CHAPTER TWO — The Woman Who Makes the Rules Cry (1)

The shrine was an old watch post, carved into the mountain's cheek a century ago, abandoned when the Circle decided the eastern pass was "clean." It smelled of dust and old incense and the particular loneliness of places that used to matter.

Isola had patched her own wounds without looking at them — a claw mark on her ribs, a deep gash on her forearm that was already knitting, because that was what Umbra blood did. Her body was a machine. The Circle had made sure of it.

The human had been unconscious for exactly four hours, and she had spent all four of them standing over him, cataloguing his sins.

One: he was alive. That alone was a violation of every sensible law she knew.

Two: he was beautiful. She'd noticed it in the clearing, and she'd hated herself for noticing it, and she'd been noticing it ever since, and she hated that she couldn't stop.

Three: he was talking in his sleep.

"...not the moose... the moose was definitely bigger..."

She pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead.

The shrines had no windows. That was the point. But the mountain sang through the stone, and the song had an edge tonight — a hunter's edge. The horn had been no accident. Someone had crossed the Veil, and the Veil was telling its children.

Her sister had crossed the Veil once.

Ella. The name came up like a blade from deep water.

Ella, who had laughed at the law. Ella, who had loved a human — a quiet, ordinary man with calloused hands and a crooked smile, who'd wandered into the valley with a broken compass and a heart too big for his ribs. Ella, who had stood before the Circle with her chin up and said, "The law is a lie, and I am in love, and you can't make me choose because I've already chosen."

They had made her choose.

The Rite of the Shade-Eater. Three days in the deep dark, with the wraithwolves and the hunger and the mountain's song turned against her. And then they had walked Ella Vane out of the valley — and the mountain had been quiet for a week, and Isola had never once asked what was left of her sister, because asking was how you ended up in the dark too.

The law is the Veil. The Veil is the law.

Isola blinked. Her eyes were dry. They were always dry now.

The human made a sound. A soft, pained sound, and his hand twitched in his sleep, and before she could stop herself she was crouching beside him, checking the gash on his arm.

It was still bleeding.

Human blood. Red, ordinary, shockingly fragile. It pooled in the cup of his palm and his veins showed blue through his skin like rivers on a map, and Isola stared at them for a long moment, because she had never seen a vein up close before.

They were so breakable.

His eyes opened.

"Hi," he said, and smiled, and the smile was like sunrise in a place where the sun had been outlawed.

She dropped his arm like it was on fire.

"Whoa — okay, that's one way to say good morning." He pushed himself up, winced, and looked around the shrine with the delighted confusion of a man who'd woken up inside a video game. "Nice place. Very... rustic. Mystical. Is there a gift shop?"

"You're going to die tomorrow," she said.

"See, that's the thing." He sat back against the wall, utterly unbothered, and gave her a look that was far too amused for a man bleeding out. "You keep saying that like it's a threat. But I've watched you, Chief. You're not a killer. You're a librarian with a sword."

Her jaw tightened. "How do you know what I am?"

"Lucky guess." He shrugged, the picture of innocence. "Silent. Scary. Organized. The way you put the dead wolves in a line was very color-coded."

"The wolves weren't in a — " She stopped. Closed her eyes. Counted to three. "You are going to be the death of me."

"See, that — " he pointed at her, delighted, " — that's a confession. Noted for the trial."

He reached for his pack — she'd confiscated it, along with his phone, his drone corpse, and a truly concerning amount of jerky — and she realized with horror that he was holding the strip of fabric she'd torn from her own sleeve to bandage her arm.

"Where'd you get that?"

"You were bleeding through it," he said, simply. "So I took it off you and used it on me. Waste not, want not. And before you say it — yes, I know it's gross. You're welcome."

He held the red-soaked strip up. His hands were steady. His eyes were not.

For one stupid, dizzying second, Isola wanted to laugh.

She didn't. She was the Chief Guardian. She didn't laugh, she didn't cry, she didn't feel — she enforced.

"You're a grave thief," she said, because she needed the anger back. "What were you doing in the pass?"

"Vlogging."

"The truth."

"That is the truth. Part of it." He tilted his head, and for a second the fool's mask slipped, and she caught a glimpse of something sharp underneath — something with teeth. "I'm a collector. Rare artifacts. Old stones, old bones, old stories. Your mountain is full of all three, and it's the one place on the map that nobody will touch, which means it's the one place worth touching."

"That's not a reason. That's a hobby."