Aela Darkwood's Arc

Chapter 8 of 13

They walked until the sky turned gray at the edges. Kalen stopped beside a stand of pines and pulled a bundle from his pack. He shook it out, and a small tent snapped open on bent poles. Its skin was already stitched with fake leaves. Aela helped him press real twigs into the loops until the shape sank into the brush. The sun climbed. Anything on two legs in this forest would see her before she saw it. They crawled inside and pulled the flap shut. Inside, the light came through green and shifting. Aela sat with her knees up and the book on her lap. Kalen leaned against the far wall and watched the seam of the door. "Sleep in shifts," he said. "I'll take first." She nodded. Then she remembered his hands at the inn, the dried blood in the cracks. "Say the rest of it. The part you didn't finish last night." Kalen reached into his jacket and drew out a folding knife. The handle was dark. Red lines ran through it like veins. He opened the blade. Faint marks glowed along the steel. "Wolf blood in the metal," he said. "The witch gave it to me. When your friend reads the knot open, I cut my palm. Then yours. Same cut, same blade. Our blood mixes under the moon." Aela looked at the scars on her forearms. She did not pull her sleeves down. "One more cut." "One more," Kalen said. He folded the knife and set it between them. She slept. He woke her at midday. She watched the door while he slept. Nothing came. The heat rose and fell. By late afternoon the light in the tent turned gold. They broke camp when the shadows stretched long. Aela led him back toward the grove where she had left her friend. The book banged against her ribs again. She smelled pine and old smoke and, faintly, blood. They found her at the edge of a clearing, on her feet, tank top torn at the shoulder. Blond hair still tied back. The scar over her right eye caught the last light. She saw Aela and moved fast, one arm out to pull her behind. "Who," Lyra said. Not a question. A demand. "Kalen," Aela said. "He has the third piece." Lyra did not lower her arm. Her free hand opened at her side, palm up, the dark swirl on it showing. Kalen raised his own palm. The same swirl sat in his skin, thinner, older, but the same. Lyra's arm dropped an inch. Then another. She stepped closer and looked at his hand without touching it. "Where," she said. "Later," Kalen said. "Moon's coming. Read the knot. I'll cut when you say." Lyra looked at Aela. Aela nodded once. Lyra pulled the branch from her pack. Its green light lit the three of them. "Sit," she said. "Ribs bare. We start when it clears the trees."