Jorren hated to be touched.
Lira figured that out on the second day.
The first morning after Thornfell’s twisted healer arrived, they let her sleep. Her body, wrung out by the journey and the buzzing magic in her channels, collapsed without much coaxing. Sella hovered over her like a anxious bird, adjusting blankets, checking pulse, whispering old Thornfell lullabies under her breath.
By midday, the infirmary hummed at a different pitch.
Everyone knew.
“We have another one,” Idris whispered to Lira as he helped her stack fresh linens. “Like you. But… not.”
“Don’t start rumors,” Mara snapped from across the room. “We have enough of those breeding in the corners.”
“It’s not a rumor if it’s true,” Idris muttered.
Mara flicked a drying rag at his head anyway.
Lira carried a basin and a towel to the curtained-off section where Jorren and Sella lay. She paused just beyond the cloth, knuckles brushing the fabric.
“May I come in?” she asked.
“Depends,” Jorren said hoarsely from within. “You bringing more… lightning?”
The bitterness in her tone burned.
Lira stepped through.
Jorren was half-sitting now, propped against a stack of pillows. Her skin had a waxy pallor. The cloudy film in her irises didn’t obscure the sharpness in her gaze. Her wolf—still snarling in the bent channels—watched too.
Sella perched on the edge of the bed, fingers wrapped around a clay cup. She looked like she hadn’t slept in the entire two days since they’d arrived.
“I brought water,” Lira said, lifting the basin slightly. “And cloths. I thought you might like… to feel something that isn’t buzzing.”
Jorren snorted. “You think wiping my face is going to fix what’s in my bones?”
“No,” Lira said. “I think it might… make today less miserable.”
Jorren’s mouth twitched. “Optimistic,” she said. “For an empty girl.”
“Least I can do,” Lira said. “Sit with you. While I figure out how not to break you further.”
Jorren’s eyes narrowed. “You’re very… direct,” she said.
“Practice,” Lira said. “I got tired of people talking around me like I wasn’t in the room."
“You talk around yourself,” Jorren said.
Lira blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Last night,” Jorren muttered. “You paced in the hall. Muttering about ‘tools’ and ‘conduits’ and ‘drains.’ Like you’re not also… girl. Wolf. Or… former wolf.”
Heat crept up Lira’s neck. “You heard that?”
“My hearing is… excellent,” Jorren said dryly. “Everything else… questionable.”
Sella’s lips twitched. “She’s grouchy,” she murmured to Lira. “That means she likes you.”
“Don’t speak for me,” Jorren grumbled. “I barely like myself.”
Lira set the basin down and dipped the cloth. “May I?” she asked again, this time gesturing to Jorren’s face.
The other woman hesitated.
Then, slowly, she nodded.
“Touch… gently,” she warned. “Everything inside me is… closer to the surface now.”
“I know,” Lira said quietly.
She didn’t, fully. Not yet. But she understood enough about being scraped thin.
The cloth was cool against Jorren’s fevered skin. Lira wiped along her brow, her cheekbones, her jawline. The tension in Jorren’s shoulders eased by degrees.
“How long since you… twisted?” Lira asked softly.
Jorren’s jaw tightened. “Three months,” she said. “Almost to the day.”
Sella’s fingers whitened around the cup. “It was… around the last blood moon,” she murmured. “Cael forbade any full-pack shifts that night. After… what happened to you.” She nodded at Lira. “But Edrin… she wanted to test something. She said… if we could control the surge, we could… use it.”
“She thought she could stuff a storm into a bottle,” Jorren said. “Someone had to hold the bottle.”
“You volunteered,” Lira said softly.
Jorren snorted. “Better me than a pup,” she said. “Or a warrior with no idea what channels even are. I’d been… experimenting. With runes. With bindings.” Her gaze went distant, seeing something only she could. “We thought… if we carved new lines around the old stones, we could… guide the surge. Give it… paths. So it wouldn’t chew through whoever happened to stand too close.”
“It chewed through you instead,” Lira said.
“Yes,” Jorren said simply. “It did.”
Lira’s throat tightened. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Jorren shrugged, the movement small. “I lived,” she said. “You lost your wolf. I lost… everything *and* kept her. Not sure who’s worse off.”
“We’re both fucked,” Lira said frankly. “Just in different ways.”
A huff of laughter escaped Jorren. “Cael said you were refreshing,” she said. “I thought he meant insufferable.”
“He meant both,” Sella said under her breath.
Lira winced. “He’s not wrong.”
She set the cloth aside and reached for Jorren’s wrist again.
Jorren tensed. “We just did this,” she said.
“I’m not going in deep,” Lira said soothingly. “Just… skimming. I want to find… the parts that hurt the least.”
Jorren’s mouth twisted. “They all hurt,” she said. “In case you were wondering.”
“I know,” Lira said. “That doesn’t mean there isn’t… relief… in there somewhere. If we… make room.”
Jorren watched her for a heartbeat, then extended her arm.
“All right,” she said. “If you break me beyond repair, I’ll haunt you.”
“Fair,” Lira murmured.
She closed her hand around Jorren’s wrist.
Static bit.
