WHAT THE ROPE WAS FOR

I pressed my back against the cold wall and stared at the rope in his hands.

Darian stood in the narrow cell with the torchlight flickering over his tired face, and for a few long seconds neither of us said a word. I had imagined this moment so many times in my first life, the Alpha coming for me in the dark, but in none of those dreams had he been holding the thing that killed me.

"If you came to do it yourself," I said, and my voice came out steadier than I felt, "you can at least have the decency to do it now and not wait until the whole pack is watching."

"Liora, no." He took a quick step forward, and I saw the pain flash across his face as he realized how it looked. "Please listen. I have very little time, and I can only say a few things."

"You can only say a few things," I repeated flatly. "How convenient."

"It is not convenient." He dropped to one knee in front of me so that his eyes were level with mine. "Veda gave me a command in front of everyone tonight. I am to bring you to the gallows at dawn with my own hands, and I am not able to refuse it. I cannot tell you why, and I cannot say who is doing this to me, because the moment I try, my throat closes up. You saw it happen in the side room."

I had seen it. I remembered the way his face had gone pale and the words had died in his mouth, and I remembered the silver glow under his collar tonight. I did not want to believe any of it, but it was getting harder to call it a lie.

"So you are here to follow orders," I said.

"I am here to follow them exactly." His eyes held mine, and something sharp and careful was moving behind them. "Veda told me to bring the rope to your cell. That is what she said, and those were her exact words. She did not tell me what the rope had to be used for."

I looked at the coil in his hands again, and this time I saw what I had missed. It was not an ordinary hangman's rope. It was long and thin and tightly braided, with iron hooks tied at both ends, the kind of rope that climbers use on the cliffs behind the pack house.

My breath caught. "You brought me a climbing rope."

"There is a drainage shaft behind the back wall of this cell," he said, speaking quickly and quietly now. "Third stone from the floor, on the left. It was built when my grandfather ruled, and almost nobody remembers it exists. It drops straight down to a tunnel that runs under the moon temple and comes out at the river. The guards will not look for you there because they think the shaft was sealed years ago."

"And you are just telling me this."

"I am telling you where a rope can be used," he said, and a tired, crooked smile tugged at his mouth. "I never said anything about an escape. Veda cannot punish me for describing a shaft."

For a moment I only stared at him. It was the cleverest thing I had ever seen a cursed man do, and I realized that he must have spent hours of this night searching for a gap in the words that bound him, the way a prisoner tests every bar of his cage.

"Why should I trust you?" I asked softly. "You chose her over me last time. You stood there and let them do it."

"I know." His voice broke. "I know that I did, and I will carry it until I die. I am not asking you to forgive me, Liora. I am only asking you to live."

He took my hands and pressed the rope into them. His fingers were shaking, and they were very warm, and when he looked at me, I saw something I had never seen in his eyes in my first life. It was not coldness or duty or pride. It was plain, desperate love.

"Go," he whispered. "Before the guards change at midnight."

I should have thanked him, or said something that mattered, but my pride and my fear were tangled together in my chest. So I only nodded once, turned around, and found the third stone from the floor on the left.

It moved when I pushed it. The whole section of wall swung inward with a low groan, and a gust of cold, damp air rushed out of the darkness behind it. I hooked the iron end of the rope around a rusted bar inside the opening, tested it with my weight, and glanced back one last time.

Darian was still kneeling on the cell floor with his head bowed, and he did not look up. The silver glow flickered faintly at his collar again, as though the curse knew he was bending its rules, and I saw him clench his jaw against some pain I could not see.

Then I climbed down into the dark.

The shaft was narrow and slick with moss, and the rope burned my palms as I lowered myself hand over hand. I counted the seconds to keep from thinking about how far down I was going. By the time my feet finally touched solid ground, my arms were shaking and my breath was loud in my own ears.

I was standing in a low stone tunnel that smelled of wet earth and old roots. A trickle of water ran along the floor, and far ahead I could see the faintest gray glimmer that might have been the river or the early dawn. I started walking with one hand on the wall, and for a while there was nothing but the sound of my own footsteps.

That was when I noticed the carvings.

They were cut into the tunnel wall at about the height of my shoulder, small and worn almost smooth. I stopped and ran my fingers over them, and my heart gave a sudden, painful jump. They were crescent moons, the same shape I had seen all my life on my mother's old healer's satchel, and they led down the tunnel like a trail of bread crumbs.

I followed them with my pulse pounding, and at the end of the tunnel I found a low wooden door that was nearly hidden behind a curtain of roots. A single crescent moon was burned into the wood, and under it were two letters in my mother's own handwriting.

E.H.

Elise Hale.

My hands were trembling so badly that it took me three tries to lift the iron latch. The door creaked open onto a tiny round room that smelled of dust and lavender, and in the middle of it stood a small stone table with a single leather book lying on top.

I knew that book. My mother used to write in it every night when I was a little girl, and she always put it away the moment I came near.

I crossed the room as if I were walking in a dream, picked up the book with both hands, and opened the cover. The pages were yellowed and soft with age, and the first line was written in a hurried, shaky hand that made my eyes burn.

My darling Liora, if you are reading this, then they have already killed me, and you are not who they told you that you are.