He did not speak. He did not seem able to. Kael crouched, very slowly, as if the ground might give way beneath him, and picked up the fang between two fingers, and held it in the pale light with the delicate, terrible care of a man handling a live coal. It was the same as the others, black and glossy and curved. But on its inner face, she saw, a tiny mark had been cut, fine as a hair: a crescent, split down the middle by a single line. She did not know what it meant. She knew only that his hand was shaking.
“Kael.” She touched his sleeve. “What is it?”
He wrapped the fang in his handkerchief, slowly, as if folding a flag over a coffin, and stood. His face had gone still and smooth. It was the face he wore like armor, and for the first time she felt its edges.
“A message,” he said.
“Fro
