37
After tending to my own scratches that the splintered wood left on my forearm, I leave the first-aid kit on the table and head for the yard. I don’t know how long he’ll need behind that door, or what he’ll decide to be when he finally comes out.
Outside, the world has rearranged itself in just half an hour.
The snow is no longer an endless white cage. Blood marks it in vicious, scattered streaks.
I pass the crossbow abandoned where he threw it, half-buried beside the churned-up signs of our struggle; a weapon that had been a choice and then a warning and then nothing at all.
Beyond it, the smokehouse sits like the only black wound in all that brightness.
For the first time since I woke up here, the landscape doesn’t look like something built to keep me trapped.
It doesn’t even look like something survived despite the current setting.
It’s where I’ve found my grit. Where he’s found his demons. Where those demons met mine and they stripped both of us down to whatever was left underneath.
The cold nips at me through my clothes as I stand there for a moment, allowing the truth to settle in my chest. Then my eyes take in the mess around me, and practicality wins.
I tidy up as much as I can. It takes me a short while, my eyes darting towards the treelines – now painfully aware of the lurking beasts behind them.
About half an hour later, I shove the cabin door open—and halt.
Elias is standing beside the dinner table, closing the first-aid box, dressed in thick grey sweats and a white long-sleeved top that allows a suggestion of his tattoos through the fabric.
A dressing bulges beneath the sleeve over his bicep, a faint rust-coloured stain already spreading through the white cotton.
He turns slowly, one wayward lock of black hair falling over his forehead.
Time holds still around us. The fire ticks softly beside us. His shoulders loosen by degrees, and my ribs seem to follow.
There is too much sitting between us to drag any of it back into words. We have already said the things that mattered. Anything more would only bruise them.
My eyes shift to his arm.
‘You might need a rabies shot,’ I murmur, then freeze at the double edge of it.
His sharp exhale might almost pass for a scoff. He takes an apple from the bowl and rolls it in his hand as I ease myself out of the jacket and the boots without taking my eyes off him.
He bites into it, attention fixed on the floorboards as he gives himself one step towards me. Another. Another.
By the time he reaches me, my body has gone completely motionless.
The sweet-sharp scent of the apple reaches me first.
He regards the bite mark for a long moment. When next his eyes meet mine, recognition moves through me before memory does.
And he raises the fruit towards my mouth.
A soundless echo passes between us. An apple once offered like a rule – a condition. A bite shared.
But his hand is looser this time. Slightly uncertain. The fruit hangs between us, offering a question instead of the command it once had.
I look from the apple to his face, reach up and turn it slightly, then bend closer to bite over the imprint of his teeth.
We chew in the quiet.
‘See?’ I murmur as I stare into the blue and find no winter left. ‘I bit.’
His jaw moves once before he swallows.
‘Mm.’ An Elias Crane sound.
‘Can you tell the difference now?’
His head moves in a slow nod as he looks down at the apple. The silence writhes, then settles into a steady rhythm.
‘I don’t like your tattoo,’ he says with that familiar imperious tone.
‘That makes two of us,’ I agree as I hook the coat and leave the boots by the door. My feet claim two steps towards the table. The floor complains beneath me.
That old, dangerous pressure settles along my spine when he follows. He stops before his body reaches mine, the heat of his chest crashing against my back.
He bites into the apple again, arm snaking around my waist as he lifts it to my mouth.
I take a small chunk off its flesh.
He swallows next to my ear. ‘I want it gone or covered.’
My hackles rise so fast they almost take my voice with them. ‘You want it gone?’
He hums in return. ‘I don’t want his name on you.’
‘Wanting is good,’ I murmur, ‘ordering is not.’
He goes rigid before he relaxes again. His breath fans over my neck as my heart beats the last of my sense away.
‘The chains are off,’ he says quietly, ‘the wound is cleaned, the clothes are on.’
His eyes travel down to my mouth as he abandons the apple on the table.
‘And?’ I ask.
A muscle works in his jaw as his other hand coils around me and he turns me slowly around to face him.
‘Can I kiss you, Leah?’
‘Mm,’ I echo. ‘Can you?’
We lean into each other.
He deliberates through a few uneven breaths as I tip up my chin. His eyes search mine, then my mouth, as if checking for the first sign that want has become something wrong.
My palm snakes up his thigh to answer his uncertainty.
It will take time.
Old stains won’t wash out because I kissed him once in a room made of wood and iron and told him to stop chaining himself to the past.
