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b78 /b

10 vouchers

The ward emptied in ripples: Monica back to her herbs, Alfonso to his ledgers and orders, Audrey to the shadows she wears like armor. Isolde’s breath steadied into the thin, spiteful rhythm of someone who has lost the game and will try to invent a new board. The door shut. Thetch settled.

Francesco didn’t let go of my hand until we were in our rooms.

He closed the door with his heel and stood there a moment, head bowed, as if listening to the echo of his own roar dying out in the wood. I watched his shoulders rise and fall, watched the tremor in his fingers smooth under the warmth of the fire and the quiet of the bedchamber.

Then he looked at me. The fury was gone. What remained was something far more dangerous–unvarnished tendernessb. /b

“Come,” he murmured.

He didn’t lead me to the bed.

He led me to the hearth and sank with me onto the rug, drawing me between his knees, my back to his chest, his arms a circle as sure as a promise.

For a while, we said nothing. The fire did the talking: crackle, settle, breathe. I let my head fall back to his shoulder.

He tucked his face into my hair and inhaled like a man at the end of a long road.

I love it…

“Thank you,” he said finally, voice low and hushed, the edge gone. “For telling me yourself.”

I let my fingersce with his. “I should have sooner.”

He shook his head, the lightest brush of stubble at my temple. “You carried it because you are kind. But we decided–together.”

I nodded “Together,” I echoed, and kissed the inside of his wrist.

Silence again, but the kind that heals.

He pressed one more kiss to the crown of my head. “There’s more,” he said, not as an usation, only as certainty. “I can feel it in you, like a tide waiting for moonlight.”

I turned in the circle of his arms so I could see his face.

The fire put gold where grief had lived all day. I smoothed my thumbs under his eyes. “There is more.”

His hands settled at my waist. “Tell me everything.”

So I did.

12:02 Tue, Sep b30 /b

2

I told him about the fen and the reeds, about a name breathed like a curse and a prayer–Mother Séverine.

I told him of a dress called youth that can be borrowed, of oaths bought with girls‘ lives and a witch’s ledger that never forgets.

I told him Isolde had been a pawn, and Franco a prettier one, and behind them both the wet mouth of an old debt asking for Lycan blood to break a lock our ancestors had set and then fled.

He didn’t interrupt.

His jaw worked once when I said “girls,” and again when I said “Lycan blood,” but he didn’t look away.

When I reached thest piece–the whisper Isolde threw after me like a hook–that Totti Lycaon had died with an older name on his lips, one that tasted of storm and would point the way to the fen, he went very still.

“When my father died,” he said slowly, “he said my name. And he said…” He stopped, eyes cutting to the fire as if the shape of the me might line up with memory. When he looked back, the gold was bright and distant. “He said ‘Bring the sea back its stolen name.‘ I thought he was raving. I thought… I buried it with him.”

“Sea,” I repeated. “Fen. Salt and reeds. It fits.”

He huffed something like augh, humorless, at the ceiling. “The Lycaon line–too proud to pay a bill.”

“We will pay with honesty,” I said. “Not with blood.”

He took my face in his hands again, a fierce, gentle bracket. “No one takes your blood. No one takes mine. Not while I breathe.”

“I know.” And I did. The room knew, too; the pledge thudded into the rafters and settled there like weight- bearing timber.

He drew me forward until our foreheads touched. “You believed me when I killed a brother. Believe me now: I will kneel to nothing that takes children and calls it a fee.”

I kissed him for that, soft and sure, and felt the vow join the others we keep between our ribs.

We stayed like that a while–his palms warming my jaw, my fingers in his hair, our breath the only wind.

Then he pulled me closer and we shifted until I was straddling his thighs, my knees bracketing his hips. The fire painted us. He smoothed his hands down my back and I felt safety like a tideing in, steady, inevitable.

We didn’t need to rush toward heat; we let it find us, small and real. He kissed along my cheekbone where tears had dried, my eyelids, the corner of my mouth–reverent. I took his bottom lip between mine and felt the line of him soften, lengthen, trust.

When we parted, I tucked myself under his chin. His heartbeat had slowed. Mine matched it.

Outside, the manor murmured–the tter of dishes far below, a sentry’s cough.

Inside, just us.

12:02 bTue/bb, /bSep b30 /b

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I traced circles on his chest and felt him melt into the rug.

“I will speak to Alfonso,” he said, voice a shade firmer. “Quietly. We put eyes south. We map every midwife’s story, every missing girl’s name. We find the salt roads. We pay the markets to send word if anyone asks for rare herbs the fen–witches favor.”

b78 /bfne07f Th? link to the orig?n of this information r?sts ?n find?novel/fne07f

“And we open the ward doors wider,” I said. “Not to Isolde–to mothers. To daughters. We tell them we believe them before they have to teach us how.”

He caught my hand, kissed the dirt still living in my cuticles. “That is why you are Luna.”

“And you are my stubborn king,” I said, smiling against his throat.

He turned his head, smile answering mine. “Your stubborn king,” he corrected.

Itnded in me like warm bread.

We might have stayed there the rest of the night, armoring ourselves with limbs and vows.

The world, predictably, refused to wait.