Chapter 108: Somewhere Safe

Kaela froze with both arms inside the cabinet. She whipped her head around toward him, her silver eyes wide and bright with panic, before turning back to tear through the fallen pile of blankets.

"Master," Kōya said, keeping his voice low and level, "tell me its shape. I’ll help you turn the room over."

She raked her hand through the top drawer a second time, knocking a small wooden object over the front lip. It bounced off the cabinet molding and clattered across the floorboards to tap against Kōya’s kneecap.

Kaela flinched as if a blade had grazed her cheek.

Kōya stayed still for two heartbeats before reaching down to pick the object out of the dust.

It was a three-inch figure whittled from soft pine. Years of thumb-rubbing had polished the snout smooth, though the craftsmanship was clumsy: the left ear stood higher than the right, the bushy tail was thick enough to throw the balance off so the carving leaned sideways, and the back left leg had snapped off at some point and been painstakingly splinted with a sliver of birch bark and waxed thread. A child’s carving of a little fox, kept long after the knife-slips had faded.

Kōya held the wooden fox out on his open palm.

Kaela stared at the splinted leg. Her right hand lifted three inches off the floor, trembled in the gap between them, and snatched itself back against her chest.

His master flinching away from a three-inch piece of pine twisted something cold behind Kōya’s ribs. He set the carved fox gently on the flat top of the cabinet where she could reach it on her own terms and backed away a step.

Kaela scrambled to her feet and tore into the rest of the room.

She yanked open the pantry cupboard beside the cold fireplace, shoving stoneware crocks aside with a loud clatter and lifting the iron kettle to peer into the soot beneath the trivet. Finding only cold stone, she lurched across the room to the row of cedar storage chests lined up beneath the casement window.

Her movements lost all coordination, her bruised hands slamming lids back against the wainscoting and dumping bundles of dried herbs and spare leather straps across the floor.

"Kaela," Lyra said softly from the end of the table.

Kaela’s attention stayed on the chests. She wrenched the lid off a third chest, found it empty, and flung the wooden cover sideways across the planks before clawing at the iron clasp of the fourth.

Kōya took a step toward the window to catch her wrists before she tore her scabs open, only for Lyra to raise her right hand at chest height.

Wait.

Lyra’s mouth was tight with worry, her eyes fixed on the beastwoman’s heaving shoulders, yet she gave Kōya a small shake of her head. Kōya halted beside the table chair.

Walking slowly around the spilled herbs so her boots wouldn’t crunch them, Lyra stopped four paces from the window chests, leaving Kaela a clear path to the door. "Can you remember the last place you held it?"

Kaela’s hands froze on the fourth iron clasp.

Beyond the cedar walls, the waterfall kept up its endless bass roar, vibrating in the window glass. Kaela squeezed her eyes shut, her brow furrowing deep as her dry lips formed silent shapes.

Her eyes snapped open. Her eyes darted across the room in jagged stops—table, antler rack, cold hearth, open cabinet—before shaking her head hard enough to whip her tangled silver hair across her cheeks.

With a guttural sound, she shoved the empty cedar box off the bench. The chest smashed into the log wall and rolled onto its side in the dust.

Kaela stayed on her knees beside the wreckage, her shoulders shaking.

Kōya stepped forward. "It’s all right, Master."

Kaela’s head whipped around. The fury in her silver eyes stopped his boot mid-stride, aimed entirely inward at the blank wall inside her own skull where a life used to sit.

Her mouth worked. "I..." The syllable cracked in half. She clapped both scarred palms over her temples, digging her fingers into her hair. "I can’t..."

Her chest heaved in ragged, hitching pulls. Kōya dropped to one knee on the floorboards, resting his open palms on his thighs, making his hands plain. "You don’t have to explain it right now."

Kaela shook her head fiercely, dropping one hand to jab a trembling finger toward the pine shelves, then the open cabinet, then the oak table. "It was here," she rasped, her voice rusted and thin from weeks of silence. "I know it was here."

"I believe you."

"I put it..." She swallowed hard, her throat clicking beneath the dark slave mark. "I put it somewhere safe."

"I believe you, Master."

Her face contorted, shame washing over the fury as she turned her face away toward the floorboards. The slavers’ collars and cages hadn’t taken everything; whatever she had hidden in this house before her capture was the one piece she had kept out of their hands, and now her own fractured mind was locking her out of it.

Kōya wanted to swear to her that they would pry up every floorboard before noon until it turned up. With too many promises turned to ash in the borderlands, he kept his mouth shut and stayed kneeling on the planks beside her.

Lyra crouched down on Kaela’s other side, keeping two feet of breathing space between them. "Would you like me to check the back room for you?"

Kaela turned her face toward her. The rigid line of her jaw softened a fraction, acknowledging the offer even as her pride struggled with the helplessness. Slowly, she lifted her chin and pointed toward the narrow interior doorway beside the practice sword rack.

Lyra nodded once. "I’ll search carefully. I won’t move anything out of place."

Pushing herself up, Lyra walked past the antler rack into the back bedroom.

The rear chamber was scarcely eight feet wide, carved partly into the living basalt of the cliff face. A low rope-strung bed frame sat against the timber wall opposite a thick pine clothes-press and a narrow slit window facing the damp fern-wall behind the falls.

Moving with light, careful hands, Lyra checked the shelf inside the press and knelt to search beneath the bedstead.

Folded grey wool blankets, a cracked ceramic washbasin, and a rolled bundle of stained linen hand-wraps lay undisturbed under a coat of fine grey dust.

Nothing small or hidden sat among the linens.