She hissed through her teeth. “You weren’t exaggerating,” she muttered.
“I’m many things,” Jorren said. “A liar isn’t one.”
Lira forced herself to breathe slowly, evenly. She didn’t want to drain anything. Not yet. Not even a little. She wanted to… map.
She let her awareness slide over Jorren’s channels, looking for pockets where the magic bunched most painfully. Where the wolf snarled loudest.
It was chaos.
Surge zipped along bent lines, striking sparks at every joint. Some of those sparks leaked outward, into the surrounding flesh, nerves shrieking in response. No wonder Jorren hated touch; her body was a live wire.
But there were spots.
Small stretches where the lines straightened.
Tiny places where the magic flowed smoother. Less blocked. Less shrill.
There.
And there.
And—
She pushed her focus there.
“Do you feel that?” she asked quietly.
Jorren’s face changed. The tightness around her mouth eased, just a fraction. Her lashes fluttered.
“It’s… quieter,” she whispered. “There. For a breath.”
Lira exhaled slowly. “Okay,” she murmured. “That’s… something.”
She pulled back.
The static roared again. Jorren sucked in a sharp breath, shoulders jerking.
“Sorry,” Lira whispered.
“Don’t… be,” Jorren panted. “It’s… the least horrible that’s felt in months.”
Sella’s eyes filled. “Jor—”
Jorren scowled at her. “Don’t you dare cry,” she snapped. “I’ll ban you from my bed.”
Lira bit back a smile. “I need to… think,” she said. “About… pressure. About… release valves. You have… more power stuck in you than your channels can hold. If we can… bleed it in the right places…”
“You’ll tear me,” Jorren said.
“Maybe,” Lira said honestly. “Or… not. Maybe we can… open new lines. Little ones. To let it… leak. Safely.”
Mara appeared at the curtain, as if summoned by the word *leak.* “I heard that,” she said. “And I’ll say it again: *gently.* No ravine waves indoors. You burn a hole in my infirmary, I’ll tan your hide.”
Lira sighed. “Yes, Mara.”
Mara eyed Jorren. “You regretting coming yet?” she asked.
Jorren snorted. “I regretted everything three months ago,” she said. “This can’t be worse.”
“Famous last words,” Mara muttered.
Lira let go of Jorren’s wrist and stepped back.
Her own emptiness buzzed, but it was… different than the ravine. Less like being scraped raw. More like having brushed against a patch of nettles.
Bram waited just outside the curtain, leaning against the wall, arms crossed. His eyes searched her face.
“Well?” he asked.
“She’s… a knot,” Lira said. “But there are threads that aren’t… completely tangled. If we can tease them out…”
He grimaced. “You’re going to knit people now?” he said.
“Better than unravelling them,” she replied.
He huffed. “You’re exhausted just from that,” he said. “I can smell it.”
“No,” she said immediately.
He arched a brow. “No?”
“No using ‘I can smell it’ as an excuse to treat me like glass,” she said. “That’s a rule now.”
“A terrible rule,” he said. “I reserve my right to sniff out your bullshit.”
“Fine,” she said. “You can call me on lies. But you don’t get to decide what *tired* means for me. Or when it’s worth it.”
He studied her. “You’ll work yourself into the ground,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “I will. That’s… who I am. You knew that when you started… orbiting.”
His mouth twitched. “Orbiting,” he repeated. “I prefer ‘gravitationally bound.’”
She snorted. “Of course you do.”
He sobered. “I’m not trying to… control you,” he said quietly. “I just… watched you fall at that ravine. It… did something to me. To my wolf.”
Her chest tightened. “I know,” she said. “It… did something to me too. But I’m… not planning to repeat that. Not… like that.”
He exhaled. “Promise?”
She hesitated.
“I… promise to warn you,” she said carefully. “If… something like that is coming. So you can… stand with me. Or pull me back. Or… tackle me. Whatever seems… smartest at the time.”
His eyes darkened. “I like the tackling option,” he said.
Heat flared in her cheeks. “You would.”
He grinned, the expression quick and boyish before dropping as he caught Mara’s glower from across the room.
“Go,” she said, jerking her chin at the outer beds. “We’ve got three twisted ankles and a dislocated shoulder waiting for your delicate touch.”
Bram groaned. “You just want to see me get kicked in the face again,” he said.
“Occupational hazard,” Mara replied. “Consider it karma.”
Lira smiled as he went.
Then she looked back toward Jorren’s curtained-off section.
Karma, she thought, was a bitch.
So was the web.
She intended to bite back.
***
The next three days blurred into a pattern of cautious experimentation.
Lira didn’t dive into Jorren’s channels. Not yet. She brushed. Prodded. Learned.
She catalogued where the static screamed loudest and where it merely hissed. She spoke with Jorren, Sella, and eventually Edrin—who sent a blistering letter full of curses and grudging respect—to piece together exactly what spellwork had been attempted.
“You tried to carve new bindings *over* old oaths,” she told Jorren on the second evening, frowning over a chalk drawing on the infirmary floor. “Without first… loosening the old ones.”
“That’s what I said,” Jorren muttered. “Edrin said I was being… sentimental.”
