The Cursed Blood novel · Chapter 28 of 32

Chapter 28: Warden of the Gap

I got my boots on.

Conall got his trousers on inside out and didn't notice until the stones.

Nobody said anything about it. The honey elder looked at them for a long time and smiled into her tea.

The packs hadn't gone home.

They'd slept around the fires in their coats, and now they stood up in the gray light and turned to watch the warden house door.

The wardens brought them out together.

The man who'd been the Mardell Alpha, and his beta.

Shirtsleeves. Trousers. Boots.

No gold at his throat. No ring on his hand.

The high pass over the mountains starts at the far end of the Line, past the last stone, where the snow never melts.

To get there they had to walk the whole ring.

Every pack in the Greywater stood on both sides and watched them go.

Nobody threw anything. Nobody spat.

That was worse for him, I think. He'd have known what to do with spit.

The beta walked with his head down.

He passed Margaux at the edge of the ring.

He slowed.

She looked at him once, with her bare earlobes and her chin up.

He kept walking.

The man who'd been Alpha stopped in front of me.

The wardens let him.

He looked at my boots, and my wild hair, and the warden captain beside me with his trousers on inside out.

"You'll never be more than a kitchen girl," he said.

"Kitchen girls count what goes out the door," I said. "Go on. You're going out it."

The east-slope alpha cackled.

He went.

The gray brothers walked them to the last stone and stood there until they were two black dots on the snow.

Then nothing.

The old man sat down on his stool and rubbed his face.

"Now," he said. "The seat."

The Warden of Cinder Gap has a vote on the territory council. It had been empty eight years.

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