Zade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

By morning the storm had thinned to a slow, steady fall. Zade sat on the cabin floor and watched the cub breathe. It was too weak to walk. Too small to leave. He needed meat before nightfall, and he could not hunt with the cub in his arms. He had no one left to hand it to. His court was ash three winters gone, and every name he trusted had died with it. He stood at the window and counted his options. There were two. Take the cub into the cold and fail. Or leave it here alone and hope nothing found the door. Neither answer kept it alive. A sound cut the quiet. Not wind. A high, bright hum, closer with each breath, like a kettle that had learned a tune. Golden light bled through the gaps in the shutters. Zade drew a shadow blade and stepped to the side of the door. The door banged open. Snow blew in. So did she. Lily Spark landed on the boards in a scatter of golden motes, wings buzzing, cheeks pink from the cold. She was barely four feet tall and shining like a lantern someone had forgotten to cover. She had been his friend for a hundred years and had never once knocked. "You," she said, jabbing a finger at his chest, "are very hard to find. Very. Hard." She shook snow out of her hair. "Also. Something is hunting where you live. I flew all night. My wings hurt. Say hello." Zade lowered the blade. "Hello." Her eyes went past him to the cot. She stopped talking. That, more than anything, told him she understood. "Oh," she said, softer. She crossed the room and knelt by the cub. Her light dimmed on its own, warm gold going honey-slow so as not to startle it. "Oh, you tiny thing." "Aurora-kin," Zade said. "Bound to me. It cannot travel yet." She looked up at him. Her face did the fast thing it always did, joke, then plain. "You need to hunt." "Yes." "And you have nobody." "No." "You have me." She said it flat, like she was naming a fact. "Go. I will sit on this cub. I will yell at anything that comes through that door. My light stays on. Nothing dark gets close." He did not move. He had not asked anyone for anything in three winters. "Zade." She used his name like a small stone dropped on a table. "Go. Before it dies." He pulled his cloak on. He set his palm on the cub's flank once, felt the thin heartbeat, and then he walked out into the snow. He brought back a hare and a lean fox before dark. The cub ate. Lily was still on the cot, glowing steady, arguing with the fire. She told him then what she had flown all night to tell him. The thing he was hunting already knew where he lived. It was going to his home.