The Price of My Blood

The first attempt to reach Maisie came disguised as a school invitation.

Ruth noticed that the village seal had been copied badly. Gareth traced the courier, and a name from Julian’s territory appeared before noon.

Maisie never saw the envelope.

I did.

I sat in Ronan’s study staring at the bright drawing of a harvest fair while my wolf paced beneath my skin.

“They expected us to let her leave with a stranger?”

“They expected someone to be busy,” Gareth said. “A familiar event. A convincing uniform. They were testing the edges.”

Ronan stood by the window, his expression so controlled that I knew how angry he was.

“Change the collection arrangements,” I said. “Everyone gets the same list. No verbal substitutions, even from someone who claims we sent them.”

Gareth nodded and wrote it down.

It was a small action. It helped me breathe.

The second message came three days later through counsel. Julian offered to surrender certain estate documents if I met him at the north chapel. Attached was a photograph of my father’s field compass and a page bearing his handwriting.

I knew the compass. The hinge was bent where I had dropped it at twelve and lied about it badly.

I touched the image with one finger.

The note beneath it read: You deserve to know what happened at Blackthorn. Open what your mother left, and I will tell you.

Ronan read it beside me.

“It may be false,” he said.

“The promise is probably false. The compass isn’t.”

We showed the page to Agnes. She studied the visible lines of the notebook without touching the pendant.

“The chapel wards are failing,” she said. “If he has been cutting at the threshold for years, leaving it alone will not repair them.”

“Can Nora open it safely?” Ronan asked.

“She can learn enough to understand what she is choosing. Safety is a larger question.”

I appreciated her refusal to promise it.

We spent the next week preparing. Gareth’s scouts mapped the approaches and identified the hired wolves stationed beyond the ruins. Counsel obtained an emergency territorial order allowing inspection of Ellis land under dispute. Ronan sent notice to neutral witnesses so Julian could not quietly recast our arrival as an attack.

The practical work stayed around the edges of my days. In the middle of them, I braided Maisie’s hair, listened to her mispronounce enormous, and tried not to hold her too tightly.

She noticed anyway.

“Are you going somewhere?” she asked while we watered the terrace pots.

I set the jug down.

“Daddy and I need to visit the place where I grew up. There are some things there we need to put right.”

“Can I come?”

“Not this time. Ruth will stay with you, and Agnes will come here.”

She looked at the water darkening the soil.

“When will you be back?”

I wanted to say before dinner. I wanted to give her a certainty the world had not offered me.

Instead I sat beside her.

“We plan to be back tomorrow evening. If that changes, Ruth will tell you, and we’ll send a message as soon as we can.”

“You said you weren’t going to look anymore.”

I understood then. She thought departure meant the old search had begun again.

“I’m not looking for another little girl. I found mine.” I touched her cheek. “I’m going to make it harder for those people to frighten us again.”

She leaned into my hand.

“Will Daddy keep the monsters out?”

“We’ll help each other.”

That answer seemed to matter. She looked toward the house where he was speaking with Gareth, then nodded.

That night she asked for the fox book twice. I read it twice.

Afterward Ronan and I packed light bags in near silence. I put my mother’s notebook beside clean socks and found myself laughing at the combination.

“What?” he asked.

“I used to imagine inheriting her strength would feel less like preparing for an overnight trip.”

He held up a packet of biscuits.

“Important equipment.”

The laugh escaped more easily that time.

Before dawn I visited Maisie’s room. She woke while I kissed her forehead and caught my sleeve.

“Tomorrow evening?”

“That’s the plan.”

She pressed her cloth wolf into my hand.

“Take him. He knows the way home.”

I nearly refused because I knew she slept with it. Ruth, standing in the doorway, gave a tiny shake of her head.

Accept the help she can give.

I tucked the toy into my bag.

“I’ll bring him back.”

The journey north took most of the morning. Ronan drove until we joined the escort at the boundary, then sat beside me in the rear vehicle while Gareth reviewed the final arrangements.

The land changed. Pines gave way to bare ridges, then returned in darker clusters. I recognized a bend in the road where my father used to stop for apples. The stall was gone.

Grief rose without warning.

Ronan took my hand.

“Tell me,” he said.

So I told him about the apples. About my mother eating hers while driving and pretending not to hear my father complain about the juice on the wheel.

As we drove farther north, he asked whether I wanted to stop before the final checkpoint.

I did. We pulled into a quiet turnout where the mountains showed through the trees. Gareth’s vehicle waited a short distance away.

I stood beside the car and stretched my cramped legs.

“You haven’t been here since?” Ronan asked.

“Since the window. The night I took the notebook.”

He nodded.

“I keep thinking I should feel different,” I admitted. “Stronger, now that I can shift. Less like I’m going to be caught doing something wrong.”

“You’re going back to a place where terrible things happened. Your wolf doesn’t erase your memory.”

I looked up at the ridge.

“You make it sound reasonable.”

“It is reasonable.”

He reached into the car and brought out the packet of biscuits. We ate one each beside the road, looking at the hills.

It was almost absurdly ordinary. That helped.

When I returned to the car, I checked the cloth wolf in my bag, the notebook, the plan Gareth had explained twice. I had come north once with nowhere safe to return to.

This time I knew who was waiting at home.

He listened until the chapel appeared through the trees.

Its bell tower had fallen. Moss covered the stones. Beneath the ruin, somewhere in the dark, my mother’s last unopened door was waiting.