Solma jumps at the movement behind her. She grips her hunting knife but immediately recognises the shape emerging from the moonlit camp. She’d expected Olive, but it’s Bell who sits beside her.
“’Liv told me you ain’t sleeping,” she says. Solma snorts.
“’Course she did.”
Bell gives her a sharp look. “That girl loves you,” she says. “More’n you—”
“Than I deserve?” Solma asks bitterly. “I know.”
A wry smile plays on Bell’s lips. “I was gonna says she loves you more’n you know,” she says. “You deserve that love, girl. You always have. I thought you quit punishing yourself about that?”
Solma shrugs. She thought she had, too. Maybe that’s a lie.
Bell sighs. She places her rolling pin on her lap and flexes her shoulders. The wound Vulkan inflicted on her last year never fully healed and
