His Loyalty Test Became My Pack's Funeral novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Redcliff

Corvin shows her Redcliff's gate, chained from outside, and her brother among the dead. A raven brings a note in Joss's hand.

I would not eat, sleep or sign anything until I saw Redcliff.

Corvin did not argue.

He had a horse saddled before the sun came up, and he rode beside me through the gray hours without once asking me to talk.

His warriors followed at a distance.

Two of them stayed behind to watch the boat landing, in case the rider in the hood came back.

The wrist mark burned every time Corvin's horse came within an arm's length of mine.

I kept my sleeve pulled down over it.

By noon the smoke was in my mouth.

The fortress stood on its red cliff the way it always had, but the roof of the great hall was gone.

Black beams stuck out of the walls, snapped off short.

Iron Hollow's host had camped in the field below.

They had not taken one brick.

They stood in rows along the road with their helmets in their hands.

I did not understand why until we reached the gate.

It was shut.

A chain as thick as my arm had been wound through both iron rings and padlocked.

The lock was bright steel, new and clean.

On the lock, stamped into the metal, was the Dawn Watch crest.

"Outside," I said.

My voice did not sound like mine.

"The chain is on the outside."

"Yes."

"Somebody locked them in."

"My men found it this way at dawn on the seventh day," Corvin said. "We had waited at the ford for six days. We rode up and heard nothing from inside for hours. Then the flag went up. Then the fire."

"You attacked the gate."

"We tore the gate open with horses." He pointed at the great links in the dirt. "Forty of mine went in to carry out the living. Forty-one did not come out."

He said the number plainly, so I would have it.

I got off the horse and walked through the broken gate.

The courtyard was black.

They lay where they had fallen, close to the walls and close to the doors, wherever they had tried to get out.

Four hundred wolves, the best fighters Dawn Watch had.

Many of them had burned in their human shapes.

I counted without meaning to.

I counted faces I knew from the training yard, from the supper tables, from my own wedding rehearsal.

Near the east stairs, face up, with a leather cord around his neck and a wolf's tooth hanging off it, was my brother.

I had given him that cord when he turned sixteen.

I knelt down in the ash and put my hand flat on his chest.

It was cold.

It had been cold for days.

I did not scream.

I heard something come out of me that was lower than a scream and it went on for a long time.

When it stopped, Corvin was standing three steps away with his helmet in his fist.

He had not come closer.

"Did your men do this?" I said.

I had to know.

It was the one question I had carried all the way from the city.

"No," he said. "But I won't tell you my men didn't kill any of yours that week. On day four your brother put a spear through three of my scouts on the ford road."

I looked at the boy in the ash.

"He would," I said.

"He fought well." Corvin crouched where he was, across from me, with the body between us. "He did not die by my hand or my order, and he did not die in battle. He died in a fire that someone chained shut, and somebody wanted it to look like my doing."

"The wounded who got out," I said. "Your riders carried them to the gate of Moonwatch."

"They were the ones we could reach before the roof came down."

"They screamed that the Alpha was dead."

"Did they?" His eyes narrowed. "My riders turned back at your walls. They did not hear it."

I thought of Sabine, with the water skin.

I pushed the thought away because it did not mean anything.

I thought of a man in a hood, smiling.

Then something small and black dropped out of the sky onto my brother's chest.

A raven.

It sat there on his ribs with its head turned, and it held out one leg.

A tube of oiled leather was strapped to it.

A crimson wax seal pressed into the end of the tube.

I knew that seal.

I had watched Joss press his signet ring into wax a thousand times, on a thousand orders.

My fingers would not work.

Corvin had gone completely still.

I broke the wax with my thumbnail.

Inside was a square of paper and a glass vial no longer than my little finger, packed in wool.

The vial was full of white powder.

The note was four lines in a handwriting I loved.

*Willa. You swore. Obey the seal.*

*Put this in his cup at the oath feast tonight.*

*Then come home to me.*

*J.*

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend