Chapter 169: The Tenth Love Scene

Eamon came up the cellar stair at a run and there was a thing behind him.

It came up out of the dark of the cellar and into the light of the yard and it was not a wolf and it was not a man.

It was old. It was older than anything I have ever seen. It was a shape in a coat that had been a keeper's coat two hundred years ago and it had a face and the face was thin and white and the eyes in it were the colour of the stone in my pocket.

The first of the old blood.

It stopped at the top of the cellar stair and it looked round the yard. The forty rogues on the steps went back a step. The Council guards at the gate put their spears up and then thought better of it and put them down again.

And then it looked at me.

"Founder," it said.

Its voice was the sound of a door opening in a house that has been shut for a long time.

"Say what you have come to say," I said.

"I have been behind a door for two hundred years," it said. "And I have been listening. And there is a thing I have to say to the fourth of my line and I am going to say it before the sun goes down."

"Say it."

"I made the rites," it said. "I made the binding and I made the breaking and I made the reversal and I made them to right a wrong. And then the keepers took them and the Council took the keepers and two hundred years of wolves have been bound and drained and kept in a house in the north." It looked at me. "And I have been behind a door and I have not been able to stop it."

The yard was quiet.

"Then why did you not come out?" I said.

"Because a founder who is behind a door cannot be used," it said. "And a founder who walks out of a door is a founder the Council can take."

I stood in the yard with the stone in my hand.

"There is a thing I have been carrying since the day I got off the bus," I said. "And it is a stone in my pocket and a line in a book and a mark on my chest and a debt that was not a debt. And I have been trying to work out what to do with it."

"And?"

"And I am going to give it back to the line." I held up the stone. "I am not going to be a founder in a room at the top of a house. I am going to be a healer with a case of tins and a mate and a coast. And the line is going to be the twelve and the seven and the nineteen and the thirty one and every wolf in the north who was bound with the water of the spring."

The first of the old blood looked at me for a long time.

"Then the line is safe," it said.

And it went.

I do not know how to describe it. It did not die and it did not fade. It went back down the cellar stair and it went through the door behind the second pool and the door closed and the stone in my hand went cold and then it went still.

I stood in the yard with the stone in my hand.

Ronan came and stood beside me.

"Fiadh," he said.

"It is done," I said.

"It is done." He put his hand on my face. "You have been in a square and a cellar and a cellar door and you have shifted and fought and given away a line in a yard in the north."

"And I am tired," I said.

"Then come to bed."

We went up the stairs of the house of the north.

The house was quiet. The twelve were in the room at the bottom of the house and the seven were in the room above them and there was a Council guard on the door and a rogue on the stair and there was a lamp burning in the corridor.

We went past all of it to a room on the second floor.

It was not the room at the top of the house. It was a room with a window that opened and a fire and a bed and a door that shut, and the fire had been lit an hour before and the room was warm and the window was open and the smell of the north came in through it.

Ronan shut the door.

I stood in the middle of the room with my coat still on.

"I have not slept in a bed in eleven days," I said.

"Neither have I."

"I have slept in a bothy and a cave and a boat and a camp in the highlands and a cell."

"I know. I was there." He came and stood in front of me. "Fiadh. Take your coat off."

I took my coat off.

He took it out of my hands and hung it on the back of the door. Then he came back and put his hands on my waist and stood there looking at me.

"You have got ash in your hair," he said.

"I know."

"And there is a cut on your jaw from the square."

"I know."

"You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life."

I put my hands on his chest.

"You have been in a square with forty hunters and a cellar door and a wolf who has been behind it for two hundred years," I said. "And you are standing in a room in the north with your hands on my waist and you look like a man of thirty two who has never been ill in his life."

"I feel like one." He kissed me. "I have not felt like one since the spring."

The kiss went on for a long time.

We got out of our clothes eventually. It was not a graceful business. There was a boot that would not come off and a shirt with a tear in it and at one point he laughed so hard he had to sit down on the bed, and I stood over him with my shift half off and told him to stop being ridiculous.

Then he stopped laughing and looked at me and I looked at him and the room went quiet.

He was warm. That was the first thing. He was warm all over and he was strong and he was steady and he was not shaking, and he put his hands on me and they did not shake either. He kissed my throat and my shoulder and the silver mark over my heart and he said my name against my skin in a voice I had not heard from him before.

I put my hands in his ginger hair and pulled his head up and kissed him.

I do not know how long it went on. Long enough for the fire to burn down. Long enough for the square outside to go quiet. I remember his hands on my back and my leg round his hip and the sound he made when I put my mouth on his shoulder. I remember the silver mark on his chest warm under my palm and the pull between us going tight and staying tight.

And at the end of it, when we were lying in the dark with the quilt over us and his arm under my head and my hand flat on his chest, the bond settled.

It settled the way it had settled in the rented house in the Council town. It stopped pulling and it stopped aching and it lay down between us like a wolf lying down by a fire.

"Ronan," I said.

"Hm."

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow." He turned his head. "Fiadh. There is a thing I have not told you."

"What?"

"I have been in a fire and a cellar and a square and a siege and a trial and a border and a bothy and a camp in the highlands." He looked at me. "And I have been an Alpha for eleven years and I have never once been a wolf who was not frightened. And I am frightened now."

I put my hand on his chest.

"So am I," I said.

"Then we are both frightened."

"Yes."

"And we are going to finish it anyway."

"Yes." I put my forehead against his. "Together or not at all."

And through the bond, warm and steady and clear, I felt him.

And outside the window, in the square, a wolf began to sing.