Chapter 18: Torin's POV

Torin's POV

My wife slept in the narrow bed she had slept in as a girl, with one arm flung over her head and her boots still on.

I stood at the window of her old room and watched her breathe.

I had said a cruel thing to her at dawn after our first night.

I had told her she looked at my throat like a hunter, and I had said it because I was afraid she did not want me.

She had wanted to kill me.

She had told me so in my own study, to my face, in a steady voice, and then she had put her mouth on my scar.

I did not know a man could be that sorry and that glad in the same hour.

She turned in her sleep and said my name.

It was not Lucian's name, and I stood a long while after that.

Then I went down the stair and took a sealed page out of my coat.

I had written it by the fire at Coldwater, the night before we rode.

It gave Dunmere the grain road for good, in my own hand and under my seal, whether I came back from Highgate or not.

It named my wife free of the year.

It named Hester to hold Coldwater.

I gave it to the Dunmere steward and told him to hand it to Bronwyn only if I did not ride home.

He looked at the seal and then at me, and said nothing.

I walked out through the gate in the dark.

The Redmere riders had made camp in the lee of the ridge.

There were two hundred of them, in a ring of low fires, and every man looked up when I came in.

"Alpha Harcourt?" I said.

A sentry pointed with his chin.

Ronan sat on an upturned bucket outside his tent with his arm propped on his knee.

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