FREYA
They bring Eli to me in a low stone room with a table and a lamp and four armed warriors standing against the walls, watching every move I make.
Eli is grey.
They half carry him in and set him on the table, and the sight of him guts me, because the silver has been in him for hours now and I can see what it is doing, the sweat on him, the wrongness in his color, the way the wounds sit open and angry and refuse to knit the way a wolf's wounds should.
They have given me what I asked for. They have given me water, and clean cloth, and a thin blade, and a pair of iron pincers, and they have given me him, and now I have to be the one to dig the poison out of him.
"Freya." His voice is a thread. His eyes find me as I lean over him. "What did you do? Where did they take you? What is ha
