Chapter 45: The Point of No Return

Ronan was on the floor of his room with his back against the bed and his hand at his chest and the mark glowing through his shirt.

He had tried to shift.

I knew it the moment I saw him. His jaw was wrong, the line of it, and the hair on the back of his hands was still too thick, and there was a look in his eyes that was not only a man's. Padraig was on the floor beside him with his hands on his shoulders.

"He got up when the fight started," Padraig said. "He got up and he went to the window and then he tried to go over. I held him and he fought me and then he went down."

"Get out," I said. "All of you. Nessa, shut the door."

They went. I knelt down in front of Ronan and took his face in my hands.

"Look at me."

His eyes came to mine and they were pale green and the pupils were wrong, too wide, and he was breathing through his mouth.

"Fiadh."

"Yes. It is me. You are in your room and the fight is over and the rogues have gone back to the ridge and you are not going anywhere." I got my hand on his chest, over the mark, and the heat of it came up through my palm. "You tried to shift."

"I had to get out there. There were wolves on my wall."

"You have a false bond eating your chest and a silver wound in your shoulder and you lost a challenge four hours ago and you tried to shift." I could hear my own voice going high. "Do you know what would have happened? You would have gone over halfway and stuck. You would have been a man with a wolf's jaw and a wolf's hands and no way back and I would have had to sit here and watch you."

He shut his eyes.

"I know," he said.

"Do you?"

"I know." He opened his eyes again. "Fiadh. I am going to say something and I want you to hear it and not argue with me. I am at the end of it. Whatever is left of me is going to go in the next few days and I do not want to spend them sitting in this room."

I sat back on my heels.

"What are you saying?"

"I am saying that the pack cannot hold the wall again tomorrow with me in this house. Bran will come back at dawn and the Ravenscar wolves will come with him and Maeve has nineteen wolves and a hole in her roof." He put his hand over mine. "If we are going to do the rite, we do it now. Tonight. Before the sun comes up."

I looked at him.

"We need Elara and the box and the boathouse," I said. "We need Padraig and the page. And you can barely sit up."

"Then we do it sitting down."

I sat there on the floor of his room with my hand under his and the mark glowing under my palm and the whole house quiet around us.

"Right then," I said. "Get your coat."

I went down first. The kitchen was full of wolves and wounded and Nessa was at the table with a bowl of water and a cloth. Maeve was on the step with her arms folded.

"Whatever you are doing," she said, "do it quietly. There are eleven wounded in this house and four of them are not going to sleep tonight."

"Maeve." I stopped in front of her. "I need the boathouse. I need it empty and I need it bolted from the inside and I need nobody to come near it until morning."

She looked at me.

"The rite," she said.

"The rite."

Maeve was quiet for a moment. Then she said, "I will put Colm's brother on the slip with a lamp and tell him to keep the harbour wall clear. If the Council boat sends anyone up the wall tonight, he will whistle." She looked at me. "Do not die in my boathouse, healer. I have enough to explain as it is."

Padraig was in the sickroom. He had the page and the box and his book. He did not ask any questions. He put his coat on and picked up his stick and said, "I will get Elara. She is at the grey house and she will come if I tell her it is tonight."

He went out into the dark.

We went down to the boathouse at four in the morning. Ronan walked with his hand on my arm and we went the long way round by the harbour wall so the house would not see us, and the tide was out and the slip was wet and the boathouse was cold and it smelled of tar and rope and old water.

Elara was already there with Padraig. She had a bag with her and her green scarf and her face was pale.

"I have not done a breaking," she said. "I have done eleven bindings and I have never once done a breaking. You should know that before we start."

"I know it," I said.

"And I do not know what will happen to me when it goes. The binder is tied to the bond. If the bond breaks, there may be a price for me too."

I looked at her. She had lied to Ronan and she had made him into a thing that was kept and she had left him to die slowly, and then she had come back and told him the truth and stood against Lorcan in front of the Council.

"Then we will all pay something," I said.

We bolted the door. Padraig lit the lamps and set them in a ring on the floor, and Elara knelt down on the boards and opened her bag and took out a small pot of something black and a knife with a bone handle.

Ronan sat down in the middle of the ring with his shirt off and his bad arm in his lap and the mark dark and angry on his chest.

"Fiadh," he said. "Before we start. There is a thing I have not said."

"Say it."

He looked up at me and his pale green eyes were steady.

"I love you," he said. "I have loved you since the beach. I have loved you since you knelt down in the shallows and told me to let go of your wrist."

I knelt down in front of him and put my hands on his face.

"I love you too," I said. "And I am going to be very angry with you if you die in this boathouse."

He laughed. It was a small one but it was real.

"Start the rite," I said to Elara.

She began to speak, and the lamps went out one by one, and the cold came up off the floor of the boathouse and into the ring.

Outside, on the harbour wall, somebody whistled twice.