Chapter 3 A Letter Under the Floor

Nova

Nobody's!

The word hung between us like smoke. I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, and Caelan swayed. It was a small movement at first, just a lean to the left. Then his knees gave out, and I caught him before his head struck the stones.

He was heavier than he looked, and burning hot. Through his thin shirt, I could feel the black veins pulsing against my arm like something alive. His eyes were half closed. His lips moved.

"Don't," he whispered. "Don't tell Wren I came here."

"You're an idiot," I said, and my voice shook. "You have three weeks to live, and you walk around barefoot in the snow."

"I had to." His fingers curled weakly in my coat. "It's the one night he doesn't watch."

"Who doesn't watch?"

But he had already gone limp. I do not know how long I stood there, holding the man who had broken my life while the snow fell on both of us. I know that my anger did not leave. It only changed shape, the way water becomes ice, until it was something harder and much more painful. I thought of him on his knees at that cairn. I thought of the day he rejected me. Both memories were true, and neither would fit inside the other.

"Caelan!" A figure came crashing through the trees. Wren, in her red scarf, her face white. "Oh, God. I knew it. I knew he would sneak out again."

Together, we dragged him back to the Alpha House. I gave him a sedative and a cold compress, and I sat beside his bed until his breathing slowed. Wren stood by the window with her arms wrapped around her, watching her brother sleep.

"Thank you," she said at last, in a small voice.

"It's my job."

"No, I mean it." She turned. Her gray eyes were red-rimmed. "I need to tell you something strange. You can tell me I'm crazy."

I waited.

"Three weeks ago, before Uncle Ambrose sent for any healer, Caelan called me into his study. He said, 'Dust the clinic and put fresh flowers on the workbench. Someone is coming, and I want her to feel at home.'" Wren laughed, short and uneasy. "I thought the fever was making him confused. We didn't even know you existed. And then you walked through the gate."

My skin got cold.

"He said 'her,'" I said slowly.

"Yes." Wren studied my face. "He's been waiting for you, Dr. Calder. For six years, I think. I just never knew who for."

"He also told me to leave honey out for your tea," Wren added. "He was weirdly specific about it."

I had taken my tea with honey since I was six. Nobody in Duskwood could have known that. I did not trust my voice, so I did not answer. It was past midnight when I got back to the clinic. I locked the door, drew the curtains, and stood in the middle of the room with my heart thudding like a fist.

Welcome home, Nova!

Someone had planned this. Meaning someone had known I would come. The flowers, the dusted shelves, the card. And Caelan had said "her," weeks ago, as if he had always known her face.

I needed to understand. I needed something real to hold. So I did what my mother taught me to do when I felt lost. I cleaned and started with the workbench, wiping every jar, every beaker, every drawer. When I lifted the heavy stone mortar to wipe beneath it, my fingers caught on something odd.

A seam in the wood, a thin line, where the grain did not match. I knew this table. I had sat beside it for twelve years. That seam had never been there. I pressed my thumbnail into the groove, and a small panel slid open.

Inside it lay a folded sheet of paper, yellowed at the edges. On the front, in loopy, familiar handwriting, was one word.

Nova!

My knees folded. I sat down on the floor with the letter in my lap and read it by lamplight.

My darling girl,

If you are reading this, then I am gone, and the formula I made out of love has been twisted into something terrible. Forgive me. I never meant it to hurt anyone. I hid this where only you would think to look.

There is something I should have told you years ago. You are not like other wolves. The blood in your veins is older than the pack, older than the Alphas, older than the border. It is called Lunar blood, and it is the only thing in the world that can break the poison I made.

Do not tell anyone. Not even the boy fate chose for you, if he comes to you with kind eyes. Not even those who say they are friends. The ones who want what you carry will smile at you first.

Trust your own hands. Trust the moon.

I love you more than all the stars, Mama

I read it three times. By the end, the page was wet, and I did not know when I had started crying.

Lunar blood! The cure was not in any jar or herb. It was me. It had always been me and the poison killing Duskwood had been born in my mother's hands and could only die in mine.

Behind me, the lamp flickered. I froze. The window was latched. The door was locked. There was no draft. The flame bent sideways, as if something had passed in front of it, and then it went out. Darkness swallowed the room.

I held my breath. The only sound was the thump of my own pulse. Then, very softly, I heard a floorboard creaking behind me. I moved without thinking. I rolled sideways just as something whistled through the air and buried itself in the table where my head had been. A knife. I smelled it before I saw it. Silver.

"Who's there?" I gasped.

No answer. A shadow lunged, tall and fast, and a gloved hand clamped over my mouth. The blade flashed again, toward my throat.

I did not decide what happened next. Something inside me, the thing that had opened its eyes when I touched Caelan's blood, simply woke up. Heat burst through my chest. My hands lit with a faint silver glow. The attacker cried out and stumbled back.

For one heartbeat, the light showed me a hooded shape, a black mask, a pair of cold, steady eyes. Then the figure threw something at my face, and a cloud of white powder exploded in the air. I coughed, stumbled, and fell. The powder stung my eyes and burned my nose. Wolfsbane, I realized. Someone knew exactly how to stop a wolf from healing. By the time I could see again, the window stood wide open on the empty night.

I lay on the floor, shaking, my throat raw, my hands still glowing. Then I saw it. Caught on the window latch, where the attacker had squeezed through, fluttering in the cold breeze: A thread of bright red wool.