All Chapters of The Phoenix Wolf's Awakening : Chapter 121 - Chapter 130

138 Chapters

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Two

Mona's povI woke Vesna at midnight and told her everything in the space of eleven sentences.I did not soften it. I sat on the end of her narrow bed in the west building of the school and I told her about Kesh — the councillor's name, his coronation stare at little Aeron, the anonymous notes, the years of watching, Nova's identification at Bloodrose, tonight's dinner request to visit at second bell. Vesna sat up against her pillow with her hair loose and her knees drawn up under the blanket. She did not interrupt me once. When I was done, she said only, "So he was the man at my door." I said, "Yes." She was quiet a long time. Then she said, in a voice that was not fear but was very close to it, "Mona. I have been afraid of that man since he stood on my step. Not because of what he said. Because of what he did not say. He was not asking me if I was interested. He was measuring whether I could still be pointed." She looked at me. "What do you need me to do at second bell?" I told her.

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Three

Mona's POVKesh left Nightshade the day after his yard visit with a smile on his face and, I hoped, a splinter of doubt driven under one nail.He rode out with two escorts and a warm farewell from Cassian, and the moment the last hoofbeat cleared the outer wall I sat down on the front steps and did not move for an hour. Nova came and sat beside me. She said, "Vesna did it perfectly." I said, "She did." Nova said, "Now what?" I said, "Now we wait. He will move. His whole plan just cracked open under his hand. When he moves, we will see the shape of the rest of them." She nodded slowly. Then she said, quiet, "Mona. You look ninety." I laughed. It was a small laugh, but it was real. She helped me up. That night I went home to Derek and I did not tell him how tightly I had been wound for the past week. I did not need to. He read it off my shoulders the way he had always read me. He drew a bath. He washed my hair himself, kneeling behind me with his sleeves rolled up, the way he had done w

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Four

Mona's POVThe rider had come from Silver Moon, not from Kesh's territory, and that in itself told me the shape of what had happened.He was one of Aeron's own — a young man named Tass, sweat-streaked and pale — and he handed Cassian the letter and then swayed on his feet until a groundskeeper caught him and sat him down on the step. I read it standing beside Derek's chair, one hand still resting on Derek's shoulder. Aeron's handwriting was careful even in crisis. Aunt Mona. The Ashfen Pack has claimed the north ridge above Silver Moon's border. They say the boundary was set wrong two generations ago. They have moved three families onto contested ground. Their alpha is refusing arbitration. I have kept our warriors on our own side of the ridge, but two of them have already been struck at, and one is wounded. I have never done this before. I need your counsel. Please. — A. I folded the letter. Derek looked up at me. He said quietly, "Ashfen has not moved on Silver Moon in forty years."

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Five

Mona's POVI rode home from Sophie's small house with my granddaughter chattering beside me, and I did not hear a word she said.Kesh's family. The trading house that had supplied the wolfsbane my father poured into my morning tea for eighteen years belonged to the family of the man I had shared bread with at council dinners. It was not a coincidence. It was a lineage. It was older than I was. My mother had known there was something. She had written it on the back of a letter — ask him what he did to my sister Amaya's daughter. Now I understood, with a coldness I could not shake off my shoulders even in the afternoon sun, that whatever "he" had done to Amaya's daughter had been done inside a longer plan. A plan that had reached my mother, and Amaya, and Vesna, and my own kitchen for eighteen unbroken years. Little Mona said, from her pony, "Grandma, are you listening?" I said, "I am sorry, my heart. I am listening now." She said, patient, "I said I want to be a healer like Aunt Rose."

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Six

Mona's POVSophie moved to Nightshade in the spring, and I understood on the day her cart came through the gate that I had been waiting for her without knowing it.The little house Cassian had picked out for her was three lanes from mine. It had a small stone step, a good south-facing window, and a garden strip just wide enough for the herbs she had been growing at Silver Moon for forty years. She stood in front of it with her hands on her hips the way Leon used to stand in front of new things, and she said, "It will do." That was all. That was the whole ceremony. Her cart held less than I had expected — a bed, a chair by the fire, three chests, a bundle of tools, and the small locked box that held Leon's ledger and my mother's letters. She had brought both. She had brought the whole weight of what we were still carrying together, and she had brought it in a locked box small enough to sit on a shelf. I helped her unload with my own hands. My back complained. I did not care. When we we

