I did not sleep in the Keep, and I want to say it was the door. Mostly it was the door.
But part of it was simpler and stupider and more human than that. I had spent my whole life learning how to make people comfortable. I had learned to be small and grateful and easy to have around. Now I was a thing that killed with a touch in a fortress full of wolves who wanted me gone, and there was no version of small that could help me anymore. The one skill I had was useless. You cannot shrink your way out of being untouchable.
I learned exactly how untouchable on the second morning.
There was a child in the Keep, a pup of maybe six from the servants' quarters. She had no fear in her at all, the way small ones sometimes have none. She came pattering down the tower stair while I stood at the arro
