CHAPTER TWO THE SILVER IN HER BLOOD
M arion stared at Morna as if the woman had just asked her to grow wings and fly out of the mountain.
“You,” Morna repeated, and the old healer looked far too calm for a woman speaking nonsense. “Not a horse. Not a man. You.”
Marion laughed once. It came out cracked and ugly. “I have only just discovered I am not dead, so forgive me if I do not run straight into whatever madness you are suggesting.”
“It is not madness.”
“No? Then what is it?”
Morna’s eyes moved over her face, then down to the hand Marion still had pressed against the glowing bite at her neck. “It is what you are.”
Marion did not like that. She did not like any part of it.
She had spent most of her life being told what she was.
Widow. Healer. Witch if the village had found enough courage to hang her.
Duncan had called her stubborn, ungrateful, unnatural.
The Crown had wanted to call her useful.
The wolves had called her dangerous before they dared call her mate.
Now Morna stood before her with that grim, knowing look and added another word to the pile.
Marion stepped away from the altar. “I am Marion Bell.”
“Aye.”
“I am Georgie’s mother.”
“Aye.”
“I am not some old tale you pull from smoke because everyone is frightened.”
“No,” Morna said, and her voice softened in a way that made Marion more uneasy than if she had shouted. “You are worse than an old tale, lass. You are the part of the tale men worked very hard to bury.”
The cavern seemed to press closer around them.
Marion looked toward the tunnel. Above, the mourning had not stopped, only changed.
Whispering moved through the castle now.
Feet. Voices. A door banging. Someone running.
They knew. Or suspected. Somehow the news of her waking was already climbing through stone faster than any servant could carry it.
And still, beyond all of it, that other heartbeat pulled.
Euan.
Slow. Steady. Going farther.
She made herself look back at Morna. “Explain quickly.”
Morna nodded as if she had expected nothing else.
She came nearer, though not too near, and took Marion’s wrist. Her fingers were cold and rough.
Marion almost jerked away. Not because the touch hurt.
Because she heard Morna’s pulse through her fingertips.
Felt the old woman’s blood moving under skin, felt the ache in her joints, the tightness in her lungs from too many nights breathing smoke and herbs.
There was a scar under Morna’s left sleeve that still remembered pain.
Marion snatched her hand back.
Morna watched her carefully. “You felt that?”
“I felt too much.”
“That will settle. Some.”
“Some?” Marion snapped.
“Aye. Better than none.”
Marion gave her a look.
The corner of Morna’s mouth twitched. “There she is.”
“This is not funny.”
“No. But if you can glare at me, you are not lost to the wolf.”
The words struck harder than Marion wanted them to. “Was that a possibility?”
Morna did not answer fast enough.
Marion’s throat tightened. “Was it?”
“When your heart stopped, aye. We thought...” She looked toward the altar. “We thought the ritual had taken you and left nothing behind.”
Marion swallowed. She could see it too easily. Her body on the stone, pale and still. Euan’s hands on her. Georgie screaming. The clan silent, maybe some relieved, maybe some ashamed, maybe some already turning away because human women did not survive wolf claims and there it was. Proof.
Her chest hurt.
Not with sickness. With anger.
Morna reached for her again, slower this time. “Let me see.”
Marion almost refused, but Euan’s heartbeat moved another faint measure away and she held out her arm.
Morna pressed two fingers to her wrist. Then to her throat. Then, with more care, she touched the glowing bite. The moment her fingers met the mark, the light under Marion’s skin answered. Silver and gold curled around Morna’s fingertips.
The healer inhaled sharply.
Marion stiffened. “What?”
“Your gift,” Morna whispered. “It changed.”
“I can see that.”
“No. Not only color.” Morna’s hand hovered near the bite now, not touching. “Before, your healing rose against the wolf as if against fever. Every time the change came, your gift burned it back. It tried to save you from what it did not understand.”
Marion remembered the pain and wrapped her arms around herself. “It felt like dying.”
