Page 71 of A Warrior's Fate

Adrien blinked, and Sebastian joined him in observation. She winced as Adrien’s fingers brushed over her skin while her brother said, astonished, “You’re healed.”

“What?” Isla snapped her attention to her side, gazing a few inches below her ribs where the pain was worst. Just as Sebastian had said, the area was smooth, free of any injuries. But she still felt it. Her body battling. Her—

“It still hurts,” she said, brushing her hand over the planes of the skin. “My wolf—it’s—something’s wrong.”

Sebastian was examining the knife again, his jaw tight. “Is it wolfsbane?”

Terror coursed through Isla again.

It would take copious amounts of the poisonous root to kill her, but it could severely hurt her wolf. In archaic practices, it was used to aid those who couldn’t control their shifting, but now, it was outlawed throughout the continent.

Adrien shook his head. “You could smell wolfsbane if it was on something like that. It would mess with her healing too. There would be a scar.”

Sebastian looked away from the weapon. “Then what is it?”

“Maybe you re-aggravated something from the Hunt.”

That wasn’t the answer. Isla knew what that felt like. This was entirely different.

She recalled how Lukas had also recoiled at the blade’s touch, but she wouldn’t speak on it. She wanted them to drop the subject. For now. Just for now.

Sebastian went to sit in the chair meant for a physician, letting out a frustrated sigh. “Did he say anything worthwhile at least? Before he attacked you.”

Isla swallowed. The most meaningful words had come while he was attacking her.

“He said if I killed you, he’d let me out…”

Isla replayed everything that he’d said to her. Everything she’d said to him. Looped over her name said with grit and—disdain.

Had he actually remembered her…or had he just been told who she was? The girl with wheat-gold hair who’d spoken with him at the feast, who’d been with him behind the Wall, who would, without a doubt, try to visit him.

Her blood hummed with a mix of rage and fear.

Whoever had given Lukas these things knew her. Had told him to kill her.

But she found a twisted comfort—she had to, to maintain any even keelness—in the notion that whoever wanted her dead was too much of a coward to do it themselves.

He. Who was he?

The only person who knew—who knew many things she’d been seeking—was Lukas.

It would be horribly idiotic of her to try getting back to him. Hands down, the worst, least thought-out idea she’d ever had—and she’d had many of those. But there was that clearness in his eyes before he’d gone limp. Something had been…different.

“Isla?”

Isla snapped her head up to find Adrien and Sebastian eyeing her expectantly.

“He just said a whole lot of nothing,” she explained. “He doesn’t remember a thing from before the hunter shifted and woods that emerged from the darkness. Not me, not the bak, not the m—” Isla cut herself off before mentioning the marker. “It’s all nothing.”

Isla had told the boys that the marker and the book were hers. Not exactly what they were, but simply describing them as her “things”, saying she’d dropped them when Lukas had jumped her.

They’d accepted the explanation, though with some suspicion—most of all from Adrien—but weren’t as agreeable with her aversion to their plans of turning over the dagger. The proposal had come with the realization that they may have been screwed anyway, with Isla’s scent flooding the room and her blood on the floor. At least something decent could come of their attempt at helping him, and they could figure out what had been on that blade. But Isla wasn’t ready to hand it over. It felt important—all these things did—and she had to keep hold of them.

So, she’d convinced them that she had been able to keep her scent masked and that her blood hadn’t gotten anywhere but on her own person. Never mentioned that Lukas had known her name. And that was enough chance for them.

But she didn’t dispose of the weapon as she’d told them she would.

No, instead, she’d gone back to her room. She’d compartmentalized. Told herself that everything was fine—that Lukas was fine, even though she had no idea what was going on—and washed the blood from the dagger with a rag, careful not to touch the blade’s surface. Then she shoved it, wrapped in one of her shirts, along with the marker and the book to the bottom of her travel bag that had already been packed with her things from her hotel room by Adrien.

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