28. Suzana
Suzana
The scouts came back running.
I felt them before I saw them — a disturbance in the camp's edges. My wolf lifted her head inside my chest.
Toma was already standing. His thread pulled tight in the bond — iron drawn to magnetic north.
"Contact." Magda, breathless. "Thirty. Maybe forty. Moving fast from the Sorin crossing. They'll reach the lower ridge in twenty minutes."
Twenty minutes. Our fighters numbered forty-three, but eight were on the eastern approach and couldn't be recalled in time.
"Formation?" Toma's voice was already command-flat.
"Pincer. Two columns closing on the south approach. They know we're here." Magda's eyes found mine. "They have a lore-keeper with them. I smelled the herbs."
The quieting compounds. Not an advance — a hunt. My skin prickled along my nape where Toma's mark lived. The wolf in my chest pressed against my ribs with a growl I felt in my teeth.
"They're coming for me," I said. A tactical fact.
"Then they'll die trying," Aitor said from the tent entrance, already armoured. "Zviad's on the eastern watch. Do we pull him?"
"No. He holds the east in case this is a feint." Toma was at the map table. "We hold the south with what we have. Thirty-five against forty. Use the ridge."
"These aren't lowland conscripts." Magda's voice was careful. "Six with Brashov brands. And the lore-keeper is flanked by his own guard. Four wolves whose only job is getting him close enough to her."
"I can give you more time."
Both of them turned. The bond-threads pulled simultaneously — iron and copper, both hearing what I meant before I said it.
"No." Toma. Immediate.
"Listen to me?—"
"Suzana. No."
I straightened. "I'm not asking permission. The amplification — the binding gift. I used it at the gorge. I can use it again."
"And it nearly killed you." Aitor's voice was raw. He'd moved closer — the bond pulling him toward me with the inevitability of gravity. "The gorge — your heart stopped, Suzana. For eight seconds."
"It came back."
"Because we poured ourselves into you through the bond." Toma's hands were fists against the table. "All four of us. Zviad's thread holding the line. Zviad isn't here."
The truth landed cold. Without Zviad's silver anchor, the wielding would burn through my own life-force.
But twenty minutes. And forty professional fighters with a lore-keeper whose only purpose was pressing wolfsbane against my nape.
"Then I'll use less. Not the full amplification. Just enough to slow them — to buy time for our fighters to set position."
"You don't know that you can dose it." Toma had moved closer. His scent hit me — cedar and iron, sharp with fear. "Every time you've used it, it's been a flood. All or nothing."
"I can learn."
"Not in twenty minutes!"
The shout broke something open. Toma never shouted at me. But this was not the alpha. This was the man. This was fear with its throat bared.
"I won't watch you die." Quieter. Hoarse. "I won't feel your life-force drain through the bond and watch your eyes empty and — Suzana. I am asking you."
Aitor was behind me. His hand found the back of my arm — the lightest pressure. Holding, not restraining.
"He's right," Aitor said. "Without Zviad's thread in the circuit, the cost comes out of your marrow. Your blood. The raw stuff of being alive."
"And if I don't use it," I said, pulling my arm free, "they reach me anyway. They press the wolfsbane against my mark and hold me down for three days and the bond dissolves and everything we've built dies quiet in a tent while I scream."
"I choose the risk I understand over the one I can't fight. The amplification — I know what it costs. I've paid it before. I came back. The re-quieting?" I shook my head. "I don't come back from that. None of us do."
Toma's jaw worked. The muscle at the hinge flexing, releasing. Through the bond I felt him fighting himself — the alpha instinct that screamed protect her against the knowledge that unchecked, it would cage me as surely as Mircea's wolfsbane.
"You stay behind the line," he said finally. Each word extracted like a tooth. "Minimum output. The moment I feel your thread thin past half-strength, I'm pulling you out."
"That's acceptable."
"It's not acceptable. It's the least terrible option and I hate it."
I put my hand against his chest where the iron thread anchored. "I know. I hate it too."
He kissed my forehead. Brief. Hard. Then he was gone — voice raised in commands, the alpha assembling his wolves.
Aitor lingered. One breath. Two.
"If it goes wrong," he said. Not looking at me.
Looking at the tent wall, his jaw set, his copper thread burning with something I could only call anguish.
"If it goes wrong and you start to empty.
I'm pulling you out. Not Toma. Me. I don't care if you hate me for it. I'm not feeling your thread go dark."
"Promise me you'll try to stop before you have to."
"I promise."
He nodded. Once. Then he was moving — sword drawn, the fighter emerging over the man with practiced ease.
I walked out into the grey November morning and positioned myself on the ridge.
The amplification lived in my sternum. Behind the wolf, beneath the bond — a reservoir that was not quite power and not quite self but the place where those two things met.
The first clash was sound — metal on metal, snarling. I crouched on the ridge and felt it through the bond. Our wolves held for four minutes. Then the second column hit.
I felt it through Toma's thread — the jolt. The line buckling. Twenty fresh fighters and behind them — four wolves in formation around a thin figure carrying a leather satchel.
The lore-keeper. Moving toward the breach.
Now.
