Chapter 23: The Second Pact

"Yes," I said.

I said it across the whole length of the empty hall.

Ronan crossed the floor in a stride and a half and stopped in front of me.

"Yes to what?" he said, and his voice cracked in the middle.

"To the pact.

"Tonight, at the Altar, hand to hand, and in our own words."

The Court had gone to bed.

Only the candles remained, and the moon in the high windows.

It was a plain white moon now, small and cold, with no red in it.

Hester Quill had left a single silver bowl on the black stone.

It was the same bowl Lucian had carried across this floor.

I picked it up.

I felt the cold of it, and I remembered every hand that had held it.

"Not this," I said.

I closed my fingers around the rim.

The silver slumped and ran, and I let it pour out over the Altar.

It sank into the stone and left a bright seam.

Ronan watched it go.

"That's the last of it," he said.

"The last of it."

I took his left hand in my right.

His palm was broad and hot, and scarred across the knuckles where the chains had been.

"We make the terms ourselves," I said. "You first."

He took a breath.

"I won't keep you," he said. "Not in a tower, and not in a name.

"If you say go, I go, and I'll still be yours from wherever I am.

"I won't decide a thing that touches you without telling you first.

"And I'll never stand anywhere you can't see me."

My throat had gone tight.

"My turn."

"Your turn."

"Nobody bleeds for anybody," I said. "Not you, and not me.

"We say no out loud when we mean no, and we say yes the same way.

"I'll tell you when I'm afraid, even if I hate it.

"And you can have my throat, if you want it, any night you like."

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