Page 224 of Harbinger

He nods. He doesn’t ask which home I mean.

He already knows.

THIRTY-EIGHT

The pup hasn’t moved in an hour. Not since we carried it through the postern to Miradores, leaving my stricken family behind.

He’s finally sleeping, curled into a tight crescent on the foot of Bishop’s bed, his nose tucked under one paw, the tiny ivory nubs on his head catching the lamplight. Every so often, a leg twitches.

It’s the most peaceful thing I’ve seen in months.

Lenora took one look at us when we came through the postern—a wolf pup in my arms and blood on Bishop’s clothing—and didn’t say a word. She just marched to the kitchen, put a kettle on, set a saucer of cream on the floor, and went to find old towels. When she came back, she had a jar of salve bearing the Leontian seal and the unflappable face of a woman who’s seen worse.

Now in my room, Bishop’s sleeves are pushed to his elbows, his hair coming loose from its leather tie, and there’s blood on his shirt that doesn’t belong to him. He looks like he’s been dragged through all seven hells, but he’s staring at my wrist like it’s offended him personally.

“Stop scowling,” I say. “He barely touched me.”

“He cut you.”

“Barely.”

His eyes flick up, unamused.

It doesn’t matter that he carved my would-be assassin’s heart out. Part of him is still stuck back in those woods where I almost died.

Considering I left a fair bit of my pride back there, I get it.

Between the bits of leaves, dried blood, and the patches where Stefan’s icy magic soaked through the fabric, my clothes were unsalvageable.

Bishop doesn’t even seem distracted by the thin shift I slipped into as soon as we were alone. Usually, he finds its sheerness inspiring. But he hasn’t said a single inappropriate thing. He has, in fact, been so studiously not-inappropriate that I’m almost offended.

He rinses a cloth in the basin and starts working his way up my forearm methodically, studying each wound in the light before he cleans it.

I’m only a little worse for wear. A slender scratch where a bramble caught me. A bruise the size of a fingertip on the inside of my elbow where the guard’s grip locked. A welt across my throat, which I refuse to think about.

The frozen sensation from Stefan’s hand is gone. Mostly. Just a shadow of a frostbite lingers.

“Tilt your chin up.”

I comply, but when the warm, wet cloth touches the welt on my throat, my eyes water. I keep them open and focused on the ceiling, hoping he doesn’t notice. And honestly, the pain is mild compared to the fear slowly edging its way back into my thoughts.

“I felt something tonight, something dark,” I whisper. “I think it was magic.”

He’s silent for a moment as he wrings out the cloth. When he finally dips his fingers into the salve and starts working it into the wound, his touch is so gentle I barely feel it.

“I told the queen you were injured and we would see her when you were feeling better,” he says at last, changing the subject.

Now who’s avoiding my destiny?

I roll my eyes at him. “What will they do when I have my magic?”

He shakes his head and starts in with the salve again. “They will do nothing.”

“But I’m a Ravenell. Aren’t you afraid, at least?” He has to be. He shares my bed.

Bishop takes my hand and squeezes. “Not of you. Never of you,” he says, as though he senses that this is the question I really need answered. “And Velesont is only scared of your powers because he can’t control you.”

Power hates what it can’t control. The memory swims to my mind. Hadrian said it before, but it’s still true now.