جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 360

POV: KADE ASHBORN“Two packs on a hill at midnight, and you ask us to trust you with the moon itself? Give me one reason, Wren Thorne, why I should not take my family and walk away tonight.”Old Brannic’s voice rang off the cracked stones. He stood at the front of the crowd with his arms folded over his scarred chest, his white beard stiff with frost, and a sleeping grandchild slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour. Behind him, hundreds of faces glowed red in the light of the ring. My ears still hummed from the horn. Three long blasts, as Wren had asked. Every wolf in two territories had come.They had come as wolves, silent and shivering, and one by one they had changed back into people. Now they stood in torn blankets and borrowed cloaks, Ashborn and Thorne and Vane, shoulder to shoulder and hating it. Nobody had been told anything. I had only said, Wren will speak. My wife stood on a fallen stone with the bound envoy at her feet. Her chin was high, and I could see her hands s

POV: KADE ASHBORN“I did not poison him, my lord. But I saw who wore my cloak that night, and you will not believe me when I say the name.”Hask said it with his old hands wrapped around a cold cup of water, in my study, at noon. I had questioned him for an hour. The councillors were crowded outside the door in a restless knot, and I could hear Tobren’s low voice, and Dorn’s hard one, and the constant rattle of Brannic’s spear butt on the floor. My eyes burned. I had slept for no more than a blink since the hill.But first, the cell.It lay at the bottom of the east tower, a round stone room with a drain in the floor and one narrow window. The iron door stood open on its hinges. The guard, a young Ashborn named Pell, sat on a bench in the corridor with Maren’s old apprentice fussing over his wrist. He looked grey and sick, and he kept saying the same thing. I only drank the tea.Selene walked the cell like a cat in a strange house. She knelt, touched the floor, and sniffed her fingers

POV: KADE ASHBORN“You are sending me after her because you want me away from you, Kade. Admit it. You think I am the one who burned the elder’s door.”Ronan said it in the stable at dawn, with his hand on a saddle and his jaw like stone. The falcon had come an hour before, its legs bloodied, with a scrap of paper tied to one claw. Wren’s writing, small and cramped. Ford attacked. Maren wounded. Map stolen from elder’s tower. They knew our road. Come if you can, but tell no one. I read it four times, and then I did something I had not done since I was a boy. I sat down in the straw and put my head between my knees.“I do not think that,” I said, when I could. “I think you are the best tracker in two territories. And I think you owe a debt you want to pay.”“That is true.” He gave a short, bitter laugh. “It is also true that Marrick said he saw the man’s hand, and I carried that man’s orders for years. If I were you, I would not trust me either.”“I trust you because you told us.” I st

POV: KADE ASHBORN“You are the Alpha, Kade. You are supposed to know what to do. So tell me why my hands are shaking, and why I want to run away from my own border.”Cody said it on the northern wall at dusk, with his back against the stone and a half eaten heel of bread in his fist. He was twenty, or nearly. Three weeks ago he had been a boy who did not look anyone in the eye. Now eighty wolves took their orders from him, and the weight of it showed in the hollows under his eyes.I sat down beside him. The wind blew cold across the pass, and below us, in the grey valley, fires glittered along the old road. Ashborn pickets. Thorne scouts. Brannic’s hardest warriors, camped in a ring like a necklace.“I do not always know,” I said. “I pretend. Usually it works.”“That is terrible advice.”“It is the only advice I have.”He gave a startled laugh. “Wren would have said something wise.”“Wren would have said, ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway.’” I smiled. “She says it to me every morning.”

POV: KADE ASHBORN“Kade, that is the Ashborn bone horn. Three short blasts. Wren is calling for help, and the sound came from the north, high in the mountains.”Cody said it on the northern wall, with the wind tearing at his words. I was already running. The blast came again, thin and clear across three valleys, and something in my chest answered it like a drum. Every wolf along the pass had stopped to listen. I saw them rising from their fires, heads lifted, eyes bright.“Wren needs us,” I said.“We cannot go.” Cody caught my sleeve. “If you leave, the packs split. Brannic and Dorn will take the east. The Conclave will walk through the gap. That is what they want.”“I know.”“You are the Alpha.”“I know.” I stared north until my eyes watered. “I promised her I would find her. I promised I would tear the mountains down.”“Then you have to choose.”“I know that too.” My voice cracked.I thought of the elder’s hand on my wrist. Hold her steady. She will want to run, and she must not. I