Chapter 72. Blood. Breath. Bone.

Caleb’s POV

Three weeks can teach a mountain to breathe again.

Storm says it smells like wet pine and pride. I say it sounds like hammers in the morning and laughter at dusk. Either way, by the time the sun tips gold on Winter Mountain’s ridge, the packhouse has scrubbed the blood from its boards and combed the burrs out of its mane.

Banners hang where nets hung last week; the culvert hums the right note and nothing else. Someone polished the railing I bled on. Someone always does.

Tonight is the night we stop being “next” and become the ones.

The great room is dressed like a memory: cedar boughs and white linen, the silver torque dad wore to three treaties and a war, the dark blue mantle that made my mother a silhouette every child trusted in a storm. On the long table; bread, salt, and a single bowl of clean water no lirael will ever touch is waiting. The triple sigils of the wolf, witch and vampire are chalked on the floor in a braided circle,