Reflected
Page 28
Felicia only realized the big weakness of her father’s idea when they got to the pack’s hunting lands. “If I’m demonstrating how to defend, someone needs to attack me with the whip,” she called after her father, who was striding off up the vehicle track to the gathering in the cleared space behind the gate where people usually parked. Her father had had everyone pull off along the driveway this time. The ground was moist, but it hadn’t been raining hard enough in the past week to make everything into a mud puddle. The sunlight was fading fast, but the light pollution was confined to the horizon, so werewolf eyes could adjust properly.
“I’m rusty, but I’m sure I can manage. I reached the level of not embarrassing myself, when I was there.” Her father planted himself and held out his hand for the whip. Felicia had been keeping it minimized, coiled tightly down by her hip, almost behind her back. The pack fidgeted and a few whispers started at sight of it out in the open, but her father ignored their reactions, and she tried to do the same as she handed it over.
“Okay.” Felicia blew out a breath and stepped away from her father. “As a werewolf, the basic strategy to counter someone with a whip is to sacrifice a little arm skin to get a grip on the weapon. It’ll heal fast enough, after all. Then you either pull it away, or use it as a handle to pull your opponent closer.” She had no idea how she was supposed to teach people who were nearly all older than her, but she tried to channel her father’s tone when he was instructing people. It seemed to at least mostly work. Several of the pack members stopped glowering off in random directions like they were imagining their escape and started watching her.
Her father took a few practice flicks well to either side of her, and then nodded. She watched him, and as the lash fell, she held up her arm so the tip wrapped around several times. She hissed with the pain. She was badly out of practice, if that little graze threw her off.
She hadn’t lost her skills entirely yet, though. She clamped over the whip’s tip with her free hand and yanked. A little blood oozed up, but not enough to even threaten her grip. Her father let the whip go without much resistance, probably to help her better demonstrate the principle. “See? Simple.”
Felicia would have never admitted it to him, but the physicality of the task did help her in a way the endless talking to humans at the bank hadn’t. She began to feel a more satisfying fatigue as she either swung the whip for others to catch, or caught it to sneak in a few pointers for how to swing once they’d gotten the whip away.
The routine of it came back to her, the rhythm, and Felicia let her world narrow to her target. She needed to aim her strokes so that even if her current opponent, Pierce, didn’t catch it right, he wouldn’t be badly hurt.
Then the wind changed and brought her Tom’s scent. She started, sure she was imagining it, but there he was: lanky, light hair more shaggy than ever, and his expression wavering on the edge of an easy, good-natured smile. That was the Tom she remembered from before, perpetually smiling or ready to smile.
Surprise made her screw up the next stroke, though fortunately Pierce had already stepped back, knowing when to fade into the background. On the backstroke, the whip kissed her cheek. The scratch healed as easily as any of the others, and she scrubbed away the blood with the heel of her hand. It seemed almost fair that Tom should cause her to take a few extra licks or get in a few of his own. She offered out the whip. “Did you want to practice too?”
“Felicia, no.” Tom flinched from the whip and only took it to toss it aside. His smile disappeared, but he smelled concerned, and maybe frustrated, not angry. Not betrayed. Felicia groped after all the words she’d planned over the past few months, but she couldn’t find a single one. “I don’t want to risk hurting you.”
“I hurt you,” Felicia said, soft.
Tom pressed his lips together and looked out into the trees, though they’d been making enough racket no animals or birds were hanging around to be seen in them. “You made me very angry. I’m not an angry person, and I don’t want to become one, and I’ve sort of … found my way back to that, these past few months.”
Felicia nodded, completely at a loss. That was true. Another thing to blame herself for. But how would an apology for that be better than any of her others?
Tom licked his thumb and swiped the rest of the blood off her cheek. “We can’t—I don’t want us to have that kind of accounting. You hurt me, I hurt you. It’s unhealthy. You have to do everything in your power not to hurt each other, and figure it’ll happen anyway sometimes, no matter what you do.”
Tom ran out of steam and looked down at his hands before starting again somewhere else. “I’ve actually been in town for a little while, but I didn’t want to ambush you at work or at the house, and you haven’t gone anywhere else.” He laughed awkwardly. “Roanoke Silver told me she thought your father had something planned that would bring you out here, though.” He took a deep breath. “I talked to the Roanokes about other stuff too. They told me why you did what you did.” He eyed her from under his bangs. “That was prey-stupid, you know.”
Felicia laughed, hysteria threading through it. “I know.” Tom slipped his arms around her, and she held tight, tight as she could. “You said ‘we.’ And ‘us.’ What about my father’s orders?”
“There’s a time to fight the tide and a time to swim with the current.” Felicia’s father wandered up, and she flushed, suddenly acutely aware of the pack around them. No one was looking, but not-looking was its own kind of pressure. “Don’t be any more stupid than you can possibly avoid. Either of you.” His tone was firm, but humor lurked somewhere underneath. He walked off before Felicia could pin it down.
“So we can. If you want to try fresh.” Tom pulled back far enough to look at her but didn’t let go. “No accounting.”
“I swear on the Lady.” Felicia freed a hand to press her thumb to her forehead.
Tom laced his fingers with hers and tugged them toward the trees, away from the bulk of the gathered pack. “We could go run, or something.” His grin at her was vintage Tom, but the assurance with which he pulled her along was something new. “Personally, I’m in favor of ‘or something.’” He waggled his eyebrows.
Felicia followed before he could change his mind. Silver was right: she didn’t deserve this second chance, but it was a gift she wasn’t going to refuse. A laugh bubbled up. “Sounds good to me.”
TOR BOOKS BY RHIANNON HELD
Silver
Tarnished
Reflected
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
RHIANNON HELD is the author of Silver and its sequel, Tarnished. In her day job, she works as a professional archaeologist. “Unfortunately, given that it’s real rather than fictional archaeology, fedoras, bullwhips, aliens, and dinosaurs are in short supply. Most of my work is done on the computer, using databases to organize data.” Held lives near Seattle, Washington.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
REFLECTED
Copyright © 2014 by Rhiannon Held
All rights reserved.
Cover photographs by Getty Images
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor-forge.com
Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Held, Rhiannon.
Reflected / Rhiannon Held.—1st. ed.
p. cm.
“A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN 978-0-7653-3039-0 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-4299-9114-8 (e-book)
1. Werewolves—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3608.E3853H45 2014
813'.6—dc23
2013025946
e-ISBN 9781429991148
First Edition: Febr
uary 2014