Chapter 132: Ronan's Apology

We came up the keeper's stair at midnight with the box in my coat and the paper inside it and Ronan walking beside me on his own two feet.

He walked slowly. He had been stabbed twice in the same shoulder in a fortnight and he had been in a pool of black water for an hour and he was not a well wolf. But he walked, and he did not lean on me, and when we came out into the corridor at the top of the stair he stopped and put his hand on the wall and stood there for a moment with his eyes shut and his breath going in and out of him.

"Ronan."

"I am all right."

"You are not."

"I am all right." He opened his eyes. "Fiadh. The bond is quiet."

I put my hand on my chest.

It was. The pull that had been between us since the bothy was still there and the silver mark was still bright and the wolf in my head was still there. But the thing at the bottom of my chest that had been cold for a month was gone and there was nothing in its place but warmth.

"It is quiet," I said.

"It is quiet and it is warm." He looked at me. "I have not felt it warm since the Council chamber in the south."

Ilsa came up the stair behind us with her shawl round her shoulders and her white hair coming down out of its pins.

"Luna," she said. "The elders are in the chamber. They have been waiting since dusk."

"Let them wait a little longer."

"Healer."

"Elder. I have been in a pool of black water for an hour and my mate has been stabbed twice and I have a letter in my coat that my mother wrote before she died." I looked at her. "I am going to sit down on a step with my mate for ten minutes and then I am going to come into that chamber and finish it."

Ilsa looked at me for a long moment.

"Ten minutes," she said, and went up the stair.

We sat down on the top step of the keeper's stair with our backs against the wall and the lamp on the floor beside us and the cold coming up out of the dark below.

Ronan was quiet for a while.

"Fiadh," he said at last.

"Hm."

"There is a thing I have to say and I have been carrying it since the trial."

"Say it."

"I doubted you." He looked at the wall opposite. "In the hall, when Ailsa stood up and said your mother was born in the keepers' house. I felt the door shut and I could not stop it and I stood on the cliff and I told you it was not your fault and it was, and it was not." He turned his head. "It was my fault. I have been lied to by every wolf on this coast and I have been frightened since the spring and when a thing came up that did not fit I pulled away."

I sat on the step with my hands in my lap.

"I know," I said.

"You do not have to forgive me."

"I know that too." I looked at him. "Ronan. I have been alone for ten years and I have been lied to and I have been cheated and I have been run out of nine packs. And when you pulled away on that cliff I felt it through the bond and it was the worst thing that has happened to me since my mother died."

Ronan did not say anything.

"And I have been angry about it for a month," I said. "And I have been carrying it and I have been adding to it every time you did a thing I did not like. And tonight I stood in a pool of black water and held the bond with everything I had and the water pulled at it and tried to take it and I did not let go."

"Fiadh."

"You did not let go either." I looked at him. "You were stabbed in the shoulder for me. Twice. The first time in the hall you took a blade meant for me and the second time in the chamber you took a knife meant for me and you went down both times and you did not once say, why is it always me."

Ronan looked at me.

"That is what I have been trying to say," he said. "I have been trying to say it since the cliff and I have not had the words."

I put my hand on his face.

"I forgive you," I said.

And through the bond, in the back of my head, his shame came up so clearly that I could feel it in my own chest. It was the shame of a wolf who had been an Alpha for eleven years and had pulled away from his mate in a hall in front of forty wolves. It was the shame of a wolf who had voted with the law and watched silver go on a wrist. It was the shame of a wolf who had spent a month telling himself he had done the right thing and had known, in the dark, that he had not.

"Ronan," I said. "Stop."

"I cannot stop. It is in the bond."

"I know it is in the bond. That is the whole point of the bond." I put my forehead against his. "You do not have to carry it alone any more. That is what the bond is for. It is for carrying a thing between two wolves so that neither of them has to carry it on their own."

Ronan put his hand on the back of my neck.

"Then help me carry it," he said.

"I will."

We sat on the step for a while. The lamp burned low and the cold came up out of the dark below and neither of us said anything at all.

"Fiadh," he said at last.

"What?"

"The box in your coat. The one that fell out of the blanket."

"It is in my coat."

"And the paper inside it."

"It is my mother's hand and it says the debt was not for money and the debt was for me." I put my hand on his. "I have not read the rest of it and I am not going to read the rest of it on a step in a stairwell in the northern seat at midnight. I am going to read it when I am sitting down in a room with a fire and a cup of tea and a door I can shut."

Ronan looked at me.

"That is the most sensible thing anyone has said all night," he said.

And then the door at the top of the corridor opened and Colm came through it at a run.

"Luna," he said. "The elders are in the chamber and the keeper Eamon has been talking for an hour and the hall is full and there is a thing on the table that nobody will look at."

"What thing?"

Colm looked at me.

"It is a list," he said. "It is a list of nineteen names and every one of them is a child and there is a wolf standing in the chamber who says she is one of them."

I got up.

"Then we had better go and see her," I said.

And down in the town, the bell began to ring.