Chapter 27: The Stones

Torin's POV

I went to the Stones alone, the evening before the Blood Moon.

The Elder had moved the gathering there himself.

The old law said a Luna's release was witnessed on the ground where the first Kensington had sworn, and Winifred had found the page.

They stood on a bald hill above the Pale River, twelve grey pillars in a ring.

I had run around them as a boy. I had been sworn in between them at twenty-one.

I came up the path at dusk with my hands in my pockets and my wolf quiet under my ribs.

It was not quiet for long.

Something in the air was wrong.

Then I saw the turf.

A thin bright line of silver was pressed into the grass just inside the pillars, a hand's width deep, running all the way around.

Roswell silver. I could see the stamp from where I stood.

My mother was kneeling at the north stone with a trowel, tamping the last loop down.

She wore gardening gloves and an old coat of my father's.

"Don't step on the wire," she said without turning. "You'll feel it for a week."

"Mother."

"I thought you'd come tonight."

She stood and brushed off her knees.

She looked tired, and older than I had ever seen her, and perfectly calm.

"The Elder has allowed this?" I asked.

"The Elder is an old man who sees what is shown to him. I have shown him a healer preparing a ground for a blessing."

"It's a trap."

"It's a ring, Torin. A ring holds a wolf in place for an hour. That is all it does."

She tucked the trowel in her coat.

"Camille's blood will not take. I knew that a month ago."

I stared at her.

"You told her it would."

"I told her what she needed to hear to carry my silver in her pockets."

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