The force of Asra’s body slamming into Ciaran’s chest made him wheeze for air. He pushed her off as gently as he could and sat up, grabbing her wrist to check for a pulse. She was alive, just knocked out cold.

  The throbbing in his head was gone, and he could take a full breath without feeling like he was being stabbed in the ribs. She must have found a way to heal him and exhausted herself in the process.

  He looked around, searching for any sign of where they were. Dense trees towered all around them, the late morning light filtering through yellow leaves to cast everything in gold.

  There weren’t any recognizable landmarks. How long had he been out, and how far had they traveled in that time?

  He brushed his fingers against Asra’s cheek, and her eyes fluttered open.

  “Are you all right?” Ciaran asked.

  Asra’s face contorted into a number of different shapes, none of them happy. Finally she said, “We need to keep moving.”

  “Where should we go?”

  Asra took a shuddering breath, and Ciaran could tell she wouldn’t be coherent for much longer.

  “The quarantine cabin,” she whispered.

  “Cabin?” Ciaran asked, his brow furrowed. “What cabin?”

  But Asra’s eyes had already flickered closed.

  Ciaran wracked his mind for what she meant. Dimly, he remembered Asra mentioning staying in a quarantine cabin in between her attempts on Nolan’s life. That must have been where she was taking them. But how would he find a house that he couldn’t see or touch without the magic key?

  He thought of her terror when the wolf-woman revealed the symbol on her arm. Did she only have the one blood emblem? Was every concealment spell she placed revealed by this one emblem?

  His stomach churned at the thought. If she only had the one emblem, that meant she’d given him the key to …

  He shook his head. There wasn’t time to think about that now. He had to get them all to safety.

  His mind turned to the container of potpourri Asra used for her concealment spell, and he remembered Asra saying she’d made it herself, from flowers back home. Bolstered by the clear path forward, he dug through her bag for the jar of potpourri. When he found it, he called for Bane and opened the jar in front of his nose.

  “Find it,” he said.

  Bane sniffed the jar a few times and put his nose to the ground, heading eastward. Ciaran threw the last few things in the bag and tied it to the saddle, then lifted Asra on her back over the horse and followed after his dog.

  Bane slowed down nearly an hour later. He circled a few times, then sat next to a spot of dirt and looked expectantly up at Ciaran.

  “Good boy,” Ciaran said as he stroked the dog’s ears.

  Ciaran looked forward. The air in front of him warbled and twisted, as it did for the concealment spell Asra used to hide their campsites over the last couple months. Ciaran took a deep breath, then led Bane and the horse past the barrier.

  The spell fell away, revealing a quaint, single-room cottage in a clearing. The rough-hewn wooden structure was taller than it was wide or long, with a small covered porch on the front and a large, overgrown garden on the left side. Tall grass dotted with wildflowers swayed in the breeze, and a sweet scent wafted through the clearing.

  He eased Asra from the saddle, and as he approached the front door with her cradled in his arms, he prayed it wasn’t locked. Thankfully, it swung open with a jiggle of the handle. The air inside was stale and musty, and there was a fine layer of dust on every horizontal surface.

  The area inside was almost a perfect square. Directly to his left was a small kitchen, equipped with a sink, a wood-burning stove, and a small dining table. Directly to his right was a tiny bathroom, with only enough room for a sink, toilet, and standing shower even more cramped than the one in his hideout by the manor. The far wall was dominated by a wide window that stretched almost the full length of the room. A square-shaped bed took up nearly the entire far right corner of the cabin, extending out halfway across the window, with two armchairs seated around an end table at the foot of the bed.

  He walked Asra over to the bed and laid her down. He brushed his fingers against her cheek, hoping it would rouse her again, but she remained oblivious to the world. His hand trailed along her chin, and dried blood flaked away at his touch.

  The memory of Asra throwing herself at Nolan and slamming fruitlessly onto the ground flashed into his mind. He took a deep breath, then headed to the kitchen to wet a dusty dishrag, then returned to wipe the crusted blood from her chin.

