Damon Walker's Arc

Chapter 4 of 1

The fever was gone, but neither of them moved toward sleep. Lily had healed the brand. Now she sat across the fire from Damon, the man she'd hunted for a year, the man she'd claimed as hers to deliver. Rain started on the roof. It trapped them in the small cabin, close and quiet, with nowhere to go. Damon pulled his shirt back on. "You could've let the wound take me. Cleaner than court." "I don't do clean." Lily fed a stick to the flames. "I do paid." But she didn't look away. He noticed that. The wolf stretched out between them. Damon scratched its ears and watched her face in the firelight. "Why hunt me a whole year? Easier marks out there." Her jaw set. "A man hollowed out my brother. Left him a shell." She stopped. "That's not your business." "Then why tell me?" She didn't answer. The rain filled the silence. Damon leaned forward. The fire lit the scar the court had burned into him. "They branded me for breaking one law. A law made to protect someone I trusted." His voice stayed flat. "I don't anymore." "So you're going back to them." Lily's eyes narrowed. "To stand in their court. To earn a seat." "A seat of honor." He said it plainly. "They'll kneel to me or I die trying." She studied him a long moment. "You and I want the same thing, then. To walk into a court that hurt us and make it bow." That landed. Damon went still. For a year she'd been a sword at his back. Now she was something else. Lily rose to check the fire. Her boot caught the uneven floor. Damon's hand shot out and caught her arm. She didn't pull free. His fingers stayed on her skin. Hers settled over his knuckles. Neither spoke. The fox slipped in from the rain and sat near the hearth. Its marks glowed soft, then softer, reading no lie in the room. "This is a mistake," Lily said. Her voice had lost its edge. "Probably." She kissed him anyway. He pulled her down against him, careful of the healing brand. The rain kept falling. For a while there was no bounty, no court, no year of chase between them. Only the fire and the two of them in it. She slept against his chest. Damon lay awake. He stared at the dark rafters and felt the ground shift under him. He had one goal. Earn his honor back. Make the court kneel. Nothing could sit beside that goal. Now something did. He eased his contact's last warning from his coat pocket. A folded scrap of paper. It named the price the court set for his return. One final proof of loyalty. One service, rendered in blood. The name written on it was Lily Ryder's. Damon folded the paper shut. The woman he wanted was the woman the court wanted dead. And they wanted him to be the one to do it.