Chapter 11: The Rumour

Every face on the summit turned to me.

I could feel their eyes.

Auden started to get up off the rock. I pressed him back down with one palm on his chest.

"The Moon showed me," I said.

It was the only answer I had that wasn't madness.

Piers laughed.

It was a short, ugly sound, and it carried.

"The Moon doesn't show a girl a man's knee," he said. "A bed does."

The silence after that was the worst sound I'd heard in either life.

Then a murmur started at the back of the crowd and rolled forward.

I saw two court ladies put their heads together.

I saw one of the Alphas look from Piers to me and raise his eyebrows.

"Say that again," Auden said.

He was on his feet now, naked and bleeding, and his voice had dropped into something I'd never heard from him.

His eyes were pure gold.

"Say it again, Piers. Say it to me."

"Enough."

The King's voice cracked across the summit.

Everyone flinched. Even Piers.

"The Run is won," the King said. "The Claiming goes ahead. The Council has said it, and I've said it."

He looked at his eldest son.

"Go and get your leg seen to."

Piers held my eyes a moment longer.

Then he picked up the cloak from the ground, put it round his shoulders and limped away down the temple road.

He didn't need to say anything else.

He'd already said it to three hundred wolves.

By morning, the whole of Silverlake had heard.

I heard it myself at the bakery in town, from two women who didn't know my face.

"Since she was sixteen, apparently."

"In the boathouse."

"And now she's throwing him over for the baby brother, after he's had his fill."

I put my bread down on the counter and walked out without it.

My father was waiting in the living room when I got home.

He was standing at the window with his back to me.

He didn't turn around.

"Sit down, Elspeth."

I sat on the velvet sofa.

The same sofa.

"I've known you every day of your life," he said. "I've never once known you to lie to me."

"I haven't."

"Then tell me how you knew about his leg."

He turned around.

He looked ten years older than he had a week ago.

"Because if you've been with him, sweetheart, I don't care. Do you understand? I don't care."

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