Rosalie wiped the same glass three times because Dante had walked into the tavern, and she still felt nothing. Every other woman at the bar had gone quiet the moment he crossed the doorway. One dropped her spoon. Another laughed too loud. Rosalie only noticed the way he held the mug when he sat down, two fingers hooked through the handle, thumb tapping the rim. She had noticed that for years. She had also, for years, been the only person in town his power did not touch. She did not know why. She wanted to know before anyone else did. The letter was still folded in her apron pocket. She had carried it for months. Tonight she had told herself she would finally slide it across the bar to him. Then the stranger at the corner table had started asking questions, and the letter felt like a brick. The stranger was a traveler in a gray coat. He had bought one drink and nursed it for an hour. He had asked the baker why the girls in town flocked to Dante. He had asked the blacksmith if anyone was immune. He had used that word, immune, and the blacksmith had shrugged and pointed his chin at Rosalie behind the counter. She had felt the point land between her shoulders. Marcus came in before the stranger could cross the room. Her brother saw her face and read it in one look. He set his elbows on the bar. "Who," he said. She flicked her eyes to the gray coat. Marcus nodded once. "What does he know." "He knows someone here doesn't feel it," she said. "He doesn't know it's me yet." Marcus tapped the wood twice, thinking. Then he said, flat, "I can send him down the road tonight. I know a story that'll bore him off the trail. But you have to tell me why he shouldn't find out." She opened her mouth. Closed it. He waited. "Because I don't know why yet," she said. "And I need to." Marcus looked at her a long second. "Okay," he said. "This time." He walked to the corner table and sat down across from the gray coat like an old friend. Rosalie could not hear the words. She watched Marcus talk in short, even sentences. Within ten minutes the stranger paid, stood, and left through the front door with his pack on his shoulder. Marcus came back and drank half her water without asking. Dante slid down two stools to sit in front of her. "Your brother scared off my competition," he said. "Was that for me." "No," Rosalie said, and meant it. His mouth pulled to one side. "Honest. That's new." She felt the letter in her pocket and left it there. The stranger was gone. But Marcus knew there was something to protect now, and he had told her, plainly, that next time he might not.

Marcus stayed at the bar after Dante drifted back to his table. He drank the rest of Rosalie's water and set the glass down between them like a marker. "Closing time," he said. "You and me. Back room." Rosalie nodded. The letter in her apron pocket felt heavier than it had an hour ago. She had bought one night. Now she had to pay for it. She found him in the storeroom sitting on a crate of bottles. He did not stand. "Why shouldn't he find out," Marcus said. "Short version." She opened her mouth. The truth was three sentences long and she could not get the first one out. She thought of the way Dante held his mug, thumb on the rim, and how she had watched that for years without a single pull in her chest that belonged to his power instead of to her. "Marcus," she said. "I need another week." He looked at the floor. He looked at her. "No." "Please." "You said you'd tell me why. That was the deal." "I don't have the words yet." "Then I don't have the shield." He stood up. He was not angry. That was worse. "If he comes back through, or another one like him, I'm not sitting down at his table." The back door opened before she could answer. Brenda came in with two mugs, saw their faces, and stopped. "Wrong room," she said. She did not leave. She set one mug in Marcus's hand and one in Rosalie's. "Whatever this is, drink first." Marcus almost smiled. He looked at Brenda a beat too long and then away. Brenda caught it and pretended she hadn't. "She won't tell me," Marcus said to Brenda, because it was easier than saying it to Rosalie. Brenda looked at Rosalie. "Is it going to get her hurt?" "Yes," Rosalie said, before she could stop. Brenda turned to Marcus. "Then give her the week." Marcus set the mug down. "One," he said. "After that I tell Dante myself." He walked out. Rosalie sat down on the crate he had left warm. Outside, past the kitchen door, a small flock of pale birds startled off the eave and settled again. Brenda watched her a moment. "You know I'm going to ask what it is." "I know." "Not tonight." "Thank you." Brenda squeezed her shoulder once and left. Rosalie stepped out into the front room. Dante was gone. In his stool sat a blond man in a clean jacket, watch bright on his wrist, hands folded on the wood as if he had been waiting a while. Ashton Vale did not smile. "I saw you first," he said. "Before he ever looked. I thought you should hear that from me before the week runs out." Rosalie's hand closed on the letter in her pocket. One week. Two men. And now a third who already knew how to count.

