Chapter 16: The Border Road

Lucan's POV

I went up the pass road on foot, because a horse would have told them I was in a hurry.

My guards were a quarter mile behind me.

I had told them to stay there.

Eloise's seal sat in my coat pocket against my ribs, where she had pushed it back into my keeping, and every step I took I felt its small weight.

She had said she would ask for it when she wanted it.

I had not known until then how much I wanted her to leave it with me.

The road narrowed where the border stones began.

On one side the slope fell to the river, and on the other, a cut of shale rose twelve feet.

Seven men stood in the road.

Six wore Kestrel jackets and carried short iron bars, and one stood in front of them in a good wool coat with a gold ring on his hand.

Dalton Hartridge looked as though he had not slept in two days.

His eyes were red, and his shirt was buttoned wrong.

"Thorngate," he said.

"Hartridge."

"You took my wife."

"She signed the book and left you," I said. "Four hundred people watched her do it."

"You marked her." His voice shook. "On a river bank. You laid a hand on a woman who was about to be married."

"I did."

"I'll kill you for it."

"No," I said. "You will try."

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