Chapter Two: The Rain Tower (2)

He reached out and, very gently, wiped the tears from her face. His fingertips touched her cheek, and his whole arm shook.

"One weakness, a thousand deaths," he said to himself, hoarse.

He should let go. He was a guardian. His duty was to protect everyone—not to hold one woman in his arms.

He did not let go.

Every Law in the world was not worth the way she said *don't leave me*.

Rhett was right. He was in trouble.

The fever broke at dawn.

When Lila woke, she was wrapped in three layers of blanket, the fire was roaring, the hole in the roof had been patched, and a fresh bowl of broth sat steaming at her elbow.

She stared at all of it for thirty seconds. Then she sat up and started going through his things.

Good knife. Sellable. Ration block. Sellable. Money pouch—*gold coins*. Her eyes went wide, and she had just slipped the pouch inside her shirt when a cold voice came from the doorway:

"That's military pay. Stealing it is an execution offense."

She froze. She turned. Kael stood in the door, arms folded, holding a roasted hare.

"…I was just looking."

"Are you done?"

"Done." She slid the pouch back out with perfect composure. "Also, your pouch has a hole in it. I fixed it. No charge."

Kael ignored her, tossed the hare into the tower, and turned to leave. Her voice stopped him:

"Hey! Ice Cube!"

He paused. "…Ice Cube?"

"You don't smile, you don't cry, you lower the ambient temperature." She tore a leg off the hare and spoke around it. "When can I leave?"

"When you're healed. Three days."

"Three days is forever. I'm leaving tonight." She waved the leg at him. "Your tower is drafty, the bed is lumpy, and everything smells like wet wolf."

"There are wights out there."

"Wights scare me?" She laughed, a warm bright sound in the cold tower. "I outran three witch-hunters yesterday. I can outrun a wight."

Kael turned, finally, and looked down at her, and there was no joke in his eyes. "There's more than wights out there. There's the Council. They're cleaning the camps." He paused. "Especially the ones harboring *witches*."

The hare leg stopped halfway to her mouth.

"I smelled you the first night," he said, very flat. "The silver can't hide it. Shadow witch. Three hundred gold, dead or alive, on your head."

The tower went quiet. Lila put the hare down slowly, and the playfulness drained out of her face, leaving something wary and cold underneath—a cornered cat with all its fur up.

"Then why did you save me?" she asked. "Three hundred gold is a year of pay for a soldier."

Kael was quiet for a long time.

"I don't know," he said at last.

She blinked. He wasn't lying. He didn't know. He knew he'd watched the rain all night. He knew he'd told himself a lie about silver and wights and the wall. And underneath the lie, something had already gone very wrong with him.

He turned to leave. Her voice stopped him again, smaller this time:

"Hey."

He stopped.

"…Thanks." The word came out rusty, like she'd never used it before. "Even though you can't bandage, your pouch has a hole, you've got a face like a slapped fish, and you wrapped me up like a caterpillar in a cocoon.… Still. Thanks."

Kael, facing the door, felt his mouth try to do something it hadn't done in a decade. He killed it before it could complete the motion.

"One more thing," she called after him.

"What."

"You came in here last night." Her voice was deadly serious. "You touched my face. I can smell it. Wolf stink."

Kael: "…………"

He slammed the door. Three stones fell out of the frame. From inside the tower came a howl of laughter, cut off by coughing, and then more laughter, and then the unmistakable sound of a woman wheezing in the hay, laughing at him with her whole broken heart.

Kael stood in the rain, listening to her laugh, and knew he was a dead man.

In the afternoon, Rhett brought a letter, sealed three times in wax the color of arterial blood.

The Chief Arbiter, Elaine Cross, would arrive at the Border at dawn to inspect the defenses. And to audit the Law.

In handwriting at the bottom, elegant and sharp as a knife:

I hear the Border has been… interesting, of late. I look forward to meeting you again, Commander Voss. And to meeting whatever it is you're hiding.

Kael folded the letter very carefully and put it in the deepest pocket of his coat.

Inside the tower, Lila was humming a tuneless song, gnawing a hare bone, unaware that a hawk had already seen her.