Moonbright

Chapter 22 #2

He fights. Coughs so hard I think we've lost him. His body folds under the blanket. Axan and Maren both holding now. Maren is holding her brother through the seizing and I cannot think about that.

"Keep breathing. You will breathe. You will keep—"

His chest jerks. Once. The cough doesn't catch this time. The whole body goes for it and nothing comes back.

More paste. I scrape the bowl out. Push the steam pot closer. Press the cloth tighter over his nose.

"Come on. Come on—"

The rattle deepens. Goes wet. Goes wrong.

"Sit him up. Sit him UP."

Axan pulls him forward. I get my hand under his ribs, palm flat to his chest. His heart is going too fast. Then slower. Then—

"No. Stay with me. Stay—"

I don't know his name.

His name. I'm shouting at him to stay and I don't have a name. Maren is sobbing his name into his hair and I can't hear it, my ears are too loud, my hands are too loud—

His chest rises.

Falls.

Doesn't rise.

I push paste into the pot like volume will fix it. I push and push and Dara's hand closes on my wrist.

"Mel."

"He's—I just—just need to—"

"Mel. He's gone."

My hand stops.

The sound she makes isn't a sound.

I'm still holding the bowl.

My fingers won't unfold from it. Dara has to take it. She takes it and sets it on the ground beside me and I watch her hands do this because mine cannot.

He was breathing thirty seconds ago. I count it backward. The cough. The seizing. My hand on his chest. Heart slowing. Heart stopping. Thirty seconds. That's all it is. That's the gap. I had thirty seconds to fix it and I didn't fix it.

I have set bones and drawn fevers and stitched scalp wounds and packed shrapnel out of a thigh. Every patient I have actually treated has walked away from me. Every one of them. I was eleven the first time and I am twenty-two now and every single one of them—

Until thirty seconds ago.

Was that me? Was any of that me. Did they live because I helped them or did they live because they were going to live and I happened to be standing there while it happened—

"Melori." Keer.

He's looking at the body, at Maren, then me.

I can't read it because I can't focus on a face right now.

My eyes keep going back to the bowl Dara set down.

The paste in it has separated. Two layers.

I made it wrong. I made it weaker for the others first and they lived.

I made it stronger for him because he was worse.

Stronger killed him. Or weaker would have killed him faster. I don't know which. I don’t know which—

"Melori." Sharper.

"I'm here."

"Are you hurt?"

"What?"

"Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Stand up."

I stand. My knees don't work the way they did before but I stand up.

Brennan tries to sit up, but Dara pushes him back down. "Stay down. She kept three of you alive. Don't waste it."

Three. Not all four.

"Five of them." Brennan's voice is wrecked. Raw. "Human scouts. Camp near the border. Clay pots. Hit the ground, broke open. Smoke everywhere." He coughs. Wipes gray blood from his mouth. "We killed three. Two got away. Ran. Talking about a main force. Days ahead."

The clearing goes silent. Not because people stopped talking. Because nobody breathes.

Then the murmuring comes back. Worse.

"Days ahead—"

"This was a TEST?"

"She said this would happen—"

Tovar.

He's looking at the body. Then at me. The grief in his face has somewhere to go now and it goes straight to my chest.

"They're coming for the human." His voice cracks. "She's why—"

"Tovar." Kestria. Steel. "Not now."

"He's DEAD—"

"I KNOW he's dead. We're going to bury him. And then we're going to figure out how to keep more of us alive. Sit down."

He doesn't sit. But he doesn't speak again.

"Tovar." Keer. Quiet. Worse than loud. "Enough."

Silence.

"Council meets. Now." Keer looks at Brennan. "Scouts—rest, then report everything you saw."

People move. Slow. Reluctant. Two wolves crouch by Vidar to lift him. Maren is still on the ground beside him, hands at his face. She won't let them. The wolves wait.

Keer crosses to her. Kneels. His hand goes to her shoulder. He says something I can't hear.

I look down at the bowl Dara set on the ground beside me.

The paste has separated. Two layers. The thicker one settled at the bottom and a thin watery slick floating on top.

I made it wrong. Or it was always going to do that and I didn't know.

I didn't know. I don't know what I don't know.

I'm staring at it and my hands are still in fists and there's gray paste under my fingernails from the part I scraped out for him and I—

Motion at the edge of my vision.

I don't process it as anything.

Then I'm in the dirt.

Air gone. The ground hits my back and my head and the breath comes out of me in one piece and doesn't come back. Weight on my chest. Crushing. Pinning. I can't—

A face above mine.

Tovar's face but Tovar's face is wrong. His eyes are not eyes. The dark of them has gone yellow and the yellow is not human. His mouth is open and the teeth in it are too long. The shape of his hand on my throat is not a hand. Fingers reshaping. Bones moving under the skin.

Claws.

His claws break the skin above my collarbone before I know I'm being cut. A line of cold. Then warm. Then real.

"Vara—"

His voice is half a growl. The one word. His mate's name.

I can't make a sound.

My body has stopped working. My hands are at my sides. My legs are not moving. The breath that should have come back hasn't. The weight on my chest is grinding my ribs into the ground and his face is closer now and his teeth are closer now and—

Something hits him.

Weight gone. Just—gone. The grinding stops and the cold above my collarbone is the only thing I can feel and I'm staring at the sky.

A wet sound.

Hot spray across my face.

Then quiet.

I'm breathing. I think I'm breathing. The breath isn't going right. My ears are full of something soft, like wool, like distance.

