Chapter 75

Sloane

Pain found me before anything else did.

It sat in my left leg, heavy and hot, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. For a while that was the whole world. I drifted toward it and away again, and each time I surfaced, something new came with it.

Woodsmoke.

Pine.

The rough scratch of wool against my cheek.

The stone was gone. That was the next thing I understood. No dust in my mouth. No grinding overhead. Somewhere close, a fire popped, and wind pushed against a wall that sounded like wood instead of rock.

I opened my eyes.

A ceiling of dark, uneven timber. A narrow window with the shutter half closed and gray daylight coming through the gap. A small room, plain and clean, with a chest ag