Winter's Bite

With the wind kicking up and the heavy snow pelting down on us, it took almost fifteen hours to get to Margin. A little better than a mile per hour. We had to stop several times for Grady to pick up the town’s scent again and to let him rest since he pulled all of us on the sleigh while injured.

It was a good thing I’d stolen the coat from the brothel at Old Man’s Den, or otherwise, I don’t think I would’ve made it. As it was, by the time we arrived in Margin, I couldn’t feel any part of my body despite Archer shifting to keep me and himself warm. After bursting through the door of an inn with winter savaging our backs, the innkeeper took pity on us and put us in a room for one night in exchange for the nearly full bottle of booze I’d also stolen from the brothel.

That was eight days ago. Archer, the magician that he was, had charmed the innkeeper’s wife into letting us stay longer. He was hurt. He was beautiful. I couldn’t blame her for not being able to resist, though I had noted how her gaze lingered, how she giggled and fretted.

She made me want to put an arrow through her eye.

Which was why I sat in the bar area with Sasha on my lap while the woman doted on him in our shared room upstairs and while Grady stomped around them and snapped everyone’s heads off.

We were a touch high-strung, the three of us, after starting a war and barely escaping with our lives. I was especially edgy, since all I thought about was poison and sex, sex and poison. That was the result of sharing a room with two wolf shifters and scouring the inn’s kitchen for things that could kill and coming up empty. What kind of kitchen didn’t have some kind of toxic ingredient?

Someone entered the inn then, a smudge of brown in the whited-out backdrop behind them. The animal skins hanging on the walls swayed with the surge of wind, and the many bushels of dried herbs and vegetables hanging above the fireplace fell to the stone floor. Most of the candles in the circular chandeliers above went out in puffs of smoke.

“Shut the goddamn door,” an old man hunkered at the bar yelled.

Good to know I wasn’t the only one cranky at winter.

The innkeeper bustled out from behind the bar to help the newcomer close the door against the wind.

I folded Sasha farther into my coat, away from the stranger, and sealing off my borrowed vision. She was half asleep in my arms anyway and already hidden from the innkeeper by the angle of my body. Easier to cover up her existence down here than up in our room with the doting wife since I seriously doubted wolf pups were allowed here.

The door finally closed and latched, and the innkeeper breathed a loud sigh of relief. “It’s rough out there this year, isn’t it?” He bumped into one of the many wine barrels edging the room. A habit of his, I gathered, since it happened so frequently, like he wasn’t aware of the space his own body dominated. “Do you need a room? A drink? I have a mean pot of stew that will be ready within the hour.”

The stranger didn’t say a word, just lumbered toward the fireplace against the wall.

I bent my head over the table so my hair curtained my face. My heart stuttered a warning beat. My muscles tensed as I almost stood to slip out, but I decided against it. I didn't want to draw attention to myself, not any more than I already had. As if sensing my unease, Sasha squirmed once and then stilled, her warm little body as stiff as mine.