Chapter 18: The Mark

The Ashfall stone stood at the top of the ridge, where the trees gave out.

It was a single slab of white granite, twice my height.

A hollow was worn into the front where a thousand years of Alphas had leaned their foreheads.

Kellan carried a lantern and a folded coat.

I carried nothing, because Hester had Lyra and had threatened to follow us with a baby monitor if we took longer than two hours.

The moon was nearly full and as bright as a coin.

He set the lantern down at the foot of the stone and spread the coat on the frozen grass.

"No one comes up here," he said. "Not tonight. I asked."

"Good."

I stood in front of him, in the cold, in my own wool coat, with my breath smoking.

My old mark, the scar Dorian had left, was a ridge of dead tissue on the left side of my neck.

I pulled my collar back from it.

"I want it on the right," I said. "I don't want his under it or over it."

"Right side."

"And I want yours to be the first mark I choose."

He touched my cheek.

"You chose before," he said quietly. "Just not knowing."

"I didn't know anything. I was twenty-three and the Moon told me."

"Then this time you know."

I took off my coat and let it fall.

Under it I wore nothing.

I had decided that on the way up the hill, and I watched Kellan's face change in the lantern light.

"Elora."

"I'm twenty-six," I said. "I know what I'm doing."

"Christ."

He stripped in four movements, and then there was nothing between us but the wind.

His body was a map of old fights, pale scars on the ribs and the thigh and the long one down the jaw.

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