Chapter 3: The Exception in the Rain (1)

The guest quarters were a hunting lodge that looked like it had been built by someone with an unhealthy relationship to antlers, and Iris said so the moment Kael pushed her inside.

"Charming." She ran a finger over a set of mounted tusks. "I hope you didn't kill the interior designer."

"It was a gift from the last human who tried to make friends with me." He dropped her duffel on the bed, which was big enough for a pack of wolves, which it probably had hosted. "He had good intentions. He had a worse ending."

"Comforting." Iris sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the lodge with a forensic eye: one door, one window (barred, recent), a fireplace, a stack of wood, a cast-iron pot, and no phone signal. "So this is the prison cell with a better view. Where's the view?"

"Out the window." He moved to the window and stood there, looking at the valley. "It's the only thing in here I didn't kill."

The rain had started again — a soft, patient drizzle, the kind that made the fog curl in at the edges of the glass. He stood with his back to her, black coat hanging open over a grey shirt, and Iris noticed, for the first time, how carefully he held himself. Like a man standing on a ledge who knew exactly how close he was to the edge.

"So." She made herself comfortable against the headboard. "Let's talk about the thousand-year thing. You, the valley, the thing that calls my name — you said my ancestors buried it under the mountain. My ancestors. The witches, I assume."

"They weren't witches." He didn't turn. "They were priests. The first ones. Your bloodline comes from a cult that made a covenant with my people a thousand years ago. Peace. Cooperation. The wolves would guard their mountain, and the priests would guard the other thing in the mountain — the thing that's older than both our kinds, the thing the fog feeds on." His voice went flat. "The covenant was a lie from the first word."

"How do you know?"

"Because I was there." He turned then, and his silver eyes were ancient in a way that made her stomach drop. "I was the one who signed it. I was the one who stood beside the first priest and swore on my blood that we would share the mountain. And I was the one who watched them feed my clan into the mountain to keep the covenant strong — my brothers, my sisters, my mother — until I was the only one left. Then I killed them. Every priest in the line, every one I could find, I tore them out of their beds and put their blood on the same stones they'd used on mine."

The lodge was very quiet. The rain ticked against the glass.

"That's why you hate my blood." Iris's voice was steady, though her heart wasn't. "You're not a monster. You're a survivor who got cursed for it."

His jaw tightened. "I am exactly what they made me. I stopped pretending otherwise a long time ago."

"But you didn't kill me." She said it quietly. "You had a second. You had a grudge a thousand years deep. And you stopped. Why?"

Something crossed his face — pain, quick and violent, before he could hide it. The black cracks flickered at his wrist, just under the cuff of his sleeve, like a heartbeat. He turned back to the window. "Because you're the exception."

"The exception to what?"

"To everything." His voice was low, and for the first time, it sounded tired. "The curse doesn't let me touch a witch's blood without burning. It's the lock your ancestors put on me — I can't harm your line, and I can't love your line, and every time I want to do either, this is what it costs." He lifted his wrist. The cracks were spreading, black and patient, toward his elbow. "I've spent a thousand years training myself not to want anything. Then you walked into my valley with lime-basil body wash and a scalpel and an opinion about my interior decorating, and the curse forgot how to behave."

Iris stared at him. The rain filled the silence.

"So," she said slowly, "every time you feel anything toward me, your own body punishes you?"

"Yes."

"And you still brought me into your house."

"Don't flatter yourself." He didn't turn around. "I brought you in because the alternative is you dying, and you dying on my territory would be a genuinely inconvenient way to lose a thousand-year grudge. I'm keeping you alive out of spite."

"Mm-hmm." Iris stood up, crossed the room, and stopped directly behind him — close enough that she could feel the cold rolling off him in waves. "You know what I think?"