Chapter 28 · What the Mint Was For

The lock turned. Three clicks, and the last one caught halfway and hung there, like whoever held the key had to think about it first.

Blood came through the door before the door did. Hot, fresh, cedar and cold air off the north ridge under it.

I had one hand in the water bucket and soot to the elbow. The mint was gone — chewed down to wet green nothing under my tongue — and the paper it came wrapped in was a gray curl at the bottom of the bucket. I'd tried to burn it. The corner wouldn't catch. Waxed, or oiled, or something I don't have a word for.

Paper. Mint doesn't come wrapped in paper.

Then Valerius filled the doorway.

His right hand was wrecked. Split knuckles, thumb sitting wrong, blood dried in a seam from his collar down into his shirt.

"Out," he said. Not to me.

Boots. The door. Iron on iron. First time in eleven nights the lock shut with just us on this side of it.

He crossed in four steps. I stood, and my back found the wall before I told it to.

"Whose blood?"

"Mine. Most of it.