*Chapter 14** **The Wedding Night**

*

The silver light kept rising from the stone.

It spread across the altar and climbed up toward the high ceiling of the great hall. It touched the old banners hanging on the walls. It touched the faces of the Elders in the front row. It touched my hands and my dress and the little silver moonflowers I had sewn all night, and they shone like they were made of real moonlight.

I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move. I just stood there with my bleeding finger held out over the stone, staring at the light.

Under my collar, the moonstone had gone so cold it was like a piece of ice pressed against my heart.

Beside me, Kael wasn't breathing either. I could feel him. His whole big body had gone stiff, the way a wolf goes stiff when it hears something in the trees.

And the old priest was looking at me like I was something from a story.

Then there was a crash.

It came from the front row. Loud and sudden, like a bell falling down a stairwell. Everyone in the hall jumped. I turned my head just in time to see a tall iron candle stand tipping over. It fell against the long red curtains that hung behind the Elders' bench.

The curtains caught fire.

The flames went up fast. Bright orange and yellow, leaping toward the ceiling. Somebody screamed. The Elders jumped up from their bench. People started shouting and pushing.

And in the middle of it all, standing beside the fallen candle stand, was Selene. Her hand was pressed against her mouth. Her eyes were wide with shock.

"Oh!" she cried. "Oh, I'm so sorry! My dress caught on it! I'm so clumsy!"

But she wasn't looking at the fire. She was looking straight at me.

Guards ran forward with their coats and beat at the flames. Someone threw a pitcher of water. Smoke filled the front of the hall, grey and thick. For a few long minutes, everyone was coughing and shouting, and nobody was looking at the altar at all.

When I looked back down at the Moon Stone, the light was gone.

It was just a stone again. Pale and grey and quiet, with one small red drop of my blood in the middle.

---

The fire was out in five minutes. It had only burned one curtain. Nobody was hurt.

But when everyone came back to their places, the whispers had started.

*Did you see that? The light?*

*It was the fire. The fire was shining on the stone.*

*No, it was before the fire. I saw it.*

*Don't be silly. It was the candles. Stones don't shine.*

By the time the Elders sat back down, most people had decided. It was the fire. The light from the burning curtain had flashed on the smooth stone, and that was all. A trick of the light.

Only three people in that hall knew it wasn't true.

The old priest knew. His hands were still shaking. He didn't look at me again. He just opened his book and started reading the wedding words in his dry, thin voice, faster than before, like he wanted to get it over with.

I knew. I could still feel the cold of the moonstone against my chest.

And Kael knew.

I could feel him looking at me. All through the wedding words. All through the vows. He said his part in a low, steady voice. *I take you as my wife.* I said my part in a whisper. *I take you as my husband.* But his eyes never left my face. Not once.

Then the priest closed his book.

"You may seal it," he said.

I knew what that meant. Every wedding I had ever seen in Hollowmere ended the same way. The husband kissed the wife in front of everyone, and everyone cheered.

Kael turned toward me. He put one big hand on the side of my face. His fingers were warm against my cheek. My heart was beating so hard that I could hear it in my ears.

He leaned down.

And he kissed my forehead.

Just once. Soft and quick. His lips barely touched my skin.

*Rule three,* I thought. *No touching. Not unless it has to be done.*

It was the right thing. It was what we had agreed. I had signed my name on the paper.

But when he pulled away, I felt it like a door closing.

The hall cheered. Wolves howled. Somewhere a drum started to beat. And just like that, I was married. Mira Hale, the wolfless girl from Hollowmere, was the wife of the Butcher of Nine Packs.

---

There was a feast after.

Long tables full of food filled the great hall. Roast meat and fresh bread and honey cakes and big jugs of wine. People laughed and sang and danced. Children ran between the tables, stealing cakes.

I sat at the high table beside Kael. I didn't eat. I couldn't.

He didn't eat much either. He sat with a cup of wine in his hand and didn't drink it. People came up to bow and give their good wishes, and he nodded at them without really seeing them.

At the far end of the table, Selene sat with the Elders. She smiled and laughed and touched their arms. But every few minutes, I felt her eyes on me. Cold and dark and full of hate.

And three tables down, half hidden behind a pillar, I saw Dorian. He wasn't eating either. He was just watching me with a cup of wine in his hand, and the crooked smile on his face.

I looked away.

"What did the priest say to you?"

Kael's voice was so low that nobody else could hear. He didn't turn his head. He was looking out at the hall, at the dancing people.

My heart jumped. "What?"

"At the altar. After the stone. He said something. I heard him."

Of course he heard. He heard everything.

"He said…" I swallowed. "He said it hadn't done that in a hundred years."

Kael was quiet for a long time.

"I've been to four Blackfang weddings in my life," he said at last. "My uncle's. Two of my cousins'. And my father's second wife's, when I was twelve." He turned his cup slowly in his fingers. "Every bride put her blood on that stone. And every time, nothing happened. Nothing at all. I always thought it was just an old story. An old custom that didn't mean anything."