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Seven

Mona's POVThe rider came into our courtyard at first light, and the letter he carried was not the letter I had expected.I had been half-dressed when the gate bell rang, and I came down still tying the sash of my robe, half certain that Kesh had finally moved or that Vesna's small house had been visited a second time. Instead the letter was from Vesna herself, brief and steady, and it said only: Mona. A slow thing is happening in three of the northern packs. Not Kesh. Something else. I need your ear when you can spare it. — V. I read it twice. I felt the strange small letdown of a heart that has braced for a blow that does not fall. I sat down on the front step and I laughed once, quiet. Nova came out of the house behind me with a cup of tea for herself and one for me. She looked at the letter over my shoulder. She said, "Is it him?" I said, "No. Something new." She sat down beside me. She said, "Then you will make Cassian handle it." I looked at her, surprised. She smiled small, wit

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Eight

Mona's POVThe letter came on an ordinary Tuesday, and I have never trusted a Tuesday since.I was in Sophie's kitchen peeling apples for a pie neither of us really wanted, but the peeling was the point. Cassian's rider came through the lane on foot, ran up the small step, and handed me a folded page without a word. Inara's handwriting. Short. Please come. We lost the baby. Lyra will not stand up. Please, Mother. — I. The knife slipped in my hand. I did not feel it. Sophie caught the paper as it drifted, read it, and stood up before I could. She said, quietly, "Go. Now. I will send word to Derek and Cassian. I will pack for you." I said, "I do not know if —" She said, "Go." She had my cloak on my shoulders in under a minute. She kissed my cheek. She pushed me toward the door. Behind me, from her small kitchen table, she said the only useful thing anyone said to me that day. "Mona. Do not try to fix it. Just sit in the room." Then I was on the road. Nova rode with me — she had heard wi

Chapter One Hundred and Twenty-Nine

Mona's POVI woke first that morning, and I found the letter on my pillow before I found my own name.The candle by the bed had burned down to a small dark disk. Grey dawn was pressing at the window. Derek was still asleep beside me, one arm flung over the covers the way it always fell in sleep, his silver hair a mess against the linen. On my pillow, folded twice, sealed with a plain drop of wax he must have melted from the candle himself in the middle of the night, was a page in his own handwriting. My name on the outside. Just Mona. I lay very still for a long moment and I looked at it. I understood before I picked it up. I had been the wife of this man for fifty years. I knew what a letter left on a pillow in the middle of the night meant. I knew he was still breathing beside me, and I knew the letter was going to be what I read after he was not. He had written it now so he did not have to write it later. So he did not have to leave me without words. I sat up slowly. My hair fell a

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty

Mona's POVI was on my knees in Sophie's garden with a trowel in my hand when Lyra's stable boy came running down the lane, and I knew before he spoke.He was fourteen years old and out of breath, and his face had gone that particular grey a young person's face goes when they have been sent with news too big for them. Sophie stood up beside me. She said, low, "Breathe, boy. Then say it." He said, gasping, "Ma'am. The Alpha's mother. Little Mona. In the herb garden at Lady Lyra's house. She — her hand — a leaf caught fire — nobody was hurt but she is not stopping crying, ma'am, and Lady Lyra says please come, please come now." I set the trowel down carefully in the dirt. My knees were stiff. Sophie helped me stand. She was already reaching for my cloak from the low bench. She said, "I will send word to Derek. Take my horse. He is the faster one this year." I did not argue. I took Sophie's horse. I rode. The day was mild and gold and the last of the summer flowers were still along the l

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-One

Mona's POVThe second lesson broke both of us, and it was the moment I understood I was teaching a different kind of student than I had ever taught before.She came into my study the next morning at exactly the hour we had agreed on. Her braids were tighter than the day before, the way a child braids her hair when she wants an adult to think she has been very serious about the day. She was carrying her stuffed rabbit. She was carrying a small folded piece of paper on which she had, in careful ten-year-old handwriting, written out the first lesson from the day before as if it were a school assignment. I am not the fire. I am the person who chooses what the fire does. That is the whole lesson. She placed the paper solemnly on my knee. She sat down on the rug. She said, "Grandma. I am ready for the second lesson." I looked at her small, neat, terrified face, and I understood. Kael, at fifteen, had come to me as an instrument that needed to be tuned. Little Mona, at ten, had come to me as

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