Chapter 28
Owen
I was furious she had burned the seat.
Not because I wanted a Luna in my bed. Because a woman with no pin on a road at dawn was just meat Gareth could lose without paperwork. She had put Huntington’s name on the hall and her body on a side door and a please on my bench, and Edward was in the kitchen shaking, and it was not finished.
Melanie said it first in the yard. “Hillsford will come for the river. They don’t get the boy and the wedding and the head and then go home polite.”
I knew. Anger was not a tactic. I sent Joss to the west cut. I sent two to the south ash. I stood in the yard with Reilly’s blood on my shirt from her shoulder and I mapped the next hours like the guest house had only been the front room.
Edward was not all the way home. Home meant the hall holding. Home meant Gareth off the guest line. Home meant the east road empty. We had a bruised boy and a steward and a collapsed title. That was a start.
Huntington came out with the pin still in his fist. “She’s in the kitchen. Shoulder needs thread. She won’t go to the infirmary.”
“I’ll do it.”
“Of course you will.” He looked at me like he wanted to use the pin as a blade. “You got the boy out. You also got her off the chair. If this pack folds tonight I am going to remember both.”
I went to the kitchen.
Edward sat with water. Reilly sat with her coat off and the shoulder open, not deep, ugly enough. She looked at me. The please was still in her mouth. The heat was still there, stupid, under the blood.
“Out,” she said to Edward.
“No,” I said. “He stays in sight. We stitch here.”
Edward stayed. He stared at the wall while I washed my hands and threaded a needle I had used on my own ribs. Reilly watched my mouth. I pushed the needle through her skin. She hissed. I did not put my other hand between her legs. The boy was in the room. I wanted to. That was the rot in it.
Five stitches. I tied off. I packed it. Edward looked at me then.
“You came in the door,” he said.
“Yes.”
“She doesn’t have the pin.”
“Yes.”
He nodded once, not forgiveness, a count. Reilly sent him to Huntington with a look. He went as far as the hall door and sat where we could see him. Close enough.
She stood up. The kitchen emptied of everyone but us and a pot. She put her mouth on mine. I held the clean shoulder and the dirty one and I kissed her like the bench. She said please into it again and I said the road was not done.
“Then finish what you can finish,” she said.
I took her to the cabin because the kitchen had a door that would not bar against a whole hall. Edward saw us leave. Huntington saw us leave. It was not a secret. She had made it not a secret when she put the pin down.
I barred the cabin. I sat her on the bench. I did not rip anything. I opened her shirt around the stitches and I kissed the skin under them. I laid her down and I mapped Hillsford’s next move on her bare back with a finger.
“Guest line,” I said, touching her shoulder blade.
“They still have eight. They’ll pull more from the east road when they find the house empty.
” Spine. “River. If they cannot have the wedding they will take the hinge. That’s here.
” Low back. “South is already black. They won’t bother. West cut if I left it. I didn’t.”
She said, “Put your mouth where your finger is.”
I did.
I mapped it again with my tongue. Shoulder.
Spine. Low back. I pulled her pants down and I kept talking with my mouth on her.
Guest line. River. I spread her and licked her until her fists hit the bench.
I pushed two fingers in and I named the doors on her clit with my tongue until she came with her face in her arm, trying not to pull the stitches.
I turned her careful. I got my cock out. She said please and I pushed in slow because her shoulder could not take the wall. Deep. The knot fattened and I kept it out. She looked at me.
“If he is all the way home,” she said, “I will say the words.”
I did not let myself believe it. I put it next to scraps and the laugh in her neck and I fucked her like I had not heard it.
She came on me with her good hand in my hair.
I pulled out and came on her stomach below the packed shoulder, shaking, and I wiped it with my shirt and I put my mouth on her mouth so she would not say it again before it was true.
We lay still. Her stitches. My stitches. The map still on her skin in spit.
Melanie knocked. “Lights on the east road. Not a messenger. A line. You can finish the love later.”
I dressed her. She let me. We went to the yard.
Huntington had Edward inside the hall proper, not the kitchen. Idony on the step. Gareth was not in the yard yet. The east road was.
“River,” I said.
Huntington nodded. He hated that I was the one saying it. He moved wolves anyway. Melanie took the west approach. Joss the shallows. I looked at Reilly.
“You stay off the first line,” I said.
“Don’t.”
“You have one working shoulder and no pin. Stay off the first line.”
She looked at Edward’s shape in the doorway. She nodded once, not a promise she would keep if the line broke.
I went to the river.
Gray full now. Water high from the old storm. I could still taste her. I could still hear I will say the words. I did not believe it. I wanted to. Belief was how you missed a crossing.
Hillsford showed on the far bank in numbers that were not twelve. The eight from the guest line plus what the east road had fed. Not a full hall war. Enough to take a hinge. Gareth was with them. Clean coat. He had the look of a man whose guest had walked out without paying.
He called across the water. “Send the boy back. Send the rogue. Keep your little abdication. My father does not need your pin. He needs the river.”
Huntington’s voice behind me, carrying. “The boy is home. The cut is watched. Get off our bank.”
Gareth smiled at me, specifically. “Kept wolf. She won’t even wear a title to stand next to you.”
I did not answer him. I answered the first body that came into the shallows.
The fight was ugly and short in the way river fights are. Wet stone. No pretty line. I tore the stitch in my own side and kept the blade moving. I felt Reilly on the inner bank when she was not supposed to be there. The bond flared. I did not look. Looking was how you died in water.
We held.
Not forever. Long enough that Gareth learned the hinge would cost more than a guest house. He pulled back to the far trees with his clean coat wet at the hem. He would write his father. He would not write a wedding.
Melanie spat blood that was not hers. “That’s not gone. That’s a pause.”
“I know.”
Reilly was on the inner bank with her packed shoulder red through the cloth. Edward was not with her. Good. All the way home was still a hall with a door that held.
I walked out of the water. She put her good hand on my torn side and pressed. I put my forehead on hers. I did not kiss her in front of the line. I wanted to.
“He is not all the way home until that bank is empty,” I said.
“I know what I said.”
I still did not believe it. I held the words in my mouth like a thing that would vanish if I bit down.
Huntington pulled us off the water in shifts.
I sat on a rock and let Reilly pack my side again.
Her fingers were steady. Her eyes were not.
The heat sat between us, ridiculous, alive.
I did not put my hand between her legs on a riverbank with Hillsford in the trees.
I thought about it. That was enough to hate.
Joss came up. “Far bank is camped. Not gone.”
“Then nobody sleeps like they’re gone,” I said.
Night would come. The pause would stretch or snap. Reilly still had no pin. Edward was in the hall. The words were a promise I refused to cash.
I stood up. I went back to the line. She went back to the inner path. The bond stretched over the water and the stones and the please and the burned seat, and I kept my eyes on Gareth’s trees, and I did not follow her to the cabin to hear her say it early.
When it was true I would hear it.
Until then I was a fool on a bank with a torn side and a map I had licked into her back, and Hillsford still wanted the river.