“It was dying. Slowly. The wolf was trying to form. The healer in you kept mending the breaking before the shape could finish. Bone, blood, breath, all of it fighting itself.” Morna’s face tightened.
“At the Blood Moon, the body did what the mind could not. It stopped long enough for the wolf to come through.”
Marion stared at her.
“That is a horrible explanation.”
“It is the truth.”
“I preferred not knowing.”
“No, you did not.”
She hated that Morna was right.
Marion turned away and stared at the carvings in the wall. The woman with silver eyes looked different now that Marion knew to look at her properly. She was not kneeling. She was standing beside the wolf. One hand rested on its head. The other was raised toward the moon.
“Who is she?”
Morna followed her gaze. For a moment she said nothing.
“I do not know her name.”
Marion looked at her sharply. “You do not know?”
“No one does. Not anymore.”
Something cold moved through Marion, colder than the cavern floor. “Why?”
“Because names are power. And men who fear power begin by stealing names.” Morna walked to the wall, her limp more pronounced now that Marion could hear the small grind of pain in the woman’s hip.
“When I was a girl, my mother sang a healing song. Most thought it nonsense. A cradle thing. It spoke of women born of hearth and hand, taken by the moon, running white through black pine, carrying gold fire in their mouths.”
Marion frowned. “That sounds like a fever dream.”
“Aye, and if you tell my mother’s ghost I said that, she will haunt us both.
” Morna touched the carving gently. “I thought it only song. Then I found this, years ago, half buried in soot and moss. There were scraps in old ledgers too. Not in the chiefs’ records.
In women’s books. Healers’ books. Hidden under recipes for birthing tea and poultices for sheep rot. ”
Despite everything, Marion almost smiled. “Sheep rot?”
“It is a fine place to hide treason. No man reads about sheep rot unless already desperate.”
The smile died almost as soon as it came.
Morna turned back to her. “They were called Moon Blessed Mates in some fragments. Silver healer wolves in others. Human born women who survived a true claim and did not become lesser to the alpha. They became bond bearers. Equal ones.”
“Equal,” Marion repeated.
The word felt dangerous in her mouth.
“Aye. Their healing did not weaken the wolf. It guided it. Their bite could mend poisoned blood. Their presence steadied a clan during moon sickness and war. Chiefs did not own them. Could not. That was the trouble.”
Marion understood before Morna finished.
It sat in the room between them, ugly and familiar.
Men did not like women they could not own.
Duncan’s face came into her mind. His careful smile.
His hand on her door. His voice telling her what a widow needed, what a child required, what law allowed.
Then Aldrich, soft spoken and clean handed, asking her to heal prisoners so he could hurt them again.
Then the elders at Castle McFarland, looking at her as if she were a crack in the wall that might bring the whole place down.
Not because she was weak.
Because she was not.
Marion pressed her palm against the bite again. “If this was known, why did no one tell Euan? Why did no one know how to help me?”
Morna’s eyes darkened. “Because someone made certain we forgot.”
The answer slid under Marion’s skin like a blade.
“Someone in the Crown?”
“Perhaps.”
“Someone in the clan?”
Morna did not answer.
Marion gave a sharp breath. “You think so.”
“I think fear wears many faces. Crown law. Church law. Pack law. Men with books. Men with swords. Men who say they protect blood when they mean they protect their place.” Morna looked old again, and tired. “I do not yet know who buried the truth. But I know it was buried.”
Marion thought of Euan walking to the Grove because he believed the bite had killed her. She thought of every hour he had refused to touch her, every look of hunger he had swallowed down because guilt had its hands around his throat. He had blamed himself for a wound made larger by missing truth.
Her eyes burned.
“How long has he been gone?”
Morna’s gaze flicked toward the tunnel. “Long enough.”
Marion nodded, then started past her.
Morna caught her arm. “Wait.”
Marion rounded on her. “No.”
“You do not know how to shift.”
“I will learn on the way.”
“That is not how this works.”
“Then it can start working differently.”
“Marion.”
The name cracked like a command, and Marion stopped more from surprise than obedience.