  There was some dried blood on her leg as well, surrounding what looked suspiciously like a scar from a dog bite. He shot a glare to Bane, who sat to his left, sniffing at the comforter.

  “What the hell happened?” Ciaran asked the dog, but Bane paid him no mind.

  Ciaran sighed and wiped the blood off Asra’s leg. He ran through the events of the day in his mind, trying to parse what had actually happened, but the whole ordeal felt dreamlike. One horrifying revelation after another sprung to his mind:

  Nolan had set the kennel fire and killed his dogs.

  He had done something to Asra to keep her from shapechanging.

  He had been working with a wolf—the same one that Asra had told Ciaran to leave to die, and Ciaran had insisted on saving.

  The feeling of his bones snapping against the solid wall in the manor, the blood filling his nose and mouth, sprang to Ciaran’s mind. He swallowed back the bile in his throat, took a deep breath to slow his racing heart. His mind jumped to his mother’s final moments, at the complete mercy of his father.

  Nolan had stood there and watched it happen. Ciaran had always viewed his older brother as a protector.

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  Ciaran had been willing to find a peaceful solution. Nolan obviously did not care to.

  Asra was right. He should have just let her kill the wolf when they first had the chance.

  He should have let her kill Nolan when they first had the chance.

  Furious, Ciaran flung the damp rag at the dusty wooden floor, and it hit the surface with a loud slap. Bane startled at the sound, then approached Ciaran with his head low and ears back. Ciaran scratched his dog’s head and muttered an apology.

  Ciaran’s thoughts turned to Bane’s behavior in Nolan’s office the last time they were in the palace. Those guards must have been wolves—the wolf-woman’s people. No wonder Bane had been so hostile toward them.

  Maybe Ophelia was right. Maybe it would be advantageous for Bane to be capable of speech.

  Asra showed no signs of waking. Ciaran needed something else to do with his hands to keep his mind from dwelling on the day. He headed back outside.

  The gelding grazed in the clearing. Ciaran removed the horse’s bridle and saddle and brushed him out as best he could. As his muscles fell into the pattern, his mind strayed to Asra. Vincent hadn’t seemed particularly confident that she could recover her gazehound form completely.

  He swallowed as the image of her sitting beneath him, her fate at his complete mercy, flashed in front of him again.

  Ciaran. Please.

  The woman had never begged him for anything. Even now he couldn’t be sure what she’d wanted.

  ‘Please don’t kill me?’

  ‘Please do kill me?’

  Regardless of what she meant, she hadn’t trusted him with her fate, even after everything they’d been through. It sickened him. He would do anything to make sure she never felt that way again.

  When the horse was settled and happily munching on grass once again, Ciaran grabbed their bags and headed back inside. He startled at the sight of Asra upright on the edge of the bed. There were a million things he wanted to ask her, but he wasn’t sure which ones were fair of him to ask.

  He settled on, “Are you … all right?”

  “No.”

  She stood, wobbling as she did so. Ciaran moved to help her, but the glare she pierced him with kept him rooted to the spot.

  “Is there some way I can help?” he asked, but Asra pushed past him on unsteady legs.

  He followed her out to the grassy clearing, keeping a good distance behind her. She stood there for a moment, hands in fists at her side, quivering. Ciaran approached her cautiously, and her ragged breathing was audible over the soft rustling of the grass in the breeze.

  “I can’t reach it,” she gasped. “My magic. Or my fur. I can’t … ”

  Her face crumpled and she fell to her knees, grasping fistfuls of dirt and grass. Her whole body racked with sobs. Tears streamed from her face, and she screamed into the ground beneath her.

  It was the most terrifying thing Ciaran had seen all day.

  “He’s going to take everything from me,” she choked out between sobs. “He’s already taken my home. My family. Now this!” She slammed a fist against the ground. “I was so close. He was right there! I had him! He was right there!”

