THE TRIAL OF SILVER

Nobody on the Ironwood side of the border moved, but I could feel every one of them waiting for Cassian to speak.

The Silverfang warband had marched through the night, and it showed. Their gray coats were damp with frost and their eyes were hard with tiredness, but they stood in perfect lines behind Darian, fifty strong, with the first pale light of morning spreading behind them. Naomi stood at the front in her borrowed circlet. Tessa swayed beside her with a knife at her throat and a bruise purpling under one eye.

In my first life, Tessa was the only person in Silverfang who came to my cell. She hid a heel of bread in her sleeve and slid it through the bars every night, and Veda had her whipped for it in front of the whole kitchen. I never found out what happened to her after my trial. I had never let myself wonder, because I already knew.

"Liora," Cassian said quietly, without turning his head. "I cannot hand you over, and I cannot start a war over one healer. Whatever you are about to do, make it quick."

"I need to cross the line," I said.

"That is not quick. That is stupid."

"It is both." I pulled my arm from his grip. "Please trust me. My mother spent years teaching me the old laws, and I never understood why until now."

He looked at me for a long moment with those sharp green eyes, and then he stepped aside.

I walked alone to the line of iron nailed pines, and every Silverfang wolf watched me come. The wind smelled of pine and cold smoke. When I stopped at the border, I was close enough to see the silver glow in Darian's eyes, flat and bright, like coins sewn onto a statue. He did not blink. Looking at him hurt more than any rope had.

I turned my face to the warband and spoke as loudly as I could.

"I will not hide behind Ironwood's walls. I am a daughter of Silverfang, and I demand my right under Silverfang law. I call for the Trial of Silver."

A low murmur ran through the ranks, and a few of the older warriors shifted their feet. I knew exactly why. The Trial of Silver was the oldest law the pack owned, so old that most of the young wolves had only heard it in stories. Any accused wolf could demand the Moon Goddess's judgment instead of the Elders', and the accuser had to meet her in a ring of silver ash. If the accused won, every charge was wiped away and her accuser was named a liar before the whole pack.

Naomi's smile slipped, and for the first time that morning I saw her think.

She knew the law as well as I did. She also knew what the old warriors were murmuring to each other, which was that a pack which dragged an accused wolf off without the trial was a pack with something to hide. Refusing in front of fifty witnesses and the whole Ironwood border guard would stain Silverfang's name for a generation.

"The Trial of Silver," she said sweetly, lifting her chin, "is a fine law. Of course my sister may have it."

She was too calm, and a cold feeling crept up my spine.

"But the law is also clear that an accuser may name a champion in her place," Naomi went on, her voice carrying across the frost. "I am a grieving sister and a gentle one, and I could never raise a hand against her. So I name my champion now. The Alpha of Silverfang will fight for the justice of his father."

She turned and laid her hand on Darian's arm.

DARIAN

I heard her say my name from somewhere far away, as if I were underwater and she were calling from the shore.

I had been sinking for hours. The silver pressure behind my eyes had grown so heavy that I could barely feel my own hands, and I had stopped fighting the march and started saving my strength instead. All of it went into one single thought, which I clung to like a man clinging to a rope in a flood. She is alive. She is standing in front of me, and she is alive.

Now Naomi's fingers rested on my sleeve like a spider, and Liora was looking straight at me with her chin raised and her gray eyes steady. She was not afraid of me. After everything I had done in the last life, and everything I had failed to say, she stood at the border of her enemy's territory and looked at me as if she could see exactly where I was hidden.

Veda's voice slid through my head, cool and patient, the way it always did through the mark.

You will accept, boy. You will fight her until she yields or falls. If she lives past the sunset, the omega girl dies at your feet, and your brother hangs for treason at the next moon.

My stomach turned over. Kieran was in the ranks somewhere behind me. I had blinked at him once, a tiny signal at my father's grave, and I had thought it was a gift. It was a rope around his neck.

I tried to refuse. The mark flared, white and merciless, and my mouth opened on its own.

LIORA

"I accept," Darian said.

His voice was perfectly level, and it did not sound like him at all. He stepped away from Naomi and drew the long blade at his hip, and the sound it made in the cold air raised every hair on my arms.

The rules of the Trial of Silver were simple, and I had never been so sorry to remember them. Two fighters, a ring of silver ash on the ground, and no one allowed to step in until one of them yielded or fell. A champion could not yield on his accuser's behalf, and he could not be spared. The law had been written in a harder age, by wolves who wanted justice to cost something.

Two Silverfang warriors came forward with a leather sack and began pouring a ring of glittering ash on the frozen grass, just inside their own border. Behind me, I heard Cassian growl low in his chest, and I heard Seren stir inside me, restless and hungry.

I can fight him, little one, she said. But the seal is only half broken. I will not be at my full strength.

I know.

And if we hurt him badly, we may not need the curse to kill him.

I know, I thought again, and it was the worst thing I had ever known. The man I needed to free was now the man I had to beat. I could not kill him, and I could not afford to lose. If I lost, Tessa would die at sunset, and the war I was trying to stop would begin in the next breath.

Across the ring, Naomi wiped one gloved finger across the corner of her eye, the picture of a girl heartbroken by what she had been forced to do. Then she lowered her hand and looked right at me over the silver circle, and she mouthed three words.

Welcome to hell.

The last of the ash fell into place, and the ring closed with a faint hiss. Darian stepped inside it, silver eyed and silent, and raised his sword.

"Liora Hale," he said. "Enter the ring."