Chapter 11: The Button

Maddock did not touch the bars.

He stood a careful yard from them with his hands hanging at his sides.

He looked at me.

"My father is lying," he said.

"I know."

"He's lying about the coma. I sat with him an hour ago and watched his chest."

"It rose and fell like a man who is thinking about his breakfast."

"Then you saw what I saw."

"Why would he do this?" His voice cracked. "He's my father. He has never, once, hurt anyone."

I stood up from the cot and came to the bars.

"Three years ago," I said, "you stood at the Stone and rejected me. Who told you to?"

He flinched.

"He said you were unstable. That you'd talked in the fever about the Dacre murder."

His eyes went to the floor.

"He said grief had turned you, and you'd drag the pack into a feud. He said the Quist alliance would end it."

"Did you ask what I'd said?"

"No."

"Did you want to know?"

"No." It was barely a sound. "I was twenty-two, and I thought I was saving the pack."

"You nearly killed me."

"I know."

"No," I said. "You don't. You've never asked what it was like."

He looked up then, and his handsome face was grey.

I told him.

I did not weep or raise my voice, and I did not leave anything out.

When I finished, he had a hand over his mouth.

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