Chapter 20: Not Alone

Ronan's POV

I woke at noon with a stranger's fear in my chest, and it was hers.

The bed beside me was empty.

I sat up, and the stitches on my ribs pulled, and I did not care.

The bond showed me what she was seeing: grey stone, a cold wind, a gatehouse with a hunter on every parapet.

She was walking toward it.

She was walking alone.

I got my trousers on and hit the stairs.

Jory was at the bottom with his arms spread.

"She said you would try this," he said. "She said to tell you she has a plan and you'd ruin it."

"Move."

"Ronan. She asked me."

"I promised her I would not cross a line in a circle," I said. "There's no circle. Move, Jory."

He looked at my face and stepped aside.

I took the Highwater wolves from the courtyard, forty of them still in their grey wool, and we ran.

The east pass was nine miles.

I ran it as a man and then as a wolf, and the wound opened twice and I kept going.

The whole way, I felt her heartbeat in my own chest.

It was steady.

It was too steady.

She was frightened, and she was holding it under, and I knew that trick because I had taught it to myself at fourteen.

The pass opened into a bowl of snow and black rock with the old Concord gatehouse at the far end.

On its steps stood Corvin Sterne in his grey coat, with the bearded captain beside him and the seven envoys roped in a line behind.

Catriona stood in the snow forty paces from him in her plain travelling cloak.

She held a folded page in one hand and the iron torc of Greyfell in the other.

"You came alone," Corvin said, delighted. "I wasn't sure you would."

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