Chapter 24 #2
I stepped inside. Emma was at the kitchen table folding Thomas’s clothes into a neat pile.
Her hands moved slowly, smoothing each crease like it mattered, like getting the folds right was the only thing holding her together.
She’d lost weight — her face hollow, her eyes swollen to slits, her hair hanging loose and unwashed.
She wore a dark funeral dress, and Thomas’s blanket was clutched against her chest.
She looked up. Her hands went still on a small wool shirt.
She looked at me. I looked at her. A lifetime of friendship and the absence of her son between us.
She walked toward me. I walked toward her.
We met in the middle of the kitchen. Neither of us spoke.
There was nothing to say. Emma opened her arms. I fell into them.
She held me the way she’d held Thomas, fierce, desperate, her fingers digging into my back through the cloak.
I held her the way I’d held him on the doorstep, gentle, broken, my face pressed against her shoulder while the tears came.
“I’m sorry,” I sobbed against her shoulder. “I should have been here. I should have been here and I wasn’t and I’m sorry ...”
“Shut up,” Emma whispered fiercely, her arms tightening. “It wasn’t your fault. It was never your fault.”
She pulled back. Her hands came up to my face, cupping my chin the way she used to when we were girls and she wanted me to pay attention. Her eyes were ruined but the fire behind them was the same Emma I’d always known.
Her fingers found the rope burns on my neck. Traced them gently.
“They did this to you,” she breathed, and the fury was aimed where it belonged, at the dead men who’d earned what they got.
“It doesn’t matter now,” I told her.
“It matters to me,” she insisted, her teeth clenched. “Every one of them stood on that riverbank when they drowned Anna. Every one of them cheered while they strung you up.”
“Did you keep your promise?” Emma pressed. “The wolf. The gray one.”
“Every word of it,” I replied, and something in me went hard without my permission.
“I broke every bone in its hands so it could never hold another child. I crushed its ribs the way it crushed Thomas. And when I was done making it feel every second of what it had done ...” I held her eyes. “I stopped its heart.”
Emma’s breath left her in a rush. Her hand found Thomas’s blanket and pressed it harder against her chest. When she looked at me again the grief was still there, would always be there, but underneath it, the first breath after holding one too long.
Her gaze drifted past me to the window. Her head tilted.
“There’s something in the trees,” she observed carefully. “Watching us.”
I didn’t turn around. I’d felt him shift the moment I stepped out of the tree line, the crack and reshape of bone rippling through me like a held breath released. He’d let me walk into the village alone. He hadn’t let me walk in unguarded.
“I know.” And I did.
She studied the window for a long moment. Whatever she saw, or thought she saw, she kept to herself. Her eyes came back to mine and there was a question in them she was too smart to ask and too kind to push.
“You’re staying out there.” Her eyes moved to the window and back. “In the forest.”
“I’ll visit,” I promised. “But yes. I’m staying.”
“With whatever’s watching us from those pines,” she added, and for one moment, just one, she sounded like the old Emma. Dry and flat and sharper than anyone gave her credit for.
“With whatever’s watching us from those pines,” I agreed, and my mouth twitched despite everything.
Emma gripped my hand. Squeezed hard enough to bruise.
“Come back,” she whispered. “When you can. I’ll make tea.”
“I’ll come back,” I promised.
She let go. The door opened. Heinrich stepped inside and put his arm around her shoulders. He looked at me over Emma’s head. Tired and honest and done pretending.
“Klaus wanted war,” he acknowledged, shaking his head. “Wanted to burn witches and turn this village into his personal crusade. Fifteen men followed him into that forest.” He paused. “None of them came back.”
I held his gaze and waited.
“We’re done,” he continued. “The wolf is dead. Klaus is dead. That’s the story. That’s all anyone needs to hear.”
“Peace,” I offered.
“Survival,” he corrected flatly. “I don’t have the men or the energy for anything else.” He folded his arms. “And you let Emma bring Thomas home. You could have, in that clearing, with what you can do, and you didn’t.”
“I would never hurt Emma.”
“I know.” He met my eyes. “That’s why I’m standing here talking instead of reaching for that axe.”
I held out my hand. He shook it. Firm. Quick.
“Go on now,” Heinrich urged, stepping back. “Before people start coming out and asking questions I don’t want to answer.”
I turned toward the door. Lotte and Margit were already there, blocking the way out. Lotte’s arms locked around my neck. Margit pressed her face into my shoulder.
“Take care of your mother for me,” I told them, one hand on each head.
Lotte nodded. Her lip trembled but she held it.
Margit grabbed my cloak with both fists. “Come back soon.”
“I will.” I kissed her forehead. Then Lotte’s. “I promise.”
I loosened Margit’s fingers from the wool and stepped past them before my face could betray me.
I turned back toward the trees. Walked across the snow alone.
As I reached the tree line, a dark shape shifted between the pines, large, silent, falling into step beside me the way it had been falling into step beside me since the night I’d run into this forest with nothing but a stolen cloak and a prayer.
The black wolf walked beside me, his shoulder pressing warm against my ribs, his head level with my chin. I rested my hand on the back of his neck and felt the coarse fur between my fingers and the steady pulse of his heartbeat underneath.
I looked back once. The village was already disappearing behind the trees, chimneys and rooftops shrinking to nothing, swallowed by the forest the way the forest swallowed everything.
It wasn’t simple. It wasn’t clean. But it was finished.
And that was enough.