Aela Darkwood's Arc

Chapter 1 of 13

Aela had not slept in three nights, and the thing in the trees was learning her scent. She crouched behind a rotting log at the edge of the forest and pressed her palm flat against the dirt. Her wolf ears twitched. Something heavy moved two ridges back, the same way it had moved last night, and the night before. Her tail curled tight against her leg. Before the curse, she would have outrun it as a full wolf. Running like that had felt like flying. Now she was stuck halfway, slow on two legs, clumsy on four, and every hunter in the valley seemed to know it. She needed a wall. She needed a door with a lock. Most of all she needed one quiet night to open the small leather book in her pack, the one where she wrote down every clue about the curse — every plant that burned her tongue, every moon phase that made her bones ache. She could not study while she was prey. Down the slope, past a bend in the road, two buildings sat close together. A stone diner with lanterns burning beside the door. Beside it, a timber inn with flower boxes under every window and a wooden sign hanging from an iron arm. Warm light spilled onto the road. She counted the coins in her pocket. Enough for one night, maybe two meals. She pulled her sleeves down over the scars on her arms and started walking. The innkeeper looked at her ears. Then her tail. Then away. He took her coins and slid a key across the counter without a word. She climbed the stairs two at a time. The room had a bed, a chair, and a bolt on the door. She threw the bolt. She sat on the floor with her back to the wood and finally, finally opened the book. She wrote: candleglow bushes — safe to eat, no burn. She wrote: full moon in six days. Her hand shook. She ate half a loaf of bread from her pack and did not remember chewing it. She slept. She woke to a fist on the door. Not a knock. A fist. Steady. Three beats, pause, three beats. The innkeeper's voice came through the wood, low and careful. "Miss. There's a man downstairs asking after a girl with wolf ears. Says you owe him. He's paid me more than you did." Aela was already moving. She shoved the book into her pack. She looked at the bolt on the door, the only thing she had wanted for three days, and understood she could not keep it. She went out the window. The flower box cracked under her boot. She dropped to the road and ran for the trees, and the small camouflaged tent rolled tight at the bottom of her pack was suddenly the only roof she had left.