by Alex Bentley
“Thank you,” I say. “For coming back.”
I lean forward and kiss his cheek.
He smiles and kisses mine.
“You have old scars,” he says. “Like me.” He points to my scalp.
I nod, tracing a finger along the fine scar that runs from my hairline to the nape of my neck, the scar that was once the first of the Seven Cuts. And I do not hear the passage of the whetted flint. I hardly think about the Ritual at all.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “An ugly thing, but that is all.”
“It is only a little scar,” he says. “And you are prettier for it.”
“We should get some sleep,” I say, suddenly embarrassed. “We need to be up early.”
“Of course,” he says, rising.
I watch him as he makes a bed on the floor next to me.
“Will you help us?” I ask. “When you have freed your father?”
He crawls under his blanket.
“Yes,” he says. “I will try my best to be your finewolf, Dracafysian. At least until your actual finewolf companion turns up.”
“Don’t call me that,” I say, lying back. “Dracafysian. It seems silly.”
“It does seem a little silly,” he says, weariness creeping into his voice. “And also a little frightening.”
In less than a minute, Casmel Durn is asleep and snoring.
It is an hour or more before sleep finds me. All I can think of is the Gravene, a monstrous being that has slaughtered who knows how many gods and laid waste to who knows how many heavens. And I, Alys Clainh, daughter and son of Aryc and Alva Clainh, am supposed to defeat it?
The very notion should have me trembling with fear. And yet it doesn’t. And when sleep finally comes, it is a deep and peaceful thing.
