The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: Trade

The hall waited.

It was the same quiet as the feast night, only this time I knew how my no sounded.

"No," I said.

The Alpha's smile didn't move.

"You'd leave your friend in the cellar to save your pride?"

"I'd leave her in the cellar for one morning to save every wolf on the Line." I looked past him at the long tables. "If I say it now, he's learned he can take anyone off the mountain on any night he likes. And trade them for whatever he wants."

"Clever girl."

"Kitchen girl," I said. "We count what goes out the door."

"Bring her up," I said again. "Let me see she's breathing. Then we'll talk about prices."

He thought about it.

I watched him think. He wanted the hall to see the baker, bruised and crying, so they'd see what saying no cost.

"Fetch her," he said to the two men by the cellar door.

They went down the stairs.

I stood with my black arms behind my back, holding completely still.

Then a scream came up the cellar stairs.

Then another one, higher.

The two men came up the stairs much faster than they'd gone down.

The first was holding his right hand against his chest. The palm was red and blistered.

The second was hopping, holding his boot.

"The door," he gasped. "Something on the door. It bit me."

And behind them, up the cellar stairs, at a perfectly ordinary walk, came Hettie Tolan.

She had a cobweb in her curls and flour still on her shirt from yesterday.

Her left thumb was bleeding.

"Oh," she said. "Hello, everyone."

"Hettie."

"Isla!" She saw my arms and her face crumpled. "Look at you. You're bleeding again. Why are you down here? It's salted."

"I came to get you."

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