And then… he begins humming the tune I’ve heard so many times.
I tilt my head, frowning at him as his eyes keep roaming my face, his palms scorching over my tracksuit.
‘What is that?’ I ask.
He stops just to say, ‘It’s an old song.’ Then he dips his head to my neck and inhales. My eyes close on their own at the scrape of his beard over my pulse. ‘Join Me in Death. By HIM.’
My brows gather before I can help it. ‘That is a deeply macabre choice for a post-wolf-attack, self-chaining, impending-birthday-party kind of afternoon.’
The corner of his mouth moves against me as he smiles weakly. ‘You asked.’
The rest of my cleverness slips out of reach as his lips begin a slow ascent up my neck with a patience that I almost resent. A kiss beneath my ear. A kiss along the tendon. Another pressed into the pulse he has already ruined.
I lose a breath. Try to hold on to the next.
His hand shifts at my waist, hesitant in its search. It’s not long before his fingers find the small gap where my top has ridden up at the small of my back.
My arms come around him softly, then tighter. Fingers climbing up the back of his sinewy neck until his hair starts curling around the tips.
His first touch spreads directly over my spine and I still. He does, too.
His palm rests there like a question for a suspended second. Heat seeps from him into me, and back. I feel every callus, every tremor, every inch of control he is trying to keep between want and taking.
With my hands still in his hair, I guide his mouth to mine.
The kiss starts soft enough to frighten me. A brush. A breath. Fragile people avoiding wounds. His fingers spread over my skin, mine tighten in his hair, and whatever remains of the room loosens around us.
The table, the apple, the remainder of blood outside, the wolves, the chains, the moans…
There’s just the heat of his mouth and the devastating way he lets me finally pull him closer.
The low growl of engines tears through the hush outside. I’m not even sure I hear it.
Our mouths separate slowly, breath still tangled between us. We stare at each other as if the universe has made an unreasonable demand.
When a gasp falls behind the front door, our foreheads meet. A sharp curse follows, muffled by the wood between us.
Elias moves first. I do it because he does, fingers still tingling from where his curls wound around them. I feel the loss of him more than I feel the cold that takes his place.
He crosses the room and pulls the front door open.
Winter floods in with a relentless demand.
Inga stands on the threshold, pale and wide-eyed, one hand pressed to her mouth, while Anders is already several steps beyond her with a rifle in his hands, gaze cutting over the yard.
‘Blood?’ he growls sharply.
‘Wolves,’ Elias says, his voice hoarse from the residue of our kiss.
Anders’ expression hardens. ‘I’ll call it in. If they came this close to the house, someone needs to know.’
‘Herregud,’ Inga starts towards Elias, then catches herself. Elias hesitates before opening one arm, and she folds into it, then she shifts to me.
I return the sentiment, this time with a softer set of my shoulders as she embraces me tight.
It reminds me of Anna, suddenly.
When she pulls away, her large blue eyes bleed worry as she looks at both of us. ‘Are you alright?’
‘We’re alright,’ I say. ‘They scattered back into the forest.’
‘Leah saved the day,’ Elias puts in.
‘Uh…’ I stifle an uneasy smile that threatens to bloom on my face when Inga looks from him to me and back.
‘She is wicked with a crossbow,’ he contributes, offhandedly.
With a perfectly straight face.
I go numb from head to toe. Heat rushes to my ears as Anders smiles and offers misplaced praise.
I almost swear at Elias right then and there.
‘Ah, he is joking,’ I say instead.
The devil chuckles low, his mouth barely moving when he says it – mostly for himself, ‘No, I’m not.’
Before the decision to kick him or melt into the floorboards resolves, Inga claps her hands once, the sound pulling everyone back from blood, beasts and the lingering tension in the doorway.
‘Nobody’s dead. Birthday is on!’ She scurries deeper into the kitchen as Anders lowers the rifle and mumbles something to Elias about shovels and getting rid of the blood before it attracts more animals or gives their aunt Hilde a stroke.
The world starts turning again as we begin setting everything up, avoiding Inga’s questions about why the house isn’t set up for reception.
Within an hour, though, the cabin begins changing.
Snow is stomped from boots. Bags are brought in.
More engines grumble through the trees. More cousins arrive in bursts of cold air and loud greetings, some carrying parcels, some carrying food.
The room grows warm as people brush past each other in comfortable closeness only a family shares.
The sweet aroma of coffee spreads in the atmosphere.
And the house that had felt too full of silence before begins to fill with voices.