“If the power’s out, the water is too.” The farm drew its water supply from a well with an electric pump. “We can’t use the reserves just to wash me.”

“We need to clean this mud off your cuts. They’ll have the lights back on soon, you’ll see. We’ll sit you on the toilet and I’ll fetch enough water for you to wash.”

He let her lean on his shoulders to the bathroom, but she didn’t like how labored his breathing sounded. She said, “You should rest.”

“With the farm in a shambles? Connor and Jim’ll already be wondering what’s taking me so long. Oi, is that water in the tub?”

It was. Together, Hæra and Jonathan looked at it in confusion.

“Madeleine must have filled it,” Hæra said. “Why?”

Jonathan made a sound of comprehension. “To save water in case the power goes out. Which it did. Clever lass, except she ran off in the rain.”

Hæra groaned as she stepped into the tub. Cool water sloshed against her calves. “I have to find her. I have to explain.”

“Not until you’ve got some strength back.” He set the lantern by the wall; shadows draped the corners of the room. “You look done in.”

“That doesn’t matter.” Even as she said it, she swayed. She remembered their first real conversation, out by the fence on the night Madeleine had come to dinner. She’d been rude and had to say sorry afterward. This seemed like occasion for greater regret. “I need to apologize.”

“Only to her?”

The quiet reproof, the pain in his voice, would have felled her if she hadn’t already been sent sprawling.

Hæra lowered herself into the tub, groaning with the strain in her muscles and the burn in her wrist. She almost slipped, and she dropped the ice bag so she could catch herself on the lip of the tub with her right hand. It thumped wetly on the tile floor, and a few cubes shattered. She sat in the water, hissing at the sting in her cuts. Dried mud softened and flaked off her skin, while blood began to turn the water a cloudy red.

“I lied to you,” she said, with difficulty. “For so long. Longer than he did. That makes me worse.”

Jonathan gave her a washcloth, lowered the toilet lid, and sat on it. After a moment, he said, “What the hell did you mean to do, exactly?”

As she dragged the washcloth over her stinging cuts, Hæra spoke her plan aloud to another for the first time. She explained her yearning to grow wings, her desire to avoid the breeding cycle, her belief in her own destiny. To be the first female Stormhorse. To escape the sea and storm the skies. And how devouring a worthy human was the only way to do it.

“And Madeleine, your Sister Madeleine, was worthy?” Jonathan asked.