Chapter 104: The Silver Verdict

The cold in the stone spread up my arm and into my chest and I put my hand in my pocket and closed my fingers round it.

Ilsa was still speaking.

"The Council has heard the charge and dismissed it," she said. "But the Council has also heard a thing it cannot dismiss. There is a claim of the founder's bloodline standing in this hall and it has been stood on by a keeper and withdrawn by a keeper in the space of three days. That is not a thing a Council can leave open. Until the claim is tested before a full Council with the keepers present, the healer will be marked and she will be removed from this territory."

The hall went up.

Ilsa struck the table.

"The mark is a formality," she said. "It is the old law for a claim that is in dispute. It does not say she is guilty. It says she is unproven. And an unproven claimant cannot hold a seat in a pack."

"Elder," I said. "You are putting a silver mark on my skin and sending me out of my own house."

"I am putting a silver mark on your skin and sending you north to answer the claim," Ilsa said. "That is what the law says and I will not bend it, because if I bend it for you Soren's wolves will say the Council bent it for a founder and the whole of it falls apart." She looked at me. "It is fourteen days. Go north and come back with the proof and the mark comes off."

The hall was silent.

"Who votes?" I said.

"The elders vote. And the Alpha votes, because the mark is on his territory and the old law says the Alpha must consent." Ilsa looked at the four elders. "Elders. All in favour?"

"Aye," said Rannoch.

"Aye," said the grey wolf with the broken nose.

"Aye," said the woman with the short dark hair.

Ilsa looked at the fifth chair.

"Aye," she said.

"Alpha," Ilsa said. "How do you vote?"

The hall turned round.

Ronan was standing at the side of the hall with his arms folded.

He had not spoken since the trial began. He had stood there through Lorcan's forged papers and Nessa's testimony and the elders going out and coming back, and he had not said a word.

"Ronan," I said.

He looked at me.

And then he looked at Ilsa.

"Aye," he said.

The hall went silent.

The silence went on for a long time. It was not the silence of wolves who are waiting to hear something. It was the silence of wolves who have just heard something and cannot believe it.

"Alpha," Ilsa said. "You vote with the majority."

"I vote with the law," Ronan said.

I stood in the middle of the floor of my own hall and looked at him.

"Fiadh," he said. "It is fourteen days."

"It is fourteen days and a silver mark and an exile from my own territory and you voted for it." My voice did not sound like mine. "You stood there and you looked at me and you said aye."

"The law says the Alpha must consent. If I had voted against it they would have said the Alpha of the Blackthorn Pack broke the law to keep a founder wolf in his own house and the whole verdict would have been thrown out in the north." He came forward. "Fiadh. I voted with the law so that the verdict stands and the claim can be tested."

"You voted to put a silver mark on me."

"I voted to keep the verdict and the claim and the trial alive." His voice had gone rough. "If I had voted against it we would have won the night and lost the north."

I looked at him.

"Then you should have told me," I said. "You should have said a word to me before you did it."

"I did not know what I was going to do until she asked."

The hall was silent.

Ilsa stood up.

"The mark will be put on at dawn," she said. "The healer will leave this territory by noon."

She went out. The four elders went out after her. The hall began to empty.

Ronan stood in the middle of it with his arms at his sides.

"Fiadh," he said.

"Not now."

"Fiadh."

"Not now, Ronan." I turned round. "I have been marked and exiled and voted out of my own house by my own mate in front of the whole of the coast and I have fourteen days to find a keeper and a record and a proof that does not exist. I do not have anything left to say to you tonight."

I went up the stairs.

He did not follow me.

I sat on the bed in my room with the stone in my pocket and the notebook on my knee and I did not cry. I sat there and I looked at the wall and I worked out what I had and what I needed.

I had a stone with a false bond in it that was getting colder. I had a notebook with three names in it and one of them was Ravenscar. I had a letter from my mother that said the proof was in the keepers' house and the keepers' house was not in the north. I had a pack that had voted me out and a mate who had voted with the majority and a silver mark coming at dawn.

And I had fourteen days.

The door opened.

Ronan came in and shut it behind him and stood with his back to it.

"I know you do not want to talk to me," he said. "I am not here to talk."

"What are you here for?"

He crossed the room and put his hands on my face.

"I am here because you are leaving at noon and I do not know if I will see you again," he said. "And I am not going to spend the last night in the same house as my mate sitting on the other side of a door."