  She screamed again, and the sound rent Ciaran’s heart in two. He knelt down beside her and brushed his hand across her shoulder. When she didn’t rebuke him, he pulled her in, and she clutched at his arms as her chest heaved and her tears soaked his shirt. Bane whimpered softly, then curled up next to them.

  “I can’t do this,” Asra whispered. “I’m so tired. I just want it to be over. I don’t want to be here anymore.”

  “You can do this,” Ciaran said, tightening his arms around her. “I’ve seen what you’re capable of. You can do damn near anything.”

  ` They sat like that as the sun disappeared behind the treeline and the moon appeared in a violet sky. Asra’s sobs subsided into sniffles, and she pushed herself away from Ciaran.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping snot from her puffy nose with the back of her arm.

  “No, I’m sorry,” Ciaran said, taking her hands in his. Her red eyes narrowed at him in confusion.

  “You were right,” Ciaran continued. “We should have just killed him when we had the chance. And now look what’s happened.”

  Asra sniffled again, and her voice was wary when she spoke. “Why did you bring hound’s woe with you?”

  Guilt forced him to drop his gaze. “Because I didn’t trust you. Because I thought … ” His voice caught in his throat, and he gathered himself before continuing. “I thought my brother was the person most important to me, but I realized … ”

  Asra’s eyes widened, and her heartbeat fluttered in her throat. Ciaran barreled on to prevent himself from losing his nerve.

  “I love you, Asra. You don’t have to say it back if you don’t want to,” he added hurriedly, seeing the panic in her eyes. “Gods, you don’t even have to love me. But I spent all day today terrified that I would die, and I would never get a chance to tell you how I feel. That you would go your whole life not knowing how much you mean to me. I can’t let that happen.”

  She looked into his eyes for a long moment, and he couldn’t read the expression on her face. He wished she would say something, anything, to give him some insight to what she was thinking.

  “I thought you were going to kill me,” Asra said finally.

  “No,” Ciaran said immediately. “Never. Asra, I would never.”

  “I almost didn’t save you,” she said. “In the manor.”

  He smiled weakly. “I’m glad you did.”

  “Me, too.”

  Ciaran took a deep breath. “I would like to stay with you, if you’ll let me. But I understand if you—”

  The rest of his sentence was cut off by her lips on his. She pulled him into her, and he felt her heart pounding in her chest against his. He was so relieved he would have laughed, if his mouth hadn’t already been preoccupied.

  This kiss was different from the ones they’d shared in his hideaway outside the manor. It lacked the despair, the detachment. It assuaged all his fears that his affection for her was one-sided. She wanted him, and not just physically. He couldn’t hold back his relieved laugh this time.

  She ran her hands from his cheeks down to his neck down to the collar of his shirt, which she gripped firmly and yanked open, causing buttons to rain over the grass.

  For the first time in his life, Ciaran thought about how much the shirt and the buttons cost. Luxury clothing would be a thing of his past now. He had expected it to make him sad or anxious, but the thought was almost freeing. He would gladly burn every possession he had from his old life for a life with Asra.

  She broke away and stood, holding her hand out to help him up, and led him inside. They both stripped their clothing, then Asra pulled him over to sit on the bed beside her. He brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear, and she reached up and took his hand in her own, drawing it to her lips and planting a gentle kiss on his palm.

  Ciaran’s chest clenched, and he decided to lighten the mood, lest Asra remember her distaste for sentimentality.

  He let out an exaggerated sigh. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist my charm forever.”

  “Watch yourself,” she said, her smirk belying her sharp tone. “None of those nobles will want to associate with you anymore now that you’re a criminal. If you piss me off you won't have any options left.”

  Ciaran snorted. “Shows how little you understand people. You should hear how nobles fantasize about being swept away by some suave, dangerous outlaw.”

  “Sounds like you’re the one who couldn’t resist my charm, then.”

  Ciaran kissed her cheek.

  “Guilty as charged.”