A Hatred Most Pure novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: The Reckoning
In the great hall Ansel reads his terms aloud in front of the whole hold, catches a stone thrown at her, and orders her to his chamber.
The great hall of Dunmarrow had a roof of black beams and a fire pit long enough to roast four oxen.
They marched me down the middle of it with my hands tied in front of me.
Every Urekai in the hold had followed us in.
They filled the benches and the aisles and stood three deep against the walls, and the only sound was boots on stone.
Ansel stepped up onto the dais.
He did not sit in the tall chair behind him.
He stood beside it with his gloved hand at his side and looked down at me.
An old woman with white braids to her waist moved out of the front row, leaning on a staff.
"The Alpha has brought a Saltmarsh wolf into the hold," she said, for everyone. "Let the hold hear why."
"Cora Tarrant," Ansel said. "Daughter of the Beta of Saltmarsh. Eighteen years ago she led the pack children who worked my people to the bone, and she was first among them in everything cruel."
Nobody in the hall moved.
"On the night of the first frost, those children shut an Urekai boy in the ice house." He said it evenly. "He was ten years old. He was found at dawn with his hand frozen to the bar."
The old woman turned to me.
"Do you deny any of it?"
I looked at the benches.
There were children in the front rows, small ones, in black wool and bare feet.
"No," I said.
It came out hoarse.
"I did what he says. I took his shoes. I pushed him off the pier. I called him names every day, and the other children did it because I did it." I swallowed. "I don't deny any of it."
A murmur went along the benches, and then stopped.
Ansel's eyes had not left my face.
Something moved in them, quick, and was gone.
"Then hear the terms," he said.
He held up one finger.
"She sleeps in my rooms, in my bed, from tonight. Anyone who wants her gone from this hold will take it up with me."
A second finger.
"She does not pass the gate unless I am beside her."
A third.
"Every night before I touch her, she tells me one thing she did to me. Out loud, in full, and she does not lie."
The old woman beside me stiffened.
"And she is mine," Ansel said, lower. "In this hall and in that bed. She will pay what she owes where I can hear every payment."
He said it to the whole room.
Heat went up my neck, and I hated that it did.
A woman in the third row stood.
She was young and thin and she had a baby on her hip, and her face was twisted.
"He's not the only one," she said. "My brother was in that yard. They fed him fish heads."
She threw the stone before anyone could stop her.
It was the size of a fist, and it was coming at my face.
Ansel's gloved hand shot out and caught it an inch from my cheek.
He didn't look at it.
His fingers closed, and I heard the stone crack.
"Only I punish her," he said, and let the pieces fall.
The woman sat down shaking.
He came down off the dais and took me by the elbow.
He walked me out through a side door and up a stone stair, and neither of us said a word until he shut a door behind us.
It was a big room with a bed in it, a black stone hearth and a window cut into the mountain.
The bed was wide, and there was only one.
He turned me by the shoulders to face the light.
"Arms out."
"What?"
"You've hidden a knife in your boot and bread knives in your sleeves for eighteen years. Arms out."
I held my arms out.
His hands went over me, quick and impersonal.
Down the outside of each sleeve. Across my ribs, one side then the other. Along my collarbone, where his thumb stopped on the hollow at the base of my throat.
His hand was warm through my shirt.
His breath changed.
It was small and I wouldn't have noticed it if he hadn't been so close, and then his fingers went on, down my hip, and I told myself he was angry.
"No knife," he said.
"I don't carry one now."
"Why?"
"I'm tired." I pulled my arms in. "I told you."
He stepped back and looked at the bed and then at me.
His hands had gone behind his back. The left one was shaking again.
"Take off the coat," he said. "Then tell me what you did first."
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