Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 61 - Chapitre 70

CELLA"Your lord's riders are not that quick." This is Darian, from the head of the table, in a voice like a drawn blade. "The attack began at dusk. It is barely an hour past. Ardentis lies two days' hard ride from this gate. Either you left before the first torch went out, Captain, or you have wings."The captain turns toward him with perfect courtesy. "Alpha Veylour. I would not presume to speak for the hours my lord keeps. He sleeps little, and his scouts watch every road, and he was uneasy about the safety of his daughter. That is all I know.""That is not an answer.""It is the one I was given, my lord."There is a silence in the hall, thick and strange. Fennick, by the hearth, is watching the captain with the bright, calculating attention of a man who smells opportunity, and Mira's hands have gone still on the table. At the far end of the room, just inside the doors, I see Aeden. He did not come to the council earlier. He has come now, and he stands very straight against the wal

CELLA"Silverroot holds a different view." Darian has come a step forward. "I will say it plainly, since the council seems to prefer plain speech tonight. A man was marked defending this house. Peren of my own pack is alive because of him. I will not see him sealed in a cell for the wound he took doing it." He turns his head, and for the first time since the yard his eyes meet Aeden's across the length of the hall. "But neither will I pretend the marking is nothing. Virell. Will you submit to a guard?"I watch Aeden. I watch the whole of him, the muscle jumping in his jaw, the careful, terrible stillness. I cannot read what passes between the two men in that long, silent look. I only know it is not what I would have expected, and that there is no contempt in it."To yours, Alpha," Aeden says. "To no one else's.""Then it will be mine." Darian turns back to the council. "My wolves hold his door tonight, and answer to me alone, until the matter is heard in full at dawn. That is my offer

AEDEN"I have heard you tonight." Her voice shakes, and steadies. "I heard you at my door ten minutes ago. It had your voice and your hesitations and the very catch you get on my name. It called me love. Don't tell me what you remember, Aeden. It remembers it too. It has been living in the same house as you for a week." A breath. "Tell me what you haven't told anyone."Behind me, I feel Darian go still."There are people here," I say."I know. I can hear them breathe." No pity in it, and no cruelty either, only a terrible, steady gentleness. "Tell me anyway. It could not say the true thing. It would not know how. It wants me to open this door, and the truth is the one thing that would keep it shut."I close my eyes.I think of every way I could do this. I could give her half. I could give her the shape of it with the edges sanded down, a confession fit for a council. I could give her the thing Simon already guesses. Every one of those is a lie I would be telling in front of witnesses,

CELLASomething hot and furious goes up through my chest, and I do not remember rising, only that I am on my knees with both fists against the wood and my voice has come out ragged. "You told me you wanted to be asked. I said I wanted the same. And the first thing you do, with all of this behind us, is decide on my behalf which prison I would rather live in.""It isn't a prison, it's...""Do not tell me what it is. I have lived in the other kind. I know the architecture." I take a breath that shakes. "I will not be moved out of the way, Aeden. Not by my father. Not by you. I do not know what you are becoming. I do not know what it is that listens when you sleep. But I know what I have seen. I have seen you stand in a yard with the blood of a dozen things on you and look at a boy as though you were afraid of him, and I do not flinch from that. I never will. So do not ask me to."For a long moment there is only the sound of his breath on the other side of the wood."Cella.""Count.""Ce

AEDENI do not remember crossing the yard.I remember the practice stick lying where the boy dropped it, still rocking a little in the wet. I remember the gate bell going on and on in the stone, and the last of the gold light sliding off the flagstones like water off a tilted tray. Then Cella is standing in front of me with a grey-sealed paper in her hand, at the full width of a room, and Darian has come to stand at my shoulder as the council ordered, within arm's reach of us both. She wears the look I have learned to dread. It is the look of someone about to be kind."Tell me quickly," I say. "I would rather have it quick."She reads it aloud. She does not soften a word of it, and I am grateful. The envoys will come a day early. Alpha Ardentis comes in his own person, with his household. And the Lady Crystal Ardentis, who has been returned to his protection after a long illness, and who has given testimony touching the vision of the man Virell.Darian does not move. It is a particula