She was thin and short, so much so that he would have mistaken her for a child if not for the sharpness in her eyes.  Her skin was ghostly pale, with pale green eyes rimmed and weighted with the results of many sleepless nights.

Sionann glared at him imperiously when he hesitated on the threshold, so Roderick stumbled his way in and flinched when she slammed the door closed behind him.

“Lucky for you, burden curses are easy,” she grumbled.

“Wha—?  Burden curse?”

She jerked her chin at Henry.  “You can’t put him down, right?”

“No- um.  Yes?  I can.”  Or he would have if there weren’t so many stacks of so very many things everywhere.  He glanced around, and eventually settled for sliding Henry onto the floor by a small table, half-draped over a dusty churn.  “Henry’s here to…keep an eye on me.”

“The faster you talk, the faster I get you out of here.  There is nothing you can say that’ll surprise me, so get on with it.”

“Well—”  Roderick paused when she turned and walked away, but she waved at him over her shoulder.

“Keep talking, I’m listening.”

So she said, but it was both confusing and shameful to speak on his ailments.  Where to start?  The noxie rummaged in her cabinets and muttered along with a great lot of grumpiness.  Roderick swallowed his nerves and, red to his ears, confessed.

“I- I have…become a werewolf.”

She popped open a tin and gave it a sniff.  “That’s rare.”

“Is it?” he veritably wheezed.  Hers was a blissfully bland reaction after the horror and chaos that had ensued in the capital.

“How’d it come about?”

“I’d rather not—”

“If you want it broken, you’d best be out with it.  Your preferences haven’t a farthing’s worth to do with it.”  She kicked the leg of one misshapen chair.  “Here.  Sit.”

He eased down to the proffered seat and observed as she bustled about.

There were a lot of things he wanted to ask.  Her name and dress both pegged her as one of the nomadic warrior tribes from the north.  Her house was filled with the strangest bits and bobs, many of which he had only ever seen in castles of the honored and titled.  How did one become a nocticary, and how did she go about breaking spells?  Was she a witch?  A shamaness?  And yet not a question one passed his lips.  Sionann repeatedly glanced at him with eyes full of irritation and impatience.

No superfluous conversations would be suffered here.

Mortified, he choked out her answer.

“A lady fancied me…and tried to keep me to herself.  She asked for a spell that would make me atrocious in all other eyes but hers.”

“And she was brilliantly scammed, I suppose, and found herself unable to bear the consequences of her own actions.”

“…Exactly so.”