Chapter 139

Sloane

A few hours earlier

I couldn’t sleep.

That wasn’t new. I hadn’t slept properly since the field. Some nights it was the leg, aching in the cold the way Daphne had promised it would for the rest of my life. Some nights it was Rhea, pacing, lifting her head toward the west every time I closed my eyes. Some nights it was nothing at all. I would lie on my back in Cassandra’s spare room and listen to the packhouse settle around me, and my body would refuse, quite calmly, to go anywhere.

Tonight it was the quiet.

Imogen hadn’t gone out. She had told me at supper, through Owen, that she had everything she needed until the next moon, and that I should rest, and that she would send for me when she wanted me. So there was no basket by the door and no boots by the bed. Just the room, and the dark, and the clock at the end of the corridor counting off the quarter hours.

At one, I gave up.

I got out of bed and pulled the blanket round my sho