Morna moved in front of her. “Listen to me or you will break yourself before you reach the outer gate.”
“I thought you said I was not broken.”
“You are not. You are new. There is a difference.”
That silenced her, but only barely.
Morna took her hand and this time Marion forced herself not to pull back. The old healer flattened Marion’s palm over her own chest.
“Feel.”
Marion frowned. “I feel your heart.”
“Not mine. Yours answering it. The healer in you wants to mend every strain it senses. It has done that all your life, has it not?”
Marion did not like how quickly memories rose. A neighbor’s baby gasping with fever. A soldier’s split scalp. Georgie’s scraped knees. Euan’s poisoned flesh smoking under her hand. The endless pull of pain asking for her.
“Yes.”
“When the wolf rises, you will feel strain. Pain. Bone moving. Skin changing. Your gift will panic. It will try to stop it.”
Marion looked down at her altered nails.
Morna squeezed her hand. “Do not let it.”
“That sounds simple when it is not your bones.”
“It is not simple. It is necessary.”
Marion lifted her chin. “And if I fail?”
Morna’s eyes softened, which was answer enough.
Marion hated softness. It always came before bad news.
“If you fight yourself,” Morna said, “you may trap yourself between forms. Or bleed out. Or worse, lose time. And time is the one thing Euan does not have.”
There it was.
The name turned Marion’s fear into something useful.
Outside the cavern, footsteps thundered down the passage. Small ones, fast and uneven.
“Mama!”
Marion turned so quickly Morna muttered a curse and grabbed for her.
Georgie burst into the cavern before either woman could move. Her little face was blotched from crying, hair coming loose from its braid, one stocking sagging around her ankle. Tavish appeared behind her, breathless and looking terrified of a child half his size.
“I tried to stop her,” he said. “She bit me.”
“I did not bite hard,” Georgie snapped, then saw Marion fully and stopped.
Marion’s lungs forgot themselves.
Her daughter stood several feet away, staring at the silver in Marion’s hair, the glow at her throat, the strange hands, the eyes that were not the eyes Georgie had known that morning.
Marion lowered slowly to her knees.
Every brave thing in her fled.
“Georgie,” she said, and her voice shook. “It is still me.”
The child’s lower lip trembled.
Marion held herself very still. She would have let Aldrich cut her open before she moved too fast and frightened that child.
Georgie took one tiny step.
Then another.
“Are you dead?” she whispered.
“No, love.”
“Are you a ghost?”
“No.”
“Are you going to leave?”
The question did what death had not. It broke Marion open.
She held out both arms. Georgie ran into them so hard Marion nearly toppled backward.
The child wrapped around her neck and sobbed into her shoulder.
Marion held her too tight and did not care.
She buried her face in Georgie’s hair, breathing in smoke, salt, sleep, and the warm living scent of her child.
“I am here,” Marion whispered. “I am here, I am here.”
Georgie pulled back enough to look at her. Tears clung to her lashes. “Your eyes are funny.”
Marion gave a watery laugh. “So I have noticed.”
“Are you a wolf now?”
“I think so.”
“Can you still make soup?”
Behind them, Morna made a choked sound.
Marion laughed again, properly this time, even as tears slipped down her face. “Yes. I can still make soup.”
Georgie nodded as if this settled the most important matter. Then her expression crumpled again. “Euan went away.”
“I know.”
“He would not listen. I shouted.”
“I know.”
“I told him not to die.”
Marion brushed the child’s hair from her damp cheek. “Good girl.”
“He did not listen,” Georgie said, offended through her tears.
“No,” Marion said, and looked toward the tunnel where the first gray suggestion of dawn seemed to breathe through the stone. “But he will.”
She kissed Georgie’s forehead and stood.
Georgie grabbed her hand. “Bring him back.”
Marion looked down at her daughter, then at Morna, then toward the faraway heartbeat still calling through blood and moon and all the foolish honor of a man who thought dying was easier than being forgiven.
“I will,” Marion said.
And for the first time since waking, the wolf inside her answered.