Chapter 62: The False Mate's Name

We sat in the mill loft until the small hours and went over it again and again, and then Padraig put his head back against the wall and fell asleep and Nessa went down to the mill floor to sleep by the wheel. Oisin took the first watch on the ladder.

I sat with my back against the chimney breast with the box in my lap and Ronan sat beside me and neither of us said anything for a long time.

"Tell me about Elara," I said.

He turned his head.

"What about her?"

"The name in the letter. The mate who never arrived. The letter said her name was Elara and the woman who came to the house in the spring in a green scarf was Elara and the two of them were the same name but not the same woman." I looked at him. "I have been trying to work that out for a month and I have not managed it. There was a mate in the letter and there was a binder in the green scarf and they both had the same name."

Ronan was quiet for a moment.

"There was only one woman," he said. "There was never a mate. There was a binder with a name and the name went into the letter so that the paper would look like a marriage contract." He rubbed his face. "Elara told us that on the road. She said the name was taken from a list of old families and the letter was a formality."

"Yes. But why that name?" I looked at him. "If you were Lorcan and you wanted to make a false bond look like a marriage, you would pick a name that nobody would question and nobody would look for. You would pick a name off a list that was far away and hard to check. You would not pick a name that belonged to a living binder who was going to walk into the house in the spring and put her hand on your chest."

Ronan sat up.

"That is a good question," he said.

"Did she ever tell you why?"

"No." He thought about it. "She told me the bargain. She told me the words. She told me to sign the paper and she put her hand on my chest and she said the words and I said them back and she was gone before supper. She never told me her name was in the letter and I never thought to ask because I did not know the letter existed until Maeve read it out."

I got up and went down the ladder.

Elara was on the mill floor with a blanket round her shoulders and her back against a sack of flour.

"Elara," I said. "Wake up."

She woke the way people who have slept rough wake, all at once, with her hand going to her coat.

"What is it?"

"Your name was in the letter," I said. "The letter that named the mate the Council had chosen for the Alpha. It said Elara and it said she would arrive on the fourteenth and it said the bond would be confirmed on arrival. And then a woman in a green scarf came to the house in the spring and her name was Elara too."

Elara sat up.

"That is not possible," she said.

"It is on the paper. I have read the letter myself and I have read the line at the bottom of it in the hand that writes the held line." I sat down on the floor in front of her. "Elara. Who gave you the name?"

She looked at me.

"The Council did. I was given a name and a paper and a purse and I was told to go to the Blackthorn house and bind the Alpha." She was frowning. "The name on my paper was the Alpha's name. It was not mine. A binder does not sign her own name to a binding. She signs the name of the wolf who is bound."

"Then why was your name in the letter?"

Elara was quiet.

"I do not know," she said. "I did not write the letter."

"Somebody wrote it. Somebody wrote a letter naming a mate who did not exist and gave her the name of the binder who was going to come and put a false bond on the Alpha." I looked at her. "Why would a man do that?"

Elara looked at me for a long moment.

"Because if the Alpha ever found the letter he would go looking for Elara," she said slowly. "And he would find a living wolf with that name and he would think she was the mate. And then he would go to her and she would tell him what she had done and he would know that his marriage was a ritual and his mate was a lie." She put her hand over her mouth. "It was not a kindness. It was a trap for me. If the Alpha ever came looking I would be the one who was blamed and the Council would be able to say the binder had deceived them."

I sat on the mill floor.

"There is a wolf behind Lorcan," I said. "And he has been playing a long game. He wrote the letter with your name in it so that if the truth ever came out it would land on a binder and not on the Council. And he has been sitting in the northern seat for forty years and never been challenged for his seat."

Elara looked at me.

"Soren," she said.

I went back up the ladder and sat down beside Ronan.

"Her name was in the letter because it was meant to be," I said. "Soren wrote it that way so that if the truth ever came out it would fall on the binder and not on the Council. And he put her name in it so that when you came looking for your mate you would find her and she would have to tell you what she had done."

Ronan sat with his back against the chimney breast.

"I never went looking," he said. "I was too ashamed."

I put my hand on his.

"The shame was the point," I said. "That was how it was meant to work."

The mill door opened below us and Oisin was at the ladder with his knife in his hand.

"Fiadh," he said. "There is a car coming down the road from the north. It has two outriders and it is going to the Council house."

I got up.

"Soren," I said. "He is here."

"Eight hours early," Ronan said. "And the hearing is at noon."

We stood in the loft above the mill with the river going under the boards, and outside in the dark a car went past and did not stop.