Chapter 17
She stood there a long moment after he disappeared around the corner, staring down at her closed hand, heart still hammering unevenly in her chest.
She did not open her fingers to look at it properly until she was back in the privacy of the storage room that night, sitting on the edge of her cot with the door shut firmly behind her. The token was small, easily hidden in a closed fist, carved with a symbol she did not recognize, something like a wolf's head circled by a ring of stars. It was well made, clearly not something cheaply produced, the kind of object that likely carried weight wherever he came from.
She turned it over in her fingers, studying it in the low light, unsure what to make of it. She had denied him plainly, twice, and yet he had left this with her anyway, s
