Chapter 40: The Hunter's Moon

Thea's POV

The ring at Greywater lay on a flat shelf of ground beside the lake, a hundred feet across.

A grey hemp rope ran around it, hung on iron stakes, with a torch at every stake.

Beyond the rope, three packs stood shoulder to shoulder on three sides.

The Nine sat in a covered stand on the fourth.

I had never seen so many wolves in one place.

I stood at the rope on the Keep's side, with Brigid at my left and the Elder at my right.

Behind us, the Keep's wolves who had stayed stood in a silent line.

There were fewer than I had hoped.

There were more than I had feared.

"Your hands," Brigid said, low.

I opened them.

I had been trying to light my palms since we reached the stakes.

Nothing came.

The fire had gone out of me the moment I stepped to the rope.

My hands stayed ordinary and dark.

"The wards," the Elder said. "They are very good."

"Hamish bought them."

"Hamish builds everything well."

Across the ring, on the Greywater side, my mother stood in her grey coat.

Her gloved hand was at her breast.

Daphne stood beside her.

She had her scarf wound twice around her neck, and her face was white.

She looked at me across a hundred feet of dirt and nodded once.

Isla stood at her other side.

Her hands hung at her sides.

For the first time since I had known her, she was not holding anyone's sleeve.

Ewan came in by the front gate at moonrise.

He wore no coat and no shirt, and his boots were laced to the knee.

The scar through his eyebrow stood out white in the torchlight.

He did not look at me.

He walked straight to the middle of the ring and stopped.

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