Chapter 14: Walk

The smith lit his forge in the yard at dusk, because I had said tonight.

The whole pack stood around it in the cold.

Torches burned on the walls, and the iron lay in the coals until it turned orange.

Osric stood in the middle of the yard with his sling off and his good arm held by two guards.

He had stopped screaming an hour ago.

Now he only shook.

"Niece," he said. "Queen. Your Majesty. Anything. I'll give up the Beta's seat. I'll go north and never come back."

"You held a knife to my mother's life for twenty years," I said. "Your daughter used her to practice on."

"I never touched her!"

"You watched. You counted the throws and laughed at the misses."

The pack was silent.

A woman near the front wiped her face.

An old thrall beside the stable door, who had carried water for this pack for forty years, was standing with her chin up.

I had never seen her stand like that.

"Cuff him," I said.

The smith took the red iron out with his tongs and looked at me.

I nodded.

He clamped the first band around Osric's right wrist and brought the hammer down.

Osric made a sound I had waited my whole life to hear.

The iron hissed on his skin.

He sagged against the guards, and the smith closed the second band, and the pack of Greyhollow watched it done.

Nobody spoke for him.

Nobody had spoken for my mother either.

I left before he stopped weeping.

My mother lay in the healer's room with the wolfsbane green under her skin.

The healer had cut the wound clean and packed it with moss.

It was all she could do.

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