CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
ALYSSUM
The door’s soft click was just loud enough to tug at my consciousness, beckoning me back to the land of the waking.
I shifted in the bed with a sigh, pulling the pillow I cradled deeper into my chest as I breathed heavily, resisting the morning.
Fresh, woodland air seeped in from the window I knew to be open, melting over my face with that comforting scent, carrying on its back the distant noise of traveling carts and groups of villagers.
It was positively soothing. But before I knew what was happening, the safety of my eyes-closed darkness transformed; I was back in those woods, that bastard’s hands clawing beneath my skirts, and my heart began to race as if it were happening all over again.
I startled upright, a full-bodied gasp the precursor to shallow breaths and wide, unseeing eyes.
“Hey,” Vayen said, her voice impossibly soft. She dropped the folded clothes she carried and, in a blur of motion, was by my side, cradling my jaw with her scorching palms. “Look into my eyes. Breathe with me.” Those words had preceded comfort before, and I reached for them with everything I had.
All I could see was her. The dark curls brushing her sharp eyebrows, and the fullness of her parted lips.
Her breaths were steady—exaggerated inhales through the nose, and deep, soothing exhales from the mouth.
I matched hers as best I could, though mine were hitched, attempting to fit around the fear sticking in my throat.
“You’re okay,” Vayen whispered, her silver-green eyes capturing mine. “You’re safe.” After everything that had happened, why did I implicitly believe her?
We breathed together like that for a while, and when my heartbeat finally calmed alongside my breath, I let my eyes flutter shut.
My eyes-closed darkness was safe again, permeated only by Vayen’s thumbs gently stroking my cheeks.
Unthinkingly, I leaned into her touch, tilting my head towards her hand to feel more.
There was a tenderness there I couldn’t put words to, a safety that felt unnatural given the week’s events.
But I sought it out desperately, as though the stars themselves had offered Vayen’s warmth as a balm for my wounds.
When I tilted my head far enough that my lips brushed against her palm, she withdrew immediately.
I stifled my instinctive embarrassment—I had nothing to be embarrassed for.
She offered me comfort, and I’d accepted it. That was all.
I exhaled strongly through puffed-out cheeks, blinking back the tears I had no interest in indulging.
“You’re good at that,” I managed, though I avoided her eyes.
“I’ve had some practice.” Vayen rubbed the back of her neck in a manner that seemed uncharacteristically self-conscious.
Her clothes fit better today—dark brown pants tucked into leather boots, and a fitted leather vest I’d never seen before.
This one had buckles in the front with a moderate plunge at her throat, and I could make out the edges of her black bindings beneath.
I forced my attention down to my hands when I realized I’d been staring. The awkwardness between us thickened, and I opened my mouth to say something the exact moment she stood from the bed to retrieve the clothes she’d dropped all over the floor.
I followed after her, shoving the covers from my legs and ignoring the cold as I knelt on the ground.
“Sorry about your clothes.” I picked up everything I could reach, desperate to get it all off the floor.
I huffed a breath when I stood with full arms, dropping her clothes onto the bed for folding.
I wasn’t sure that I had ever folded anything before, but I’d seen my chambermaids do it plenty of times.
I began rearranging the clothes into separate piles as Nora always did.
One for tops, one for pants, and one for undergarments.
I’d managed to fold two linen shirts, one on top of the other, when I noticed that Vayen still kneeled on the ground, unmoving.
I cast a quick glance her way, intending only to take a peek at what she was doing before returning to the task at hand, when I realized she was staring at my leg. I followed her eyes to my thigh.
“It’s even more healed than yesterday,” I commented as a means of denying the visceral memory of the pain. I hiked up my shift until the fading wound was visible, brushing my thumb over the puckered skin. “Would you believe it doesn’t even hurt to put weight on? I’d almost forgotten it was—”
Vayen leaned forward, replacing my thumb with hers and effectively ending my ability to speak. “I took care of your chest wound first, because I could tell it worried you more, but this… this is the reason I summoned Catrin. I wasn’t sure if my imbuement would be enough to heal this fully.”
I denied the instinct to shy away from her touch. It took effort, standing there in nothing more than my shift, allowing her to graze the wound I could almost still feel the pain of.