I reached down. Into the sternum-place. I took a handful — careful, measured. A pulse of amplification sent outward along the bond-threads and then out — into the space between our fighters and theirs.
The world rang.
A compression wave hit the advancing second column like a wall of air. Wolves stumbled. The formation around Bogdan broke apart. Our fighters surged into the gap.
The cost arrived immediate and brutal — a draining sensation in my chest. My fingertips went cold. Then my hands. The grey crept in from the edges of my vision.
But the lore-keeper's guard was reforming. Two wolves climbing toward me.
I reached down again. Smaller — a lance of force aimed at the two wolves. They went sideways, tumbling down the slope.
The grey deepened. Blood from my nose. The cold was central now — in the space where the wolf usually burned steady. She was dim. Flickering.
Stop or you die.
I stopped. Closed the valve and clenched against the drain.
Below me, the battle turned. Our fighters drove the stunned column back. The formation around Bogdan collapsed. The lore-keeper turned and ran.
I sat down. Not a choice — my legs made it for me. My skin was the color of ash.
"Suzana!"
Toma. Running up the ridge. Hands on my face — hot against my cold skin.
"I'm here. I stopped."
"You're grey. Your skin — Suzana, you're grey."
"The color comes back. It takes time."
"You said minimum output."
"I used minimum. This is what minimum looks like without the full bond. Without Zviad in the circuit — this is the cost."
His face. The understanding arriving. If minimum did this — then any full wielding without shared-cost distribution would kill me.
"We need to get her down." Aitor. Skidding to his knees, checking my pulse. "Her heartbeat's thready."
"I turned the fight."
"And if you'd used one more drop? You'd be dead on this ridge." He was pulling me against his chest. Through the bond I felt him pushing warmth into me. "Don't you dare tell me that was worth it."
"It was worth it. Bogdan ran. The line held. Our wolves are alive. I am alive."
"Barely." Toma behind me — his chest against my back. "Barely alive is not a strategy."
The color returned in slow degrees. Both bond-threads pouring warmth through the connection.
They brought me back to the tent. Zviad was there — recalled from the eastern watch. He said nothing when he saw me. Then his thread reached through the bond and wrapped around the damaged places.
"How bad," he said. To Toma. Not to me.
"Don't talk about me like I'm not here."
His eyes moved to me. "How bad, Suzana."
"Bad. Not fatal." I pulled away from Aitor's support.
Stood on my own legs. They held — barely, with a tremor I couldn't hide.
"I used the amplification without the full four-thread circuit.
The cost came out of my own reserves. It worked — the fight turned, the lore-keeper fled. But the cost was significant."
"Cannot," Toma said. "You cannot use it again. Not until we find a way to distribute the cost safely."
"Cannot, or you won't allow it?"
"Don't do that."
"You're telling me to bench myself. To take the one weapon in our arsenal that Mircea doesn't expect and lock it away because using it costs me something."
"Costs you everything. Your life. Your heartbeat. The raw material of you being alive tomorrow. That is not an acceptable cost for a single skirmish."
"It wasn't a single skirmish. It was a targeted assault to capture me and destroy the bond."
"Then we defend you without the amplification. We put fighters around you. We move camp. We?—"
"You hide me?" I stepped toward him. My legs were steady now — the defiance providing a structural support that mere physical strength couldn't match. "You put a wall of wolves around me and what — pray that Mircea doesn't find us? Wait for him to try again with sixty instead of forty?"
"We fight him with steel and strategy like every other war in history!" His hand slammed the table — not violence aimed at me, never at me, but the explosion of a man who didn't know how to argue for something this important.
"You don't ask me." I closed the remaining distance. Put myself inside his space, where the bond was loudest. "You don't ask me because it isn't yours to give or withhold. My power. My blood. My choice about what I spend them on."
"I know what you're afraid of," I said. Quieter now. "You're afraid of holding me while my heart stops. You're afraid my thread will go dark."
"Yes," he said. "That is exactly what I'm afraid of."
"I'm afraid of it too. But I'm more afraid of the cage. I'm more afraid of being the thing that's protected instead of the person who protects. This isn't recklessness. This is me refusing to be the prize in someone else's war."
"We find the shared-cost mechanism." Zviad. His voice cutting through. "The four-thread distribution. If we master it — a quarter-cost to each. Sustainable."
"And until we master it?" Toma asked.
"She uses it only when the alternative is worse than the cost. And we accept that she decides when that threshold is met. Not us."
Toma exhaled. Long. A man releasing something he wanted to hold.
"If you feel the limit?—"
"I stop. I proved that today."
"I trust you," he said. "I am terrified. And I trust you. Both."
I leaned into him. The bond hummed — all four threads present. The knowledge that sat between us now like a loaded weapon:
Every time I used the amplification, I moved closer to a line I could not cross and survive. The shared-cost mechanism was theoretical. And Mircea would send more.
The sacrifice mechanism was loaded. I could feel it — the weight of a future narrowing toward a single point. A moment when the cost would be everything and the alternative would be worse and the choice would be mine alone.
Outside, the camp stirred with the aftermath of victory.
Inside, I pressed my palm against Toma's heart and felt my wolf — battered, diminished, but present — curl warm against my ribs. Still here. Still burning.
For now.