Knock.. Knock…

64.b) /b

65 vouchers

A knock like a knuckle that owns the door, and then it opened, and the room filled with a scent that always makes me think of thunderheads and clean linen: Lira.

It’s been a while since I see her, since I decide to go with Francesco from Florence, only ending in different territory with new adventure here.

She looked exactly like herself–severe braid, in dark dress, eyes that turn soft only when she is about ito /ibe unkind to pain.

She didn’t spare anyone a greeting except a nod for Monica and a brief, fond pinch for my toes under the nket.

“You’ve been eating gifts,” she said, as if I’d been found with a hand in the sugar bowl.

“Only the sugary ones,” I croaked.

Sheid cool fingers at my throat, and the hum Monica had named shivered against skin and bone.

Lira’s mouth hardened. “Fen has clever children,” she said. “And cleverer grandchildren.”

Francesco’s hands closed into fists. “Fix her.”

She rolled her eyes in annoyance “Always so polite,” Lira murmured. “Monica, the green jar. No, the ugly one. Audrey, bolt the door. Marlow, if you pace while I work, I’ll sew your feet to the rug.”

If I am not sick, I alreadyugh at her.

God, I missed her.

She bent over me, and the taste on the air shifted–mint, char, something like rain hitting hot stones. “This will not be graceful,” she warned. “You will want to throw me off the bed. Don’t.” Then she turn her gaze at Francesco “This warned for you too, Alpha, don’t move”

I heard my mate huff and scoffs loudly when I try to nodded “Yes, not even a little?” I breathed.

“Maybe at the end,” she said, and began.

The pain that came was not the wildfire from before; it was a deep wrench, like a hook being unthreaded from a that had decided it liked the fish.

I bit the inside of my cheek and tasted copper.

Lira’s voice braided old words with newer ones, a rope thrown across a gap. Monica’s palm stayed steady at my shoulder. The hum faltered, then snarled, then weakened again like a storm running out of sky.

“Good girl,” Lira said, which I always hate and always save under my pillow forter.

b11:42 /bWed, Oct b1 /b

64

55 Vouchers

When she leaned back, sweat beaded fine along her hairline. She wasn’t old, but the work ages the hands first, and hers looked like a woman who has held too many breaking things and insisted they learn a new shape.

“It’sing out,” she said. “Not all at once. The bit that hid will sulk. You’ll dream of water with teeth for a week. Don’t drink anything you didn’t watch being poured.” fn6b70 ???? ????s? ???????s ?? find~novel/fn6b70

Francesco’s exhale was almost a sound.

He bowed his head over my hand and then kissed Lira’s knuckles like a prince bribing a saint. “Thank you.”

She sniffed. “Don’t thank me yet. You will make me go to the south with you and shout at a swamp. I will have to wear boots.”

Marlow made a pained face. “Swamps shout back.”

“They do,” Lira agreed. “And they hold grudges longer than kings.”

Audrey unbolted the door.

The house breathed in a draft that smelled like bread and steel and the particr kind of relief that lives in kitchens after storms.

“We found a thread,” she said. “Rope–burn hands. Salt–shed smell. A song that tastes like wet.” Her eyes slid to me. “Children safe.”

“Good,” Lira said briskly. “Keep them near ovens. A witch’s pocket stays warm when it is empty.”

Francesco straightened.

The part of him that is map and de stepped forward, one hand still on me, the other already closing around the day.

“Go,” I said, because it had to be me who said it. “Hunt the hand. Not the cake. Not the children. The hand.”

His eyes met mine–gold, steady, a hearth that remembers being wildfire.

“I will bring it back to you,” he said. “And if it won’te, I will bring you its name.”

I nodded.

The nausea sighed, sullen and smaller.

Lira tucked something under my tongue that tasted like the underside of a stone and sunshine, somehow both.

“Rest,” shemanded. “Later you may lecture kings.”

He leaned down, pressed his mouth to my brow, and let the kiss say what he could not yet ce intonguage.

Then he was gone–Audrey on one shoulder, Marlow on the other–down into the house that had learned

how to be a hearth and out into streets that smelled of salt.

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b64 /b

250 vouchers

Monica drew the curtains half a hand and sat where she could count my breaths without me noticing.

Lira tidied anger into jars and bound it with string.

I closed my eyes and saw a reed–brown dress, hands stirring batter in ten circles, and a hum that tasted like river in the wrong mouth.

“You’ll not have us,” I whispered to whatever listened from the south. “Not with cakes. Not with songs. If you want a name,e to the square and ask with yours.”

The house creaked like a ship choosing to hold together.

Somewhere below, a childughed–Pia, or Snge, or some other wild thing on light feet who believed a kitchen could forgive anything if the bread was good.

The bond hummed.

Francesco’s anger moved along it like weather–purposeful now, not a storm but a wind that knows which direction keeps a house standing.

We would be ready when it turned.

We would be ready when she did.

And when the fen’s hand reached again, it would find not a soft Luna and a roaring king, but a pair of wolves who had learned how to turn knives into spoons and back again without spilling a drop.