Chapter 14: Terms

The river below the Cold Fork pack house was frozen at the edges and black in the middle.

I stood on the bank where Harlan had found me, with the coin cold against my collarbone and the king's sealed pardon in my hand.

It was a blank sheet in a real envelope.

The king had insisted, and I hadn't argued.

Torren lay somewhere in the pines behind me, in his wolf's skin, and made no sound.

The light went red over the water.

A lantern hung from a post at the end of the ice, and something white was tied under it.

I walked out to it slowly.

It was the night nurse's apron.

Under the knot, a card was pinned.

Look behind you, it said, in Harlan's careful hand.

I did not turn around.

I put my nose up into the wind instead, and my wolf did what I couldn't.

The apron smelled of lye and the nurse's sweat.

It smelled of nothing else, and that was wrong.

There was no pine soap on it, no old man, no milk.

Whoever had tied it here had worn gloves, and had gone hours ago.

Nobody was coming to this river.

"Torren," I said, not loud.

He was already moving.

I shifted on the ice and my coat tore off my shoulders.

My wolf took the bank in two bounds and the road in ten.

I ran up the mountain with the sky going purple and the cold burning in my lungs.

My son, I thought.

Nothing else was in my head.

My son.

The keep gate was open when I reached it, and the guards on the wall were shouting.

I went through the courtyard and up the stairs in the shape of a wolf, and nobody was brave enough to stand in my way.

The nursery door hung off one hinge.

I stopped in the doorway with my claws gouging the floor.

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