He turned his head and looked at me. His gold eyes were bright and serious.

"What are you, Mira?"

I looked at him. I thought about lying. I thought about saying, *I'm nothing. Just a wolfless girl. Just a kitchen girl from Hollowmere.*

But that wasn't true anymore, was it? My mother had told me so. *No, my darling. You never were.*

"I don't know," I said.

It was the truest thing I had ever said to him.

He looked at me for a long moment. I watched him listen. I watched him check my heart, my breath, my eyes. Waiting to catch the lie.

There was no lie to catch.

Something changed in his face. He looked surprised. And then, for just a second, he looked almost sad.

"Neither do I," he said quietly. And he turned back to the hall.

---

He walked me to my room when the feast was over.

It was late. The house was dark and quiet. Our footsteps echoed in the long stone hallway of the east wing. He walked a little in front of me, with his hands behind his back.

We stopped outside my door. His was the next one down.

"The door between our rooms has a lock on both sides," he said. He didn't look at me. "I'll lock mine. You lock yours too. That way you'll know you're safe."

"I'm not afraid of you," I said.

He turned and looked at me then.

"You should be," he said. "Everyone else is."

"Everyone else doesn't know you."

The words just came out. I don't know where they came from. I wanted to pull them back as soon as I said them, but it was too late.

He went very still.

"And you do?" he asked softly.

I didn't answer. I couldn't. My face was burning.

He looked at me for a long, long time, there in the dark hallway. Then he reached out, very slowly, and touched a piece of my hair that had fallen across my cheek. He didn't touch my skin. Just the hair. He pushed it gently back behind my ear.

His hand was shaking again. Just a little.

"Goodnight, Mira," he said.

And he walked to his door and went inside and closed it behind him.

---

I didn't sleep.

I took off the wedding dress very carefully and hung it back on its stand by the window. In the moonlight, the silver flowers were still shining. I put on my old nightgown. I climbed into the big soft bed and pulled the thick blankets up to my chin.

I lay there and stared at the dark wooden door in the wall. The one that led to his room.

I had locked it from my side, just like he told me to. I had heard him lock it from his side too. Click. Two locks. Two people. One wall.

*He's right there,* I thought. *He's right on the other side of that wall. The man I gave myself to. The man who said I was perfect. And he's lying in his bed thinking about some girl in the forest, and he doesn't know she's right here.*

I touched the moonstone at my neck. It was quiet now. Cool, but not cold. My mark was quiet too, just a soft, slow pulse under my skin.

Far away, the sea kept crashing on the rocks.

I must have closed my eyes at some point. I don't know for how long. Maybe I slept a little.

Then a sound woke me.

Click.

I sat up in bed with my heart pounding.

The room was dark. The fire had burned down to red coals. The moonlight was coming through the tall windows, silver and cold.

Click.

It was the lock. The lock on the door between our rooms. Not my side. His side.

Then I heard a soft scrape of metal, and my lock turned too. All by itself. Like someone on the other side had a key that opened both.

The dark wooden door swung slowly open.

Kael was standing in the doorway.

He was wearing only loose black sleeping trousers. No shirt. The moonlight fell across his big chest and his broad shoulders, and I could see old scars on his skin. Many of them. Long thin ones and short round ones, like he had been cut and bitten many, many times.

But that wasn't what made my heart stop.

It was his eyes.

They were glowing. Bright, burning gold, like two lamps in the dark. Not the gold of a man. The gold of a wolf.

And they weren't looking at me. They weren't looking at anything. They were open but empty, like the eyes of someone who was dreaming.

He was asleep.

I didn't move. I didn't breathe. I held the blankets against my chest and watched him.

He stepped into my room. One slow step. Then another. He walked the way an animal walks, silent and careful, with his head a little bent. He was breathing in through his nose. Slow and deep. Searching for something.

He came right up to the side of my bed. He stopped. He bent his head down close to me, so close that I could feel his breath on my hair.

I closed my eyes. *Please,* I thought. *Please, moonstone. Please hold.*

He breathed in.

For a long moment, nothing happened. Then he made a sound. A low, soft sound deep in his chest. Not a growl. Something sadder than that. Like a hurt animal that has finally found its way home.

He went down on his knees beside my bed.

Then he lay down. Right there on the cold stone floor, beside my bed, the way a big dog lies down beside its owner. He curled on his side with his back to the wall and his face toward me. His burning gold eyes slowly closed.

His breathing got slower. Deeper. Calmer.

I stared down at him in the moonlight. The Butcher of Nine Packs, the most frightening man in the whole north, was lying on my floor like a tired wolf, fast asleep.

Then his lips moved.

So softly that I almost didn't hear it, so softly that it was barely a breath, he whispered two words into the dark.

"Don't leave."

I put my hand over my mouth.

Those were my words. The words I had said to him on the moss, under the red moon, with his hand an inch from my face.

The only words in the whole world that were truly mine.