Chapter 142: The Seventh Love Scene

I did not go down the stair.

I went down the cellar stair with the priestess and Oisin and left the keeper on the top of the house stair with his knife and the four Council wolves behind him, and we got the kitchen door open and the seven children out into the lane and up the hill toward the northern seat.

We got them to the northern seat at midnight.

And the siege of the house of the north ended in the way sieges end when the wolf who laid it finds out that there is nothing left inside.

Callum had held the square for six hours and Callum had held the market and Callum had held the harbour and then Ilsa had come out of the northern seat with a Council writ in her hand and forty Council wolves behind her and had read it out in the square. And the writ said that the steward's appointment was void and that the Ravenscar claim on the Blackthorn territory was dismissed and that the lord of Ravenscar was to lay down his arms and answer before the Council.

He had laid down his arms.

He had done it because there was nothing left to hold and because the writ had the seal on it and because the forty wolves behind Ilsa were not the twenty he had brought from the coast.

I got to the northern seat at midnight with the seven children and the woman in the bed and I found Ronan in the corridor outside the chamber with blood on his shirt that was not his.

"Fiadh," he said.

"Ronan."

He crossed the corridor and put his arms round me and held on.

I held on.

"Your shoulder," I said.

"It is not my blood."

"The children?"

"Safe. In the room at the top of the east stair with Nessa and two guards." He put his face in my hair. "The woman?"

"She is called Ailsa and she is not my grandmother and she has been in that room for sixty years because she knew what the house was for." I put my hands on his chest. "Ronan. My grandmother died in that house forty years ago and she is buried under the floor of the cellar."

Ronan did not say anything.

"I have to go back," I said. "I have to get her out of that cellar and put her somewhere with a stone."

"Tomorrow," he said.

"Ronan."

"Tomorrow." He put his hands on my face. "Fiadh. There are seven children asleep in this building and a woman in a bed who has not spoken in sixty years and a lord of Ravenscar in a room under guard and a Council that has been in an uproar for a fortnight. And you have been in a passage under a hill and a cellar and a house with twenty wolves on the stair." He looked at me. "Tomorrow. Tonight you sleep."

I looked at him.

"Where?" I said.

"Here." He took my hand. "There is a room at the top of the west stair and it has a door that shuts and a fire and a bed."

We went up.

The room was small and it was not the room at the top of the east stair. It had a bed and a chair and a fire that had been lit an hour before and a window that looked out over the square.

Ronan shut the door.

And then he turned round and crossed the room and kissed me.

It was not a gentle kiss. It was the kiss of a wolf who had been in a square with forty Ravenscar wolves and had not known whether his mate was alive, and it was not careful and it was not slow and I did not want it to be.

"Ronan," I said against his mouth.

"What?"

"I thought he had you."

"He did not have me." He got his hand into my hair. "He had the square and the market and the harbour and he did not have me. And he did not have you."

"He said he had you."

"He was lying." He pulled back and looked at me. "Fiadh. He was lying and you knew he was lying and you went down the cellar stair anyway and got seven children out of a house with twenty wolves on the stair."

"I did not know he was lying."

"You did. You have known me since the beach and you know when I am in a room and when I am not." He put his forehead against mine. "You went down that stair because there were seven children and a woman in a bed and you did not stop to work out whether I was in a square."

I put my hands on his chest.

"I am sorry," I said.

"Do not be sorry."

"I am sorry because you were in a square with forty wolves and I was in a cellar and neither of us knew."

He kissed me again.

We did not get to the bed.

We got about as far as the wall by the door and that was where it happened, and it was not slow and it was not tender and it was the two of us in a room at the top of a stair in the northern seat with a fire going and a door that shut.

He kept saying my name. I kept saying his. At some point I got my hand flat on the silver mark on his chest and he stopped and put his hand over mine and said, "It is still there."

"It is still there."

"It has been there since the square and I have been feeling it all night and I did not know whether you were alive."

I pulled him down.

The second half of the night was different.

It was slower and it was quieter and there was a great deal of holding on. He traced the silver crescent on my chest with his finger and then he put his mouth on it and stayed there for a while. I put my hands in his ginger hair and pulled his head up and looked at his face in the firelight and tried to remember it.

"I thought I had lost you," he said.

"You did not."

"I thought I had lost you and I was standing in a square with a writ in my hand and forty wolves and I could not feel the bond."

I lay in the dark with his arm under my head.

"You could not feel the bond?"

"For an hour. In the square. When Callum came in through the market." He turned his head. "It went quiet. It went completely quiet and I thought it meant you were dead."

"Ronan."

"I have never been so frightened in my life." He looked at the ceiling. "I have been stabbed and I have been bound and I have been dying since the spring and I have never been so frightened in my life."

I put my hand on his face.

"I am here," I said.

"You are here."

"I am here and I am not going anywhere and the bond is still there and it is warm."

He put his hand over mine.

"It is warm," he said.

We lay in the dark and the fire burned down and the square outside went quiet.

And then, around four in the morning, there was a knock at the door.

Ronan got up and opened it.

Ilsa was standing there with a lamp in her hand and her face grey.

"Alpha," she said. "Luna. There is a thing I have to tell you and I am sorry to wake you."

"What is it?"

"The elder Soren has asked to see you," Ilsa said. "He is in a cell under the chamber and he has been in it since yesterday and he has not eaten and he has not slept. And he says he has a thing to say that he will only say to the two of you."

I sat up in the bed.

"At four in the morning?"

"At four in the morning." Ilsa looked at me. "Luna. He has asked for you and for the Alpha and he has asked that the pack be brought into the chamber. He says it is the last thing he will ever ask for."