Chapter 23: Rise

Two hundred northern wolves stepped over the line of the Stones.

Nobody on our side moved.

The older Silver Claw elder stood in front of me with the iron key held out in both shaking hands.

"Princess," he said. "Say it. We would rather have you."

I looked at Rhys.

He didn't speak.

He had given me this choice with no hand on the scale, and he stood in a plain coat and let me make it.

I took the key.

"Mine," I said.

The iron went white in my fist, and frost ran up my arm and into the ground.

Behind the elder, two hundred wolves of Silver Claw felt it in their bones.

They went down on one knee together, two hundred boots on the frozen ground.

Ice ran out across the valley in a circle, and in a breath it had reached the northern ranks.

Every paw and boot in that pack stuck fast.

"Break the truce and the Stones break you," said the oldest Ice Moon elder.

His voice rang off the pillars. "You camped here ten days early. You sent blades into a hold at the Midwinter peace."

"You drew steel inside the ring."

"By the law of the three packs, an Alpha who does that forfeits his voice and his sword for twenty years."

The northern Alpha tried to lift the black blade.

My frost took his wrist.

He roared and struggled, and for a moment he looked at his own pack for help.

None of them looked back.

A young northern wolf stepped out of the ranks and cut the torque from his throat with a hunting knife.

"We buried a queen's whole house for you," he said. "We're done."

The Alpha was still shouting when his own people carried him out of the ring.

I turned.

Silver Claw enforcers had Priscilla by the arms. Her hair had come down.

"Nora," she said. "Nora, please. We were girls together."

"We weren't."

"I'm your sister!"

"No," I said. "Your mother left over me, and you've hated me for it since you were born."

"I'm sorry for that. I never took anything from you, Priscilla."

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