Eden Riverwallow's Arc

Chapter 6 of 18

The wolf bled onto her floor. Eden watched a dark bead slide off his shoulder and soak into the wood. Another followed. She thought of Maleficit out past the trees, and of what blood in this house would call. "He can't stay like that," Willow said. The ghost hovered at the wolf's flank, her lace hem drifting through his fur without moving it. "Not bleeding. Not here." "I know." Eden went to the kitchen and came back with a bowl of water and a clean cloth. She knelt an arm's length from him. His yellow eyes tracked her. His lip pulled once off a tooth and settled. "Kane." She kept the cloth on her knee. "I can't help you if I don't know what you are. I need to know what to clean it with. I need to know if my hands make it worse." He looked at the door. He looked at her. "Tell him," Willow said. "Tell him you already know." Eden set the cloth down. "Your eyes went yellow on my porch. You see Willow. You crossed a moss line that wouldn't let you across before. I have an amulet with your hair in it that called you back to my window." Her voice held. "I'm not guessing anymore. I'm asking you to say it." The wolf's chest worked. The shape of him shivered along the spine, then the shoulders, then the jaw. Fur pulled back into skin. Bone folded. It was not quick and it was not clean. When it finished, a man sat on her floor in torn black clothes, one hand pressed to a gash that ran from collarbone to bicep. White hair stuck to his face. His brown eyes were tired in a way that had nothing to do with the wound. "Werewolf," Kane said. "That's the short word for it." Eden let out a breath she had been holding since the porch. "Thank you." She went to the cupboard where she kept the things she didn't remember buying. The roll of gauze was there, wrapped in itself, the marks on it glowing faint blue and violet. She had found it the same week she found the amulet. The cottage had wanted her to have it. She understood that now. She knelt beside him and pressed the cloth to the wound first. He hissed once and held still. She wound the gauze over his shoulder. The runes warmed under her fingers. The bleeding slowed, then stopped. "Salt the sill again," Kane said. "He'll have smelled it by now." Eden nodded, but she did not move yet. Her hand was still on his shoulder. He did not take it off. Outside, past her yard, past the moss line, something down the slope where Maddie's old cottage sagged in the dark began to walk toward the trees.