Chapter 8 #3
I watched him do it and hated that it bothered me.
I dozed. Woke. Dozed again. Each time the dream pushed at the edges, Sophia’s empty eyes flickering behind my lids, but each time the sounds of the cottage pulled me back.
The fire, the creak of the chair when Dietrich shifted his weight, the steady rhythm of his breathing.
It anchored me anyway. I was counting his breaths like a child counting heartbeats to fall asleep.
By late afternoon the stew was ready. He ladled it into two bowls and set one on the table, then sat back down in his chair with the other.
This time he ate in the room with me. First time he’d done that.
He still didn’t look at me. Still didn’t speak.
But he was there, and the cottage felt different with two people eating in it instead of one.
I ate slowly. The stew was good — rich and thick, the root vegetables soft, the rabbit tender enough to fall apart. I tasted grandmother’s herbs in it again and my throat tightened, but the tears didn’t come this time. I had nothing left to cry with.
The light through the cracks in the boards turned orange, then gray, then faded until the fire was the only thing keeping the darkness out.
Dietrich set his empty bowl aside and stood.
Pulled on his coat. Fastened it. Crossed to the door.
The bar scraped and his footsteps faded and I was alone again.
I sat in the quiet and stared at the boards on the windows.
How many days now? Four. Five. I’d stopped counting because counting made it worse.
The light through the cracks was the only way to tell morning from evening and some days I couldn’t even manage that.
The walls were closer than they’d been when I arrived.
I knew they weren’t, knew the cottage hadn’t shrunk, knew the boards hadn’t moved, but my lungs didn’t believe my head and every night the air got thicker and the ceiling got lower and I woke up gasping like a woman buried alive.
Dietrich’s words kept circling back. The ones from that first day, when I’d pushed him about Sophia.
What do you think happened? He kept her. She fought. He fought harder. Eventually one of them had to break. She broke.
Sophia scratched at the door until her nails were gone. Tried to run. Fought with everything her body had. And it hadn’t mattered. Because whatever was holding her was stronger than fingernails and stubbornness and the will to survive.
I wasn’t going to scratch at the door.
I pulled the grimoire from under the bed. Opened it to the werewolf entry. Still blurred. Closed it. Slid it back.
The howling woke me around midnight. Far off at first. Then closer. Then close enough that I could track it moving around the cottage, left to right, right to left, the same wide circle getting tighter each time.
I lay still and listened.
Claws on the frozen ground. Just outside the boards. Scraping slow along the wall, stopping at the door. Then the sniffing started — wet, heavy breaths drawn through the gap between the wood and the stone, pulling air in like it was trying to taste what was inside.
I slid my hand under the pillow and found the knife I’d put there the second night. Held it flat against my ribs. My whole body was rigid and my lungs wouldn’t fill and I could hear my own heartbeat so loud I was sure whatever was outside could hear it too.
A snarl from the trees. One bark, deep, rough, furious. The sniffing stopped. The claws scraped backward. I heard it go, fast, crashing through the undergrowth away from the cottage, driven off by whatever had snarled at it from the dark.
I didn’t sleep after that.
I was still awake when the bar scraped in the morning. Dietrich came in with wood under one arm and snow caught in his beard. He glanced at me, at the knife in my hand, at my face. Whatever he saw there he kept to himself. He crouched by the hearth and started building the fire.
I watched him work. The kindling catching. The flames steadying.
“What was at the door last night?” I asked, pulling the furs tighter around my shoulders.
He didn’t turn around. “You heard it.”
“I heard scratching. I heard sniffing. And I heard a noise from the trees that scared it off.” I set the knife on the bed beside me. “What’s out there?”
He fed a log into the fire and watched it catch before he answered.
“The forest has things in it that hunt by scent. Ever since you came here, they’ve been restless.
Whatever your family carries in its blood, you carry more of it.
Your grandmother lived in these woods for years and nothing bothered her.
Sophia drew attention but not like this.
” He shoved another log in. “Since the night I brought you here, I’ve been chasing things away from this cottage that I haven’t seen in more than two decades. ”
“And you drove those things away? You’re sure?” I pressed, watching his back.
He stood up and crossed to the table. Started cutting bread. “I patrol. Every night. Lay false trails across the scent paths so anything tracking you ends up turned around. When something gets too close to the cottage I chase it off.”
I sat with that. Every night since I’d arrived. While I slept behind the bar and cursed him and read the grimoire by firelight, he’d been out there. In the cold. In the dark. Running the perimeter so that whatever was sniffing at the door never got through it.
“Is that why the hunters never found this place?” I leaned forward on the bed. “The dogs losing the trail. The search parties going in circles.”
He brought the bread over and held the plate out. “Yes.”
I took it. Ate. He went back to the hearth and set water to boil. We didn’t speak for a while. The fire popped. The bread was rough and warm and I chewed it and thought about a man who locked me in and then spent every night making sure nothing worse could get in after me.
When he pulled on his coat that evening I watched him cross to the door. His hand found the bar.
“Dietrich.”
He stopped. His hand still on the bar.
“Thank you.” It came out smaller than I meant. “For keeping me safe.”
He stood there with his hand on the bar. His back to me. I watched his fingers tighten on the wood, then loosen. Then tighten again.
He turned his head. Just enough that I caught his profile in the firelight. Something sat on his face that didn’t belong there, open and unguarded, like I’d knocked a door loose he hadn’t braced.
“You’re welcome.” So quiet I almost didn’t hear it. Then he blinked and it was gone. Same face as always. Like I’d imagined the whole thing.
He shoved the door open and left.
The bar scraped. His footsteps crunched away through the snow until the forest swallowed them.
I sat in the dark and listened to the quiet and thought about Sophia.
He’ll break you the same way he broke me.
Sophia had waited. Endured. Hoped someone would come. And the hoping was what killed her long before anyone’s hands finished the job.
I was not going to wait. I was not going to hope.
The door was barred. The windows were boarded shut. Dietrich was stronger and faster and knew this forest in ways I never would. But he had patterns. First light. Dark. The perimeter. Stretches of time when he was far from the cottage door.
I would watch. I would learn. I would find the gap.
And when it came, I would take it.