Chapter 9: The Oldest Law

The hall went off.

Half the pack was on its feet.

Somebody shouted that the Silverborn were dead, and somebody else shouted that they'd just watched one hold a silver ring.

Corbin came around the front bench toward me with his hand out, smiling.

"You heard my mother," he said. "Come here, Neve."

I looked at him.

I felt the cold white thing stir in my chest and come up behind my eyes.

He stopped walking.

He stood there in the aisle with his hand out, and his hand began to shake.

"Sit down, Corbin," Bram said, not loudly.

Corbin sat down.

He did it so fast that the bench skidded.

Someone laughed out loud along the wall, and this time nobody hushed them.

Imogen's smile thinned by a hair.

"Elders," she said. "The law is very clear."

"Then read it," Bram said. "Out loud. All of it."

The eldest elder looked at him for a long moment.

Then he sent a boy up to the loft for the book.

It came down in both the boy's arms, a huge thing bound in cracked leather, older than the hall.

The elder opened it on the table under the skylight and turned the stiff pages until he found the place.

He put on his glasses.

"The daughter of the high line," he read, "shall be wed to the Alpha of the mountain."

Imogen folded her hands.

Bram walked up to the table.

Nobody stopped him.

He put one finger on the page below the elder's.

"Keep going."

The old man squinted.

He read the next line silently, and his eyebrows went up.

"Out loud," Bram said.

The elder cleared his throat.

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