The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 17 of 32

Chapter 17: Six Days

Nobody said anything for a long moment.

The ward hummed. Down in the pines, the beta's fires were smoking in the gray light.

"Six days," Hettie said finally. "That's the full moon."

"It's the end of the Trials," the old man said.

"It's the end of him," Margaux said. "Unless she goes."

I looked at Conall.

He was kneeling behind the ward with his bleeding hands flat on the rock, and he didn't look up.

"It's your bond," he said quietly. "Your call. It always was."

"I'm not going to accept."

"I know."

"I'm going to go and look at him."

"I know that too." He looked up then. "I'll walk you to the marker."

"The beta's men are between us and the marker."

"Then I'll walk you through them."

We went down the timber road in the full light of morning.

Conall. Margaux. Me.

The beta's men stood up from their fires as we came.

Thirty men in fur collars, watching a warden, a cursed-blood omega and their own beta's daughter walk down the middle of their camp.

Nobody stopped us.

The Alpha's order had been bring her down, and I was coming down.

The beta was standing by the biggest fire.

He looked at Margaux, finally.

It was the first time I'd seen him look at her in a month.

It wasn't a father's look. It was a man counting what she'd cost him.

She kept walking.

At the marker, Conall stopped.

"Noon," he said.

"Noon."

He didn't touch me. He just stood on the stone with his raw hands in his coat pockets and watched me go down into the valley.

The ground went dead under my feet.

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