“Edrin’s a genius and an idiot,” Sella said loyally.
Lira shrugged. “Those often go together.”
She tried to explain, in simple terms, what she’d learned from Ashridge’s stones.
“You don’t… overwrite,” she said. “You… negotiate. Offer the land something better to hold than old grudges.”
“Like you told Zev,” Bram said from his perch on the windowsill, where he was supposed to be “resting” but was really eavesdropping.
Lira rolled her eyes. “Yes,” she admitted. “Apparently I have… themes.”
“Telling stubborn wolves to let go of old shit is a good theme,” Mara said.
“We’re not good at it,” Garron grumbled from a nearby cot where he was having his arm stitched.
“Obviously,” Mara said, yanking the thread a little harder than necessary.
Jorren watched all of this, eyes flickering from face to face.
“You’re… different,” she said finally.
“Which one of us?” Lira asked.
“All of you,” Jorren said. “Ashridge. Thornfell. Together. It’s… too loud. But maybe…” She grimaced. “Maybe that’s… good.”
“Loud can drown out worse noise,” Lira said.
She chose a spot to start.
A small bend, relatively speaking. Near Jorren’s left shoulder, where a channel kinked sharply, catching magic like debris against a rock. Every time Jorren moved that arm, the static flared.
“Here,” Lira said, touching lightly above the joint. “This… hurts?”
“Yes,” Jorren hissed.
“Not just muscle,” Lira said. “The magic… catches.”
She thought of Idris’s green vial—the anchor draught. The way it had steadied half-shifts on the brink. The way it might… hold Jorren’s wolf in place if the channels shifted.
“Mara,” she said. “Get the anchor.”
Mara’s eyes narrowed. “You’re sure,” she said. Not a question.
“No,” Lira said. “But… sure enough.”
Mara muttered something unflattering in Old Pack Tongue under her breath but fetched the vial.
Lira turned to Jorren. “We’re going to… try something,” she said. “We’ll give you this. It’ll… ground your wolf. For a short time. While I… push. Just a little. On this bend.”
“You’ll break it,” Jorren said.
“Maybe,” Lira said. “Or… maybe we’ll… un-kink. You won’t… know if you don’t let me try.”
Jorren’s jaw clenched. “And if it goes wrong?” she asked. “If I… twist more. Or… snap.”
Lira swallowed. “Then we… deal with that,” she said quietly. “I’m not going to… lie to you. There is risk. To you. To me. To this room. To this… building.” She smiled grimly. “But if we never test anything, we stay… stuck.”
Jorren closed her eyes for a long moment.
When she opened them, there was a fierce, tired light there.
“I didn’t… volunteer back then to… stop now,” she said. “Do it.”
Sella made a soft sound, somewhere between a sob and a prayer.
Mara uncorked the vial and held it out. “Sip,” she said. “It’s strong.”
Jorren grimaced as the green liquid slid down her throat. “Tastes like… wet dog and regret,” she muttered.
“Accurate,” Mara said. “You’ll feel… heavy. That’s the point.”
Within seconds, Jorren’s breathing slowed. Her lashes fluttered. The buzzing in her channels dimmed just a notch.
Lira could feel it.
“Now,” Mara said softly.
Lira placed her fingers over the spot again.
She didn’t reach with her emptiness this time. Not fully. She reached with… intention.
A light push.
“Breathe,” she whispered. “Into it. Not away.”
Jorren obeyed, chest expanding.
The magic at the kink flared.
The wolf there snarled.
Lira pressed.
Not hard.
Just enough.
The bend straightened.
A fraction.
Jorren gasped.
Sella’s hand flew to her mouth.
The static at that point… softened.
Lira yanked her touch back like she’d been burned.
Jorren slumped, panting.
“Talk to me,” Lira said, heart racing. “Jor?”
Jorren’s eyes opened slowly. They were wet. “It’s…” Her voice shook. “It’s… quieter. There. I can… move.”
She lifted her arm.
Just a little.
Her fingers opened and closed.
No flinch. No grimace.
Sella burst into tears.
Mara exhaled a breath Lira hadn’t realized she’d been holding. “Well, fuck,” she said softly. “You did it.”
Lira’s legs trembled. She sat down hard on the stool by the bed. “That was… tiny,” she said shakily. “We moved… a hair.”
“And I can feel my shoulder without wanting to bite it off,” Jorren said. “I’ll take… tiny.”
Bram’s hand landed on Lira’s shoulder. “You’re shaking,” he murmured.
“I just shifted a channel,” she said. “Not a stone.”
“Both,” he said. “You keep forgetting *people* are stones too.”
Heat pricked behind her eyes. “Don’t get poetic on me,” she muttered.
He squeezed gently. “Too late,” he said.
They did not rush to straighten every bend.
Mara forbade it. Corin backed her. Even Cael’s next letter, when he heard of Jorren’s improvement, urged “restraint” in big underlined letters.
“You tear her wider, I will make you very uncomfortable,” he wrote. “And not in the fun way.”
Lira had snorted at that.
Slow.
It was becoming the refrain of her life.
Slow with magic.
Slow with stones.
Slow with love.
She could live with that.
As long as she *was* living.
---