His Moonsilver Mate (Abby and Kade) novel Chapter 154

Next Chapter Chapter 154

*

Send Gift

22

Comments

|||

O

r

12:01 Mon, Nov 2

Kade

Chapter 154

She told me in the dark, with her back to me.

I think she couldn’t have done it any other way. She lay on her side facing the window, with my arm over her, and told it all to the glass. The bowl. The candle. The power going out of her alance, so that the lights in the training hall flickered and burst and Ryan’s whole drill stopped in the yar Something pulling at it from outside her. And then what Imogen had said, sitting back on hereels on the mats, with her hands not quite steady.

Light runs both ways along a thread.

When she had finished, I didn’t say anything for a long time.

I lay with my arm over her and felt the thing in my chest. I had felt it every hour of every day for six weeks. I knew its weight and its shape, the way it lay curled under Knox, the cold of the threads running out from it into my ribs and up my throat. I had thought I knew what it was. Something she had put in me to kill me, slowly. A wound that wouldn’t close.

I hadn’t known it was a way in.

Every night that Abby had crept in after everyone was asleep and sat on the edge of my bed and laid her hand flat on my chest, and the pain had eased. I had lain there with her hand on me and felt grateful. And every one of those nights, at the other end of that thread, a woman in a stone room with a candle had been watching her do it.

The binding. The full moon. Abby lying along the length of me in the circle with her muzzle on my chest, pouring everything she had into me until she couldn’t lift her head. I had felt it go in. Every drop. I had thought it was the most beautiful thing that had ever been done for me.

I had lain there with my eyes closed and let it all pour into me, and let her in with it.

“Kade,” Abby said to the window.

“I’m here.”

“Say something.”

I couldn’t. I tightened my arm round her instead, and put my face against the back of her neck, and stayed there. After a while I felt her hand come up and close over mine on her stomach.

Neither of us slept much.

MON

2

O

22

|||

O

Г

01 Mon Nov 2

and my shirt off, and made myself look.

The threads were coming back.

fter the binding they had faded almost to nothing. Pale gray, like pencil marks half rubbed out. Now there were four of them again that I could see without leaning close. Up from the scar,ver the ribs, up the side of my throat toward my jaw. Not dark yet. Not the way they had been before he moon. But darker than last week. I could see the difference. I was certain of it.

Two weeks, Imogen had said, the night she tied it. By the end of the month, it’ll be thin. Youll feel

I could feel it.

It wasn’t pain. Not yet. It was something worse, in a way. A kind of attention. As if the thing in my chest had been asleep, and was now only lying still with its eyes closed, listening.

I put my shirt on and buttoned it to the collar and went to work.

***

Imogen was waiting in my office.

She was in the chair by the window with her basket on her knees and a book open on top of it, an old one, the binding cracked and mended with thread. She shut it when I came in. Liam was already there, at his usual place by the desk. He looked as if he had slept about as much as I had.

“She told you,” Imogen said.

“She told me.”

I sat down. It took longer than it should have. Imogen watched me do it, and her eyes went to my collar, buttoned to the throat.

“Show me,” she said.

I undid the top buttons. She came and looked, without touching. Her mouth went thin.

“Faster than I hoped,” she said. “Not faster than I feared.” She sat back down. “It’s waking early. It’s had a taste of her twice since the moon, through you. The clinic. And yesterday.”

“Yesterday she didn’t touch me. I was on the other side of the house.”

“She doesn’t need to touch you. She lit up half the yard, and it went to you, the way it always goes. You felt it. You called her on the stairs.” Imogen folded her hands on the book. “Distance doesn’t

MON

2

22

|||

“Then she doesn’t use it,” I said.

mogen looked at me.

“Not on me,” I said. “Not on anyone. Not at all. Not until we know how to cut her off.” My voice was steadier than I was. “And at the full moon, we don’t do it.”

The room was very quiet.

“Alpha,” Imogen said.

“I mean it.”

“I know you do.” She didn’t raise her voice. “I knew you would, from the minute she told me. That’s why I came early, before she got here.” She leaned forward. “If you refuse the binding, you’ll wake up on the morning after the full moon with that thing awake in your chest. Not stirring. Awake. And it won’t stay where it is. You know where it was going, before we tied it. You felt it.”

I had felt it. Up my throat. Toward my jaw. Toward my heart.

“A month,” Imogen said. “Perhaps less. I couldn’t tie it again without her, and by then there might not be enough of you left to tie it to.”

“Then find another way.”

“I’m trying.” She put her hand flat on the book. “I’ve been trying since the field. Every book I own, every one I can beg off anyone in four valleys. I can tie it. I can slow it. I can’t undo it. Not without knowing what it’s made of.”

“It’s made of her,” I said. “You told Abby. Her blood. Her hands.”

“Her blood, her hands, and what else?” Imogen leaned forward. “What was in the blade, Alpha? What metal, what stone, what was it quenched in, what words did she say over it, how many nights did it take, under what moon? Every one of those things is a knot. I can’t untie a knot I can’t see.” She sat back. “Cressida knows. She made it. And there’s one other person living who might have stood in the room while she did.”

She didn’t say his name. Neither did Liam. Neither did I.

“Has there been anything at the line?” I said to Liam.

“Nothing.” He shook his head. “I’ve been up every morning. Nothing’s been moved. No tracks but ours.” He hesitated. “It’s been more than a week, Kade. She might not even have ”

MON

2

22

|||

O

r

12:02 Mon, Nov 2.

Awent down to the warriors’ hall at noon to sign the new patrol orders, and saw the rota on the board.

I read it twice. Then I read the line at the bottom.

BETA-EXCUSED NIGHT DUTIES (OTHER ARRANGEMENTS).

I stood there for a while.

When I went back upstairs, Liam was at the desk in my office going through the grain accounts. I stood in the doorway until he looked up.

“How long has that been on the board?”

He didn’t ask what I meant. “A week, about.”

“You didn’t tell me.”

“You had enough.” He put the pen down. “And I don’t want you to say anything to him, either. He’s earned it. We lied to his face, in front of his own men. He’s letting us off with a notice on a board.” He shrugged, very slightly. “That’s Ryan being kind.”

I looked at my oldest friend sitting at my desk, doing my accounts, with his name struck off every watch in my pack because I had asked him to drive a woman to the line in the dark.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“I know.” He picked the pen up again. “Go and eat something. You look terrible.”

******

That night I told her.

She was sitting on the end of the bed, brushing her hair, the way she did every night. I sat down beside her and took the brush out of her hand, and put it on the blanket between us.