Aelion Silverwind's Arc

Chapter 2 of 6

Aelion stood in the courtyard while a servant took the wounded wolf toward the kennels. Then the noblewoman came down the stone steps. Three years of longing crowded his chest, and she looked at him like a stranger who had wandered in by mistake. Her face stayed still. She wore no welcome. "You found my beast," she said. "The steward will pay you at the gate." She turned back toward her door. In a moment a guard would walk him out, and the wall would close again. "He won't heal on his own," Aelion said. The words came fast. "The wing's torn along the joint. Wrapped wrong, it sets crooked. Then he never flies again." The noblewoman stopped. "My kennel master will tend it." "Your kennel master lost him for two nights," Aelion said. "I pulled the thorns out one by one. The wolf let me. He won't let a stranger near that wing now." Her eyes moved over him, colder than before. But she did not call the guard. Lyra stepped forward from the gate, where she had waited with her satchel. The half-elf had grown up beside Aelion in the lower quarter, and she spoke to nobles the same way she spoke to everyone. "He's right, my lady. I sell rope to your kennel master. He couldn't splint a chicken's leg." She opened her satchel and showed clean linen and a coil of cord. "Your man will need both. Aelion knows the hold." The noblewoman studied the two of them. A servant hovered, unsure whether to fetch the guard or wait. "Show me," she said at last. She led them to the kennels. The wolf lay on straw, panting, red eyes tracking every shape. When the kennel master reached for the wing, the beast snapped. When Aelion knelt and spoke low, it went still. He took the linen from Lyra and bound the joint the way he'd learned on his own hunts, firm but loose enough for blood to move. The noblewoman watched his hands, not his face. "Where did an elf learn to set a wing?" "On the edges of things," Aelion said. "Where you learn or you lose the animal." The wolf settled under his palm. For the first time she looked at him as if he were a man and not a nuisance. "It will need fresh dressing each morning," she said. "Until it flies." "Then I'll come each morning," Aelion said. She did not agree. She did not refuse. She looked at the wolf, then at the gate, then back. "Each morning," she said. "You'll ask for me at the wall. They'll let you through." The gate stayed shut to the world. It would open for him alone, once a day, for as long as the wolf still limped. He had not won her. He had won the next sunrise.