Chapter 10: Stop

Hedda's POV

"It's a curse," I said. "The healer marked it ten years ago."

"The healer," my grandfather said, "lied."

We were standing in the archive with a page on the table between us and a ledger on the floor.

Torin had put himself against the wall by the door, with his arms folded, saying nothing.

"I don't believe it," I said.

"You don't have to believe it. You have to test it."

"How?"

"Say 'stop' to somebody and mean it."

I stared at him.

"In my whole life," I said, "nobody has ever stopped because I said so."

"Hedda." Bjorn's voice cracked.

"Nobody has ever heard you say anything at full voice and mean it."

"Every one of them was holding you down."

"Until you stood up at his table and said 'Granted.'"

The sentries.

Every wolf in the cold store looking at their boots.

Four men on a road, saying we were standing there, and then Hedda spoke, and then we were walking.

I felt cold from the scalp down.

"Come to breakfast," Torin said, quietly, from the wall.

"Say it to the hall. If it doesn't work, you've lost nothing."

"And if it does?"

He did not answer.

The Long Hall was full.

Sixty wolves sat at the long tables, Ridge and Saltclaw together, eating porridge.

My mother was ladling at the end of the first table.

The children were arguing about a spoon.

I stood in the doorway and listened to all of it, the clatter and the chewing and the chatter.

It was the loudest, warmest room I had ever been in.

I did not want to do it.

"Hedda?" the girl of nine called. "Come sit!"

I took a breath all the way down.

I looked at the room.

I meant it with everything I had.

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