The Pyre

Three days before that, Wren Ashcombe was humming to herself a tuneless song while folding linens in the Luna's chambers, two of the Betas who had been trained by her for six years walked in without knocking and told her that she had been arrested for the murder of Iris Voss.

She laughed. Even after all those years she could still see it clearly, that odd, unbelieving laugh of a woman who was certain that some sort of mistake must have been made. "Iris is in the west garden," she said. "I had tea with her this morning." Corin, the young Beta who previously had asked her for advice about courting a girl from the Reyes bloodline, looked down at his boots and quietly stated that Iris had been found an hour after the tea, in the same garden, with her throat cut, and Wren's own ceremonial blade—the one which had been given to her at her Luna binding and the one that she kept in a locked case which she hadn't opened for months—was lying in the grass next to the body.

After that she never laughed again.

The three days that came after became so confused that she still wasn't able to arrange them in the correct sequence three years later. There was the accusation, then the imprisonment. Cassius's face opposite her at the interrogation table, putting questions to her which had already been answered before she had opened her mouth. Kaelan's continual absence, with no visits, no messages, just silence from a man whose bed she had shared the night before his mother died, and the slow, sick realisation that silence from him was in itself a verdict.

By the third night, with her wrists already bound by hands which had once braided her hair and at the edge of the clearing, she had given up hoping for rescue and instead only hoped that it would be quick.

Before the people had finished gathering, the rope had already cut her wrists. She checked the knots twice, three at each wrist, all tied by Marla, who had once liked her, before liking her became dangerous. Marla now avoided making eye contact with her; almost nobody would, except the few who couldn't help themselves, just as you can't help looking at a wound on your own body, even if it hurts to see it.

The entire pack had turned up. During her two years as Luna, she had never before seen all the wolves from the Ashcombe territory assembled in one spot. In earlier days she had used to count the number of people at smaller meetings, a habit picked up when she was in a low rank and one which involved making sure that everyone was there and that those who were absent were looked after. These small acts of kindness had never been asked of a Luna but she had carried them out all the same. Tonight there was no one left to count since they had all come for this.

She could smell how they felt in the evening air, strong and complex: mostly fear, genuine sorrow over Iris, and beneath both of these, in threads that she knew without having to, a worse kind of relief, the particular pleasure taken in seeing a low-ranking girl being sent back to where the pack had always secretly thought she belonged.

You needn't carry out this action, she said, and your voice remained steady; in a rather absurd way she felt a sense of pride in that steadiness, a pride detached like that of a woman standing in front of a stake with kindling at her knees. Kaelan, look at me, you know I didn't do this.

Alpha Kaelan Voss stood at the front of the crowd in the identical black suit that he had worn to his mother's funeral six days earlier and he did not look at her; instead, he looked past her left shoulder at a particular spot in the tree line, just as a man does when he's trying to convince himself that a horizon is solid ground even though the ground beneath his feet has already collapsed.

The final time she had seen him in black was when he had cried out in front of the entire group without feeling ashamed, since Iris Voss was the kind of mother a son could grieve for openly. Wren stayed by his side throughout the ceremony, having her hand pressed against the small of his back, being the only thing upon which he could rely. At the time she had foolishly believed that such grief would bind the two people together forever; now she realises that it had only made it easier for her to turn against the men who love their mothers most, and at times even those who are most ready to burn a stranger in order to make the grief seem meaningful.

The evidence is clear," he said, speaking in such a voice that it could be heard by people in the back row without having to shout, a skill acquired through six years having been heir to the position. It wasn't the voice which previously had called her name into the dark, that low, half-laughing one, "Wren, come back to bed, the sun's not even up".

"The rite," she said, and her laugh came out all wrong, splitting down the middle and turning into a sob. "Kaelan, I loved her. I loved your mother. She was the only one in the entire pack who had ever looked at me as if I had earned my position rather than having stumbled into it. Why would I—" Her voice broke. She hated having to show them that emotion and yet gave it to them anyway since there was no longer any reason to protect anything. "Somebody put that blood there. Somebody wanted it to appear as though it were mine. Doesn't that matter to you at all?"

That's enough," said he, though not loudly—instead the door was bolted from the other side.

By the front, close to Kaelan's shoulder in such a way that the arrangement was in itself significant, Delphine Voss stood with her arms folded and her face assumed an expression befitting the occasion, showing grief for her aunt and a sense of seriousness appropriate to the situation. Yet even at this moment, before the fire had been lit, Wren could see the slight, satisfied tightening of her jaw, the look of a woman who after a long wait had at last gotten what she wanted. Wren and Delphine had never got on, not since the first season of the bond. Wren had always thought it was simply a case of resentment, a Voss-blood cousin watching an outsider being given a title that she believed ought to have remained in the family. She had never once, over the two years, imagined it could be any worse than that. She would spend three years wondering whether she should have.

Elder Cassius Voss moved forward with the torch already alight, the flame small and orange against the grey evening. He was old, with silver hair, and in his eyes there was a kindliness which certain cruel men acquire after a long time doing necessary and terrible things. Upon looking at her there was a brief expression that was neither hatred nor triumph but rather one of grief, deep and long-standing, directed at something she could not name. For the remainder of whatever life she had left she would be trying to explain that look and would ultimately fail.

"Wren Ashcombe," he said formally, in the manner of a man who has long since stopped having to think about it. Since he was bound by pack law and had been tried according to the old rite, he had been found guilty of the murder of Luna Iris Voss; the pack, he said, would be cleansed of whatever had been living among them by assuming Luna's appearance as if she had stolen it. As if all the two years during which she had been looked down upon and quietly resented because of the accident of having been bonded against her will—two years of devotion and hard work and the slow, difficult respect that she had in fact earned from the wolves who had taken the time to know her—could be simply taken away again like a coat that had never really fitted.

"Rhys," she spotted her brother in the crowd, nineteen years old, pale as bone, and being kept up by two Betas who weren't really holding him back but merely preventing him from collapsing. "Rhys, no matter what they say to you later on, whatever story turns up as a result of this, it wasn't me. Do you understand? I love you. It wasn't me.