Chapter 7: The Hall With No Windows

SERAPHINA

They put me in the middle of the Pack Council Hall, where the floor was cold through my shoes and the ceiling was so high that my own breathing came back to me small.

There were no windows in that hall, only torches in iron brackets and rows of old stone benches, and every bench was full. Wolves I had passed in corridors for eleven years sat shoulder to shoulder, and not one of them looked away when I looked at them, which told me they had already decided.

Alpha Corvin sat in the dark chair at the front with his hands on the arms of it. My mother sat at his right in her gold gown, her spine straight, her hands folded so tightly that the knuckles had gone white and bloodless.

"Seraphina Dale." Elder Orson's cane cracked against the stone. "You stand accused of stealing the moonstone of Lysandra Arkwright, late Luna of Moonridge, a sacred heirloom of the Alpha bloodline. How do you answer?"

"I did not steal it."

"It was found concealed in your belongings."

"It was found in my belongings because it belongs to me."

A noise went around the benches, half gasp, half laugh.

"Explain."

"Alaric gave it to me yesterday afternoon, as a graduation gift."

"Alaric Arkwright," Orson said, "is currently at the Council, representing this pack at a border meeting, and he is not here to confirm your story."

"Then send for him."

"The border cannot wait on a girl's convenience."

"It is not a story, it is four days of patience, that is all I am asking for."

"Four days," Damon said from the front bench, "in which the pack must sit with the knowledge that its Luna's stone was taken from a locked vault."

"It was not taken from any vault."

"Then the heir is a liar, or Miss Vance is." He spread his hands. "Which would you prefer we conclude?"

Isadora stood up. Her white gown was creased from the ball, and she had washed her face, and it had not helped. She would not look at me, not at my eyes, not at my hands, not at any part of me.

"Elder," she said. "I saw the stone in its case in the vault last week, with my own eyes, and this morning it is not there."

"Thank you, Miss Vance."

"That is all I saw." Her voice thinned. "I said only that."

"Isadora." My voice came out cracked. "Look at me."

"Silence," Orson said.

"Look at me and say it again."

"Silence, or you will be gagged."

She sat down. Her hands were shaking in her lap, and I watched them shake, and I understood that she was not going to help me and she was not going to lie further either, and that halfway place was the most useless place a person could stand.

Damon rose and bowed to the Alpha's chair.

"May I address the hall?"

"Speak," Corvin said. It was the first word he had said, and it was flat as a stone.

"I wish to say something in the accused's favour."

The hall rustled.

"How kind," I said.

"It may even be true that my cousin handed her this stone in some soft moment, out of pity, out of old habit, out of whatever it is he feels when he looks at her." Damon turned slowly so that every bench could see his face. "But a gift is given openly, before witnesses, in daylight. A gift is announced at dinner. A gift is not hidden under a scarf and buried in a book."

"I have explained the scarf."

"You have explained that your mother gave it to you, yes, and that is curious in itself." He let that sit for exactly as long as it needed to. "But let us say I believe you, and the heir did hand you a Luna's stone. Then the question for this hall becomes very simple, and very ugly. Why?"

My stomach turned over.

"Why would the future Alpha of Moonridge give the sacred stone of his mother, the stone that only ever sat on a Luna's throat, to a wolfless girl who is leaving the pack this week?"

"Because he is kind."

"Kindness is a scarf, Seraphina, not an heirloom."

"Where is this going, nephew?" Corvin asked.

"To the north tower, Uncle." Damon's voice was gentle, almost sorry. "Two guards on the north landing smelled rain and wildflowers at dawn. The heir's door was shut from before midnight. A woman was inside with him through the whole of the full moon. And Miss Vance, whom all of you expected to be in that room, spent the night in the ballroom and then alone in the east wing, weeping."

The hall did not gasp. It hissed, low and long, like water hitting a hot pan.

"Damon," Isadora said sharply.

"I am only laying out what was observed."

"That is enough," Corvin said.

"It is not nearly enough, Uncle, but I will stop here, out of respect for your son." Damon turned his pale green eyes on me, and they were patient, and almost warm. "The accused may of course call the heir as her witness. I withdraw every objection to sending for him. Let him come. Let him stand in this hall in front of every elder of every allied pack and explain what he gave her, and when, and why, and what happened in his room between midnight and dawn."

And there it was, laid on the floor between us like a snare with the jaws open.

If I said Alaric's name, Damon would say the rest. He would say it to the Council, where Alaric was at that exact hour standing up to speak for Moonridge, and it would follow him for the rest of his life: the heir who drank at his own ball, lost his senses, and took his stepsister to bed while his promised Luna waited downstairs.

They would not blame him. They never blame the Alpha's son.

They would blame the wolfless girl who had come up the mountain with her mother's suitcase, and they would say she had climbed into his bed to buy herself a title, and some of it would even be true, and I would have to stand in this hall and listen while they said it.

"Does the accused call her witness?" Orson asked.

I looked at my mother. She was staring at a crack in the floor.

"Does the accused call the heir?"

"Seraphina," Corvin said, and for one moment his voice sounded almost human. "One more time, and think before you answer. Who gave you the stone?"

Damon's eyes rested on me, bright and steady, waiting.

"Nobody," I whispered.

"Louder, child," said Orson.

"Nobody gave it to me."

"Then you took it."

"I have nothing else to say."

Orson's cane cracked on the stone, and the sound went through my ribs like a blade going in sideways.