiling was no longer a dance of orange firelight. It was now bathed in the pale, blue-grey light of dawn. The fires were heavy on top of me, and the robe was soft against my skin.
Memory rushed back in a jagged flood. The shrine, the name, the sting of the birch, and the cold water of the spring. I shifted and a dull, lingering ache in my back confirmed that none of it was a dream. I had been marked and then bathed. I had been claimed by something that shouldn’t exist.
I sat up and the robe slid off my shoulder slightly. The bed beside me w
