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“Head wounds are dramatic.”

“Your ankle?”

I try to move it. Pain shoots up my leg hard enough to make me gag. “Sprained.”

“You don’t know that. It could be broken,” Ezra says.

“No bones sticking out.”

“I don’t know that that counts as a thorough diagnosis.”

Behind Theo, the Saint groans.

The fog thickens around the trees. The bell rings. Once. Then again from a different direction.

The route ahead flickers into view. A line of cypress knees curves along the old channel. White flowers glow through the fog farther ahead. The open circle waits somewhere beyond them.

Ezra slides one arm beneath my shoulders. “We’re stopping.”

“No.”

“Pepper.”

“I can move,” I say.

“You just fell down a hill and tried to diagnose yourself based on the absence of visible bone.”

“I’ve used worse rubrics.”

His face crumples.

Rose’s old warning of the Everlasting Pack flashes through my mind. Susannah falters. Her alpha thinks she is falling and her beta calls. The walker turns because the people she loves are afraid.

My chest tightens. Fears says going to them is the only possible choice we can make out of love. The curse waits for us to confuse panic with devotion.

I catch Ezra’s jacket. “This is the part that broke them.”

He freezes.

Theo’s eyes lock onto mine across the marker.

I force myself upright. The world tilts.

Ezra catches me before I fall again. My ankle can’t hold my full weight. I lean against him until the dizziness passes.

“You’re hurt,” Ezra says.

“Yes.”

“I can’t walk away from you like this.”

“You’re not walking away from me.”

“That is exactly what the instructions say,” he says.

“You’re walking toward yourself.”

His breath catches. I pull the release stone from the inner pocket against my chest. The flat gray surface is warm.