“When I lost consciousness, you were…”
“I was licking you,” Vayen confirmed, like it was a perfectly normal thing to say. “When I’m phased, my saliva has healing properties. I’ve never had the opportunity to test it for myself until…”
That sent an unwelcome shiver down my spine. Could she detect such a thing with her heightened senses? Stars above, I hoped not.
New topic of conversation, please. Preferably one that did not involve her tongue—wolf or otherwise.
“When you say you could sense what I was more worried about,” I began slowly, observing the intense way she stared at my fresh scar, “that must mean you’re still you when you’re a wolf?”
“Yes, Alyssum. I’m still me.”
My name had no right sounding that good. Stars above, I had gone to sleep with every intention of giving this woman a piece of my mind, and yet…
The rest of her fingertips ghosted my outer thigh as she stood to her full height, seemingly unwilling to meet my eyes.
Instead, her attention fell to my chest, and the portion of the dagger’s mark that she was able to see.
I wondered if she wanted to touch that, too, though she never lifted her hand.
Her eyes were haunted, brows knitted together.
“Thank you,” I said, dipping my chin in a fruitless attempt to connect our eyes. “Thank you for saving me, and for tending to my wounds. I’m mad at you for a great many things, but I owe you that much.”
Vayen managed to tear herself away from the scar, running a hand through her curls and pulling at the root. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you faster. If I had been able to phase when they first attacked…”
I searched her pained features, my own brow furrowing. “If it wasn’t the attack that made you phase, what did?” And only then did Vayen meet my eyes.
“I heard you scream.”
“I screamed, and you phased for the first time since you were a child?” I questioned, surprise pitching my voice.
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I. All I know is, the moment I heard you, I was overcome with the strangest sensation—a barrier inside of me had lifted, and I wasn’t in control anymore.
I wasn’t just able to phase, I had to… like—like my body wasn’t my own.
” She stepped away from me then, shoulders rounding forward, staring at the ground.
“Have you ever felt that way before?” I asked, drawing an arm around my middle.
Vayen paused, and I worried that she might be keeping things from me again, but then her head rolled back. “Yes. In Lunamor.”
“Wait—what? When were you in Lunamor?”
Vayen scrubbed her face with both hands. It seemed she hadn’t intended for the conversation to go this way, and I didn’t enjoy how my nerves multiplied in response.
“Vayen,” I said, prompting her to turn her head just enough that I could see her profile. “When were you in Lunamor?”
It was evident in the fluttering of her jaw and the way she avoided my gaze that she had little interest in relinquishing the truth.
“Tell me.” My voice wavered, all too ready to battle her if needed. “Right now. Tell me.”
“The Feast of Comets.” The words came out harsh and loud, and it was all I could do not to flinch.
She exhaled sharply then, neck rolling as if to calm herself.
I was starting to recognize the physical manifestations of her submission, and when the next words followed, they were much softer.
“We were there—me, Winnie, and Berig. I—I was there.”
“I don’t… how? How did you get past the wall?”
“I think we’ve both proven the wall is not quite as impassable as they’d like us to believe.”
The ground felt as though it wanted to shift beneath my feet, so I plopped myself right down on the pile of shirts I’d just folded. I stared at my hands, attempting to piece together her words.
“Why?”
“I was looking for you.”
“Because of your vision,” I said, barely following the thread of logic.
Vayen nodded.
I chewed on my lower lip—it was all I could do not to tug at my fingers. I already knew the answer, but I wanted to hear her say it. “Well, did you find me?”
“I did.”
“State plainly what occurred,” I said, patience waning. “I’d rather not ask a dozen questions to get to the heart of what happened.”
Vayen walked over to the window, chest heaving with a sigh. She leaned against the sill, staring at the market below, seemingly unwilling to look at me.
“We’d been in Lunamor for three days, stalking the streets.
Winnie and Berig were at their wit’s end; I wasn’t willing to tell them entirely what I saw in my vision, and I doubted they’d have believed me if I did.
All I knew was that I had to find you and that you would be in Lunamor.
The timing was particularly unfortunate, given that Hollows attend the feast…
but if there was even a chance you could help us, it was worth the risk. ”
She gazed out the window, but I had the distinct impression her gaze found no focus in the present.