A shape above me.

Not Tovar.

Keer.

His eye has gone wolf-gold and his mouth is open and there are teeth in it that don't belong in a human mouth. His hand is at his side and the hand is wrong, the fingers are wrong, the fingers are claws and there is so much red on them, so much—

He's saying my name. He's saying my name and I can hear it but it's coming through the wool.

Below his other hand: a body. Tovar. The throat is open. The throat is open in a way throats don't open and the dirt around him is dark and going darker.

Keer killed him.

Keer killed Tovar.

The pack is silent. The whole clearing. Nobody is moving. Maren is still on the ground beside Vidar. The wolves who were going to lift the body are frozen where they stand. Kestria is two paces away with her hand at her mouth.

Keer pulls back into himself. I watch it happen. The hand reshaping. The teeth retracting.

He looks at the pack.

He doesn't say anything.

The pack doesn't say anything back.

He kneels.

His hand is on my face. The hand is human again but it's still warm with Tovar's blood and that's what's on my cheek now, that's the warmth I can feel, blood from his hand on my skin and—

"Melori."

I can't answer.

"Look at me."

I'm looking at him. I think I am. My eyes are open. The ceiling of sky is still there. He’s in the middle of it.

"Are you hurt?"

The cold at my collarbone is real. The cold is a fact. Other things are not facts right now.

"Melori."

"He cut me." My voice doesn't sound like my voice.

His eye drops to it.

He breathes out. One long breath.

Then he's lifting me.

I don't help. My body is in his arms and I'm watching the sky tilt. His arm is under my knees and his other arm is at my back. Cedar. Iron. The iron is Tovar.

"Kestria."

Her voice answers. I don't catch the words.

"With me. Now."

He's walking. Each step rocks me a little. The pack is silent on either side of us. I feel them watching but I don't look. I don't think I could look. My eyes have decided to stay on his throat. The pulse there. Steady. Faster than usual but steady.

"Council in an hour." He doesn't look at anyone when he says it. "The body stays where it is until I come back."

Nobody answers.

We're moving past the workspace. Past the fire pit. Past the path that goes to my dwelling. Past it. He's not taking me to my dwelling.

His.

I haven't been here.

I know which one is his because I've watched him come and go. The one that sits a little above the others. The one nobody walks past unless they have a reason. He carries me up the slope and Kestria's footsteps are behind us and I close my eyes because the tilting is making my stomach cramp.

The light changes.

We're inside.

It smells like him in a way the rest of the territory doesn't—denser, layered, the cedar gone deep into the furs and the wood and the air itself.

"Here."

He's setting me down. Furs under me. Soft. Deep. The bed is wide. The whole space is dim.

He's still close.

"Kestria. Stay with her."

"I'm staying."

"Don't let her up."

"I won't."

"If she needs anything—"

"Keer." Kestria. Quiet. "Go."

He doesn't go yet.

His hand is on my face again. The blood is mostly dried now. He's looking at me and his eye is back to ordinary and I cannot read what's in it. I cannot read anything right now.

"Melori."

"I'm here." It comes out wrong. Too quiet.

"You're safe here."

I nod. I think I nod. My head moves a little.

"I have to go."

I nod again.

He doesn't move.

"Go run your pack." It comes out by itself. I don't even know if I meant to say it. "I'll be here."

He doesn't move.

His thumb traces my eyebrow. Once. Slow. The pad of it warm and the blood on his hand dry now.

He doesn't lift the thumb right away.

Stays there. At the corner.

"I'll be back."

"I know."

His thumb drags down—barely—to the bone at my temple. Stops there. The hand isn't ready to come off me yet and he's making it.

Then it's gone.

The cold of his leaving is specific. The place above my eyebrow where his thumb just was. The bone at my temple where it stopped. The shape of him pulling out of the room. The smell of him is still in the furs and on my face but the heat of him went with him.

"Mel."

Kestria. On the edge of the bed. Her hand on my hair.

"Mel, I need to look at your collarbone. Just look. I'm not going to do anything yet."

"Okay."

She moves the collar of my shirt. Sucks her teeth. Goes for water from somewhere. Comes back with a cloth.

"It's not deep. He didn't get the artery. He didn't even get close."

"Good."

"I'm going to clean it."

"Okay."

She cleans it. The cold of the cloth is the only thing I can feel for a minute. Then the sting. The sting is good. I focus on the sting because the sting is something my body can hold.

"There's blood on your face. It's not yours. Can I—"

"Leave it."

She stops.

"Mel."

"Leave it. Just for a minute. I want—" I don't know what I want. "Just for a minute."

She doesn't argue. She wipes around it. Cleans my hands. She works without talking.

"I didn’t know his name."

"Vidar."

I close my eyes.

"He killed Tovar."

"I know."

"In front of everyone."

"I was there."

"He didn't have to kill him. He could have—"

"Mel."

"He could have just pulled him off."

"Tovar had claws at your throat."

"He could have—"

"Mel."

I stop.

"He could have," I say anyway, smaller. "He chose. He chose."

"Yes."

"For me."

"Yes."

I close my eyes again.

"Kestria."

"Yes."

"He killed someone for me."

"I know, Mel."

"I don't—"

I don't finish.

Vidar.

Tovar.

I have two bodies now.

"Sleep." Kestria runs her fingers through my hair.

"I can't."

"Sleep, Mel."

The cedar.

The furs.

His pillow—

I'm asleep before I know I am.