Chapter 10: Conrad's Night

Conrad's POV

I had counted them every night for forty years.

One hundred and sixty dead at Ashfen, and eleven other packs besides, and every name I had ever been given.

I knelt on the old wall with my coat gone and my throat bare, and I did not feel afraid.

I felt relieved.

Saskia stood ten paces off with the wind pulling at her hair and the silver dagger in her hand.

She was the first thing in forty years that had made my wolf go quiet.

She was also the one person who had every right to end me.

"Do it," I said.

She walked toward me slowly.

I watched her boots stop on the stone in front of my knees, and I lifted my chin.

The blade came up under my jaw.

It was cold, and it did not shake.

"You counted them," she said.

"Every one."

"You stood at that gate waiting for a girl to come."

"Yes."

"And the whole time," she said, "my father was killing them on the road."

"Yes."

The point pressed in, and a bead of blood ran down my neck.

I heard her breathe.

Her scent reached me with the wind, rain and cedar and something warm beneath, and my wolf lay down in my chest and stopped fighting.

I had never learned the word for what she was to me, or maybe I had known it since the steps and refused to use it.

"Do it," I said again, more gently.

She did not.

The dagger dropped from my throat. I felt the cold go away.

She took my hand, turned it palm up, and laid the dagger across it.

"I came here to kill the man who burned my mother's house," she said.

"Then I watched you catch a blade in your bare hand. I watched you go silent in a cell when you heard how many. I can't do it."

"Saskia."

"I'm not saying you're clean. You lit the match. My father put the oil in your hand." Her voice cracked. "Don't ask me to forgive you tonight."

"I won't."

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