Shifting Destiny

Chapter Sixteen

Kael POV

Metal strikes metal near the yard gate. I come up from the water basin with my teeth bare, and the bad leg folds when I turn too quickly. I catch myself on the other three. A guard beyond the fence calls to someone I cannot see.

Nothing comes through the gate. The sound stops, but my shoulders stay tight. I back toward the trees, watching the fence and the ward wall behind it.

Feyre's voice came through a window yesterday. I went to it. She spoke my name, and I stood still at the wire to listen. The clang brings back an earlier day: the gate moving, pain in my leg, my teeth near the fence. I cannot hear her now.

The guard keeps his distance while I reach the trees. I can hear him speak into the thing at his shoulder, but the words pass too quickly. I understand my name. I understand that he is looking at me. I wait until he looks back at the building before I put the bad foot on the ground again.

It takes my weight for three steps. On the fourth, I lift it.

When the light fades, food appears near the far gate of the holding run. A woman from the sanctuary leaves it there and goes back behind the fence. She never comes close enough for me to reach her. The outer gate is tied open. I can see the way out past its post and the trees beyond it. The inner gate to the building stays shut.

The outer gate moved toward me before. I still hear the hinge scrape when I look at it, but I cannot see the face of the handler who pulled the rope. Tonight the gate does not move. The woman settles behind the inner fence with a lamp beside her feet and her hands where I can see them.

I walk around the outside twice. The food smells of meat and the tin dish beneath it. My leg throbs when I stop, so I stand with that foot off the ground and watch her. She eats from a small packet of her own. There is no rope in her hands.

Levi comes along the protected path behind her. I know him before I look at him. His scent was in my home, on my clothes, beside Eira's when she was young enough to follow us into rooms where she had been told to stay out. I turn my head toward him and listen for her too, though I hear only the handler opening her packet.

"Leave the gate as it is," Levi tells the handler, stopping on her side of the fence. "If he goes in, no one closes it on him tonight."

"Alis told me," the woman answers, looking toward the open end. "I'll call if his limp gets worse."

Levi does not say my name. He stops when he sees me near the trees and stays behind the inner fence while I move toward the food. The ground in the run is dry under the roof, with a shallow dish of water against one wall. I can get to both without passing a person. I step inside.

The wall takes some of the wind. For a moment I can stand without watching the sky and the fence together. I eat a little, then stop when a footstep sounds beyond the inner gate. Levi has changed where he stands. He moves back when I lift my head.

"Easy," he says from the far side of the wire, his hands down. "I'm staying here."

I know that voice. There should be other words after it. Things I used to tell him when he watched a door for me, or when Eira laughed at us for talking in low voices when we thought she was asleep. I see her fingers on the edge of a table. A pale mark across one knuckle. Then all I can see is the dish beside my paws.

I do not know where Eira is. The need to find her makes me turn in the narrow space. My injured leg catches beneath me. I hit the wall with my shoulder and hear the handler rise on the other side of the fence.

"I'm not coming in," she tells me, keeping the fence between us. "You can go back out."

Levi tells her to stay back. I hear his voice, but the place around me has changed. There is stone under my hands. A door farther down a dark room. Someone calls Eira's name. I pull against something tight on my wrists, and pain goes through my head before I can see who put it there.

My paws are on dirt. The run smells of wet wood and food. I bare my teeth at the empty space in front of me. No one has touched me. The pressure remains behind my eyes, although I can feel the ground and hear Levi breathing beyond the fence.

It does not belong to my leg. I have known that much on the nights when the pain in my leg eased and the pressure did not. It presses harder when I reach for a memory. I shake my head, and the dish rattles against the wall where my foot catches it.

Vivian stands at another door. Her mouth moves, but I cannot hear the words. I remember taking a step toward her and stopping because she stepped back. I know her face, but I cannot picture Eira's now. I hear a loud crack and taste blood. I do not know whose.

I blink at the dirt. Levi is still there. The woman has lowered herself back onto her seat, farther from the fence now. Neither of them looks at the water dish. They watch me.

Beyond the building, air moves from the ward roof toward the open end of the run. Disinfectant comes first, then cloth, warm skin, and Feyre. I raise my nose. She is farther away than yesterday's window, but I know her scent from there and from the woods.

I remember the woods and her arm beneath my teeth. I cannot hold what I meant to do. I remember her falling away from me. Her blood. Her eyes when I looked back. The memory makes me take a step toward the open gate, toward the wall her scent came over.

I smell sweat and fear with her scent tonight. It may have been there before. I cannot tell how long the air has taken to reach me. I only know that I went toward her before and she was hurt.

I stop with one paw lifted. Levi looks along the ward wall, following the direction of my head. I could go to the fence beneath the ward windows. The far gate is open, and no one here could reach me before I got there. My leg would slow me, but it would not stop me.

I put my paw down and turn away from the wall. The movement hurts my bad leg. I go back under the roof instead of out through the gate. Feyre's scent grows faint while I lie beside the dish.

"He backed off," the handler says quietly to Levi, watching through the wire. "Did you see where he was looking?"

"I did," Levi answers, still facing the ward. "Let him rest. Call me if he gets up again."

I hear the words without knowing whether Levi means to speak to me. Rest. I lay my head on my forelegs and keep the bad hind leg stretched out. The pressure eases enough that I can hear the guard's steps outside again. I still want to get up, but I stay where I am.

Footsteps come from the path beyond the trees. Not Levi's. The guard on the outside watch speaks into his radio. Another person answers from farther away. The stranger has not reached the fence, and I cannot see through the dark beyond the open gate.

Then the wind turns. A smell comes through the opening, sharp beneath damp leather. I know it from the dark room, though I cannot remember the person who carried it. My ears flatten before the stranger takes another step. The pressure behind my eyes, quiet since I turned away from Feyre, drives hard through my head.