Chapter 12: The Tin

Dorian came back at noon with a clay jar under his arm.

He'd left on foot and run both ways, and his coat was gray with road dust.

The Ashfall wolves had finished a long, strange morning of waiting.

Kellan had moved Rhea to the gate, still bound at the wrists, so that she stood in front of both packs when Stonehollow arrived.

It did arrive.

Behind Dorian, in a long line up the mountain road, came the Stonehollow wolves, three hundred of them.

They'd followed their Alpha.

He hadn't called them.

He walked straight through the gate, past his own people, past Kellan, and stopped in front of me.

His face was bloodless.

"I found it in the back of her wardrobe," Dorian said. "In a hatbox."

He held out the jar.

It was a plain clay tin with a cork stopper, no bigger than a fist.

I took it with both hands.

It was heavier than clay should be.

"Don't open it near the baby," Kellan said gently, behind me. "Silver dust. If the smell is strong, the baby will feel it."

"The baby's in the longhouse cellar with Hester."

"Still."

"Then I'll open it far from her," I said.

I turned to Rhea.

She stood very straight, with her chin up.

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