Bloodless Moon

The Valley That Remembers

"I need to tell you something," he said. "Before the window closes. And I need to tell you that this is not the bond talking, or if it is, I can't distinguish it from what I would think regardless, which might be the same thing."

"Tell me," she said.

"When I came through that window, I was prepared for an asset. I had spent three years building the case for the extraction. I knew the risk, I knew the protocols, I knew what bringing a Nullblood into proximity with my pack would mean. I had plans. Contingencies." He paused. "I had no contingency for you being a person who wanted to know the name of the star formation above the east meadow and had memorized the procurement specifications for your own window and was counting the valley lights as if they were something you were keeping safe."

She didn't speak.

"I'm not asking you to make a decision based on what I feel," he said. "I'm asking you to know what it is before you decide. Whatever you decide."

The river moved below them.

The valley breathed around them.

She sat on the flat rock that Lev had told her about and she looked at Cassian Drav and she felt the thirty-seven hours remaining in the window like a specific weight, not a threat but a fact, and she made a decision about what she was going to do with the remaining hours.

"I need more time with the old record," she said.

"Yes."

"And I need to speak with Mira about the chemistry."

"Yes."

"And I need Ezra to tell me what he knows about Rafe and why Rafe left the settlement this morning for two hours."

A very short silence.

"What do you know about Rafe," he said.

"Almost nothing. That's the problem." She stood. "Someone in your pack has been in contact with the Syndicate. The phone in the cargo area of the Land Rover, Mira's phone, has been receiving messages. I'm not certain it's Mira sending from it. And Rafe left the settlement through the north passage this morning for two hours. Those two facts don't necessarily connect. But I don't like unconnected facts that involve communication with people who want to return me to a facility where the termination protocol has my name on it."

He stood beside her. His face had changed quality, the careful openness was still there but underneath it something harder had surfaced.

"I'll talk to Ezra," he said.

"Talk to Camille first," she said. "She saw Rafe come back. She went to find you."

He looked at her.

"She did."

"I know. I saw her from the medical annex window."

He was quiet for a moment.

"Is there anything that gets past you," he said, and the dryness in his voice was something she found, she noted this with careful precision, something she found very specifically compelling.

"Everything I haven't learned yet," she said.

She climbed off the flat rock and walked back toward the settlement.

She heard him follow.

She did not look back, not from avoidance but from choice, the conscious decision to trust that he was there without needing to verify it.

This was new.

She filed it.

Camille was in Cassian's study when they returned.

She looked at Seraphine when they came in and then she looked at Cassian and she said:

"Rafe didn't go north to clear his head. He went north because someone called him. I know because I followed him."

Then she said the next thing.

And Seraphine understood that the thirty-seven hours remaining had just become irrelevant.

Because what Camille said next changed the shape of every decision she'd been about to make.