The Storeroom Key

Chapter 4 The Crumbling Foundation

Claws struck steel at the northern line. I had heard that sound in a dozen battles and knew how to move through it without thinking. The coughing was new.

Warriors collapsed around me with black foam on their lips. Some had no wound at all. Poison crossed their skin and locked their muscles before a rogue came within striking distance.

I killed the wolf in front of me and looked for the familiar silver shimmer around our territory.

Aria's barrier was gone.

“Where is the healer? Where is Aria?”

No one answered. Two more warriors fell, leaving a gap wide enough for three rogues to cross. I forced the retreat through the pack link.

“Fall back to camp!”

Several wounded wolves had to be dragged. The poison followed us between the trees and settled low over the paths.

Camp offered no shelter. Bodies covered the ground outside the medical hut, and every breath tasted sweet and rotten.

The storeroom door remained bolted. Elara stood beside it, twisting her hands while the wolves nearest her watched in silence.

“Caleb!” She ran to me. “They're all dying!”

I pulled free of her hands. “Where is Aria? I ordered her to the northern front.”

“I don't know. She left.”

Left during an attack. Another jealous display, I told myself. I could punish her later. First I needed the antidote.

I opened the storeroom. Neat rows of vials filled every shelf, some clear and some clouded with red or green sediment. Aria's labels covered the racks in the Old Tongue.

“Which one is the antidote?”

Elara stayed at the door. “I don't know. They all look the same.”

I grabbed several at random and carried them outside. The first made a poisoned warrior vomit black fluid. The second did nothing.

By the time I uncorked the third, the wolf's chest had stopped moving.

There were hundreds of vials behind me, and I could not read one label.

Aria had to be proving a point. She would be in our den, waiting for me to beg.

I would drag her back to the medical tent if I had to. Her defiance could wait until the pack was stable.

The den was empty.

The pouch of calming herbs she kept beside my bed was gone. So was the dried lavender that covered the smell of blood after battle.

The hearth had burned low. The tea Aria usually replaced before it cooled had gone dark in the pot.

I checked the sleeping chamber and the small treatment room. Her spare clothes were gone, and the shelves that held her salves were bare. Cold stone and ash had swallowed her scent.

I had treated those comforts as part of the den. Now every empty place carried Aria's hands.

If Aria would not come when called, I would use the bond. I closed my eyes and pulled at the place where her presence had rested for years.

There was nothing to hold.

I reached again. Pain drove through my chest and dropped me to one knee. The empty bond held nothing. Even her anger was gone. Everything I sent across it came back through my own body.

She had severed us at the root.

My hands struck the floor. A howl tore out of me and carried through the open den door.

The bond stayed empty. Outside, a poisoned wolf coughed until someone called for a healer who was gone.