Chapter 18: Kneeling

By morning, every wolf in Ironwood knew what I was, and none of them would meet my eyes.

I walked out onto the porch of the Harrowgate house at sunrise and found the pack square full.

Two hundred people stood in the frost in their work clothes, and nobody spoke.

Bea came out behind me in a borrowed coat.

She still looked thin, and she moved like someone who had been ill.

But there was color in her face, and she held her own elbows.

"You don't have to go out there," she said.

"Yes, I do."

"Then I'm coming."

We went down the steps together.

The crowd opened ahead of us without a word, all the way to the old speaking stone.

The pack ledger sat on top of it, green and heavy, with the pen beside it.

Ivo stood at the far edge of the square, by the well, with his jacket back on and the horn gone down.

He had sat outside the cellar door all night, and Bea had stepped over his boots at dawn.

I had told him to stay at the back.

He had.

"Cassie."

Zachary came out of the crowd.

He was in the same thin jacket, and his face was gaunt, and he walked straight up to the stone.

Then he knelt on the frozen ground in front of me, in front of everyone.

A soft sound ran around the square.

"I'm not here for Bea," he said.

His voice carried.

"I came to the gate at Cinderfall and asked you to fix her. That wasn't an apology. That was another favor."

"Yes," I said.

"I want to say the whole thing. Not at a gate. Here, where I said the first part."

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