Rosalie did not answer the blond man at the bar. She walked past him and out into the cold, letter still in her pocket. She went home the long way and did not look back. By the time she reached her cottage, she had a plan the size of a coin. She needed a reason to stand in front of Dante that did not sound like a girl making one up. She sat at her kitchen table and wrote a list of every errand in town that might put her near him tomorrow. She crossed out all of them by dawn. In the morning, Brenda came by with bread and did not knock. She sat down across from Rosalie and looked at the crossed-out list. "You're trying to bump into him," Brenda said. "Don't. He'll feel it." Rosalie folded the paper. "Then what." "Give him something he asked for. Not something you invented." Brenda tore off a piece of bread and chewed. "Marcus said Dante lost a book at the tavern last week. Old one. He's been asking after it. Marcus put it behind the bar and forgot." She wiped her hands. "Go get it. Take it to him. That's a reason." Rosalie went to the tavern before it opened. Marcus was wiping glasses. She told him what she wanted. He reached under the bar without a word and set the book on the wood between them. It was small, brown, worn at the corners. "He's at the oak by the creek this hour," Marcus said. "He reads there. Don't make me regret this." He held the book a second longer than he needed to before he let go. "Six days," he said. "Clock's the clock." She found Dante where Marcus said. He sat against the trunk with his coat open and his hands empty. A gray wolf lay near his boots, pale marks glowing faint along its side. It lifted its head when she stepped into the grass and did not growl. Dante looked up. She held out the book. "Marcus had it," she said. "Behind the bar. He forgot." Dante took it. His thumb went to the spine the way it went to his coffee mug. "Thank you," he said. He looked at her longer than a thank-you needed. "Rosalie, right." "Yes." The wolf stood, walked between them once, and sat at her feet. Dante watched the wolf. Then he watched her. "Sit a minute," he said. "If you can." She sat. She did not touch the letter in her pocket. She had come with a book and left with a seat on the grass beside him, and the animal at her knee that Brenda had once said only came near people who meant it. The wolf leaned its warm side against her leg. Dante did not ask what that meant, but she saw him mark it.

The wolf stayed at her knee. Rosalie kept her hand still on the grass. Dante watched the animal like it had spoken to him in a language he almost knew. She had come to deliver a book. She had not planned for this. The warm weight against her leg was asking a question she could not answer, and Dante's quiet was asking the same one. "He doesn't do that," Dante said. "Not with people he just met." He set the book on his thigh. "Not with people at all, mostly." His voice was flat, not cold. He was telling her a fact. "Why you." Rosalie opened her mouth and closed it. She had spent years hiding how much she noticed him. She could not tell him that. She looked at the wolf instead. The pale marks on its side glowed faint under the red leaves of the old oak above them. A small flock of pink-marked birds settled in the high branches and began to sing in soft, paired notes. Dante glanced up at the birds, then back at her, and his mouth tightened. "I don't know," she said. It came out true. She had told herself it was luck, or a flaw in whatever he did to a room. Sitting here, with the wolf leaning into her and the birds calling above them, luck did not fit. "Something's different with me. I've known it a while. I don't know what it is." He was quiet. Then he said, "You feel nothing when I walk in. Do you." She looked at him. His hazel eyes did not flinch. "No," she said. "I mean—I feel things. Not that." She pressed her palm flat to the grass. "Not the pull other people feel." He nodded once, like a man confirming a wound he already knew about. "I figured," he said. "I've been trying to figure since the first time." The wolf lifted its head and pushed its nose against her wrist. Dante watched the animal do it. "He knows something I don't," he said. "He's telling me you're safe. He's telling me more than that." He did not name the more. Rosalie's face went hot. She kept her hand where the wolf had put it. "I can't explain him," she said. "I can't explain me either. I want to." That was as close as she had come to the letter in her pocket. Dante closed the book over his thumb. "Then we find out," he said. "Together. If you'll sit with that." She said yes before she thought about Marcus, or the six days, or the man in the gray coat. The wolf settled its chin on her boot. Above them the birds kept singing in pairs. She had come here with a borrowed reason and no answers. She was leaving with a promise to look for one, and Dante waiting on the other side of it.