Chapter 22: Eyes Open

The moon was still full, and the Stone threw a long shadow across the frozen grass.

I climbed the ridge with Corbin a pace behind me. He still smelled of well water.

The Stone-keeper waited beside the slab.

She said nothing. She went and sat on a rock with her back to us.

"You can say no," Corbin said.

"I know."

"I mean it. If you cut this tonight, I'll walk down that path and stay out of your way."

"You'd be at the gate in the morning with a bucket," I said.

His mouth moved. "Probably."

I stood in front of the Stone for a while.

The Stone had heard me answer a rejection once. It had given my strength back on this same grass.

Now nobody was lying and nobody was hiding.

I was only a woman deciding.

"I want to ask you something," I said.

"Anything."

"If I seal this, you get no power. Not the seat, not the thread."

"You'd carry water for the rest of your life."

"Yes."

"And I'd still be the stronger wolf in every room we walk into."

"You already are." He said it plainly. "You were the first time you looked at me."

I laughed in spite of myself.

"All right," I said. "Put your hand on the Stone."

He did.

I laid mine beside it, close enough that our little fingers touched.

"I know who you are," I said. "I know the man in the clinic. I know the man at the door. I know the one with the buckets."

"I'm not choosing the one I wish you were. I'm choosing all of him."

"I choose this. I choose you."

The Stone lit.

The silver ran from me into him, and then it came back, thin and gold, out of his chest.

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