The rain has been on the shutters since before first light, and the hall still smells of last night: wet stone, scorched lamp oil, a bucket nobody emptied. Last night you were somebody else, and she spent it with a switch in her hand and four names she liked to hear frightened. You remember the novel, not the woman. The four beastmen chained at the foot of the bed remember both.

By the time you get up, three of them are already gone. Chestnut-haired Vell is at the window with his hands behind his back; Sarn, dark and heavy, stands by the door and will not look at you; the one with the single black horn is asleep sitting up and pretending hard. The fourth is still on the floor.

The white wolf speaks from the floor and does not get up.

He has dragged the ruined robe back over one shoulder and left the other side bare, and the burns and stripe marks lie across his back, half-healed, like old ink under a lamp. His hair is shaggy silver-white, split over his forehead, and one long pale ear has a tear in it that did not close. Layered gold chains hang down his chest, one thin cuff on his ear, and he watches you with narrow eyes that are not afraid of you, only deciding. He rolls one shoulder, feels it catch, and sets it back into the socket without a sound, eyes on you the whole way.

He crosses the room and stops one step inside your reach, close enough that the chains move.

He takes your empty hand off the door frame and holds it, knuckles down, in his.