"What's on your mind, Caz?"
He’s quiet for a moment, considering. “Who were you running from?”
"What are you going on about?" Renee asks with her usual impatient grumble. She lets Ursulette's clothes fall back into place, shielding her skin from the crisp night air. "She wasn’t running from anyone—she was the one doing the chasing. Remember?"
"Shewas,” he admits. “But no one else ran through this way. Just you” The direction of his voice shifts, aimed at Ursulette now instead. “What happened to the people you were chasing? And who or what are you running from."
The thought is almost too absurd to think about. Never since meeting any of them have I known Ursulette to run from a fight. I'm not even sure what sort of creature it would take to make her flee. I once saw her stand up to Harland and both of his brothers when they were teasing Rhain for being so boyishly-figured. She fought all three of them until she was a bloodied pulp and refused to let anyone else come to her aid until all three of the brothers forfeited the match. Which they did.
But her silence says it’s not so farfetched of an idea as I think it is.
"What were you running from?" I ask her again, a cool breeze wafting over my skin and making it prick with anticipation. Perhaps fear.
Ursulette turns away. For a long moment, she doesn't answer, the words too difficult to surmise.
"It was that girl,” she says at last, like she has to wrestle every word from her mouth. “The one we caught in Gravenburg."
Charlotte…
My heart leaps in my chest. Suddenly I feel like I’ve just tumbled over the ledge of a rocky cliff overhanging the ocean.
"What about the girl?" I ask, trying to maintain my composure and grateful that no one can see my face. "What happened?"
I always pegged her for a fighter, but I can’t imagine what she could’ve done to frighten away Ursulette.
My cousin hugs herself, rubbing her arms for comfort. "She...she let me bite her."
No worse report could’ve been given…
Bitten.
Condemned.
As good as dead.
My chest becomes as cold and tumultuous as the ocean, my heart bruised and broken.
I knew this would happen. I knew that it was the only possible outcome for her once she entered these woods. And yet…I’d hoped there could be another ending for her, one that didn’t end with her dead or worse, wandering the forest as a ghoul.
"What do you mean sheletyou?" Caz clarifies.
It’s not until then that I, too, notice the odd choice of words.
No human would justleta noctis bite them. It would mean their imminent death.
Even the ones in my employ don’t allow my fangs near them—and I wouldn’t want them to. I have no interest in creating ghouls and further depleting our dwindling source of food by unleashing a ravenous, unstoppable creature upon the realm.
Ursulette's mouth hangs agape. "I…I mean just that. I think she let me bite her. She could’ve stopped me or fought it, but she just stood there. And she didn't… She tasted wrong."
Hope sparks in my heart like cinders to dry logs. It hasn't always been that humans turned to ghouls when they were bitten. Some of them had a different fate. Some of them became noctis.
"You think she has druid blood?" I ask, maybe too eagerly considering the side-eye I feel emitting from Renee. "She's becoming a noctis?"
I don't care who judges me though, especially not Renee.If Charlotte is a noctis, then there's no longer anything weird about the connection I feel toward her anyway.
But Ursulette snuffs out all vestiges of hope I had left.
"No.” My tortured heart erupts so violently that I almost can’t hear her. "No, not druid blood."
