From Ashes to Their Luna novel · Chapter 22 of 24
Chapter 22: The Kneeling Lawn
Nessa's POV
They came through the Stonepine gate in the morning light, two hundred people on foot, with their coats buttoned to the chin.
Kieran's pack stood back along the road and let them pass.
Nobody spoke. The only sounds were boots on gravel and the slow wheels of the Council wagon at the tail of the line.
I stood on the lodge steps in Kieran's coat, with his hand in mine.
Garson and Dalton came first.
They stopped at the bottom step and went down on both knees, together, on the stone.
"We came to say it where it counts," Garson said. "Not in our own pack house."
"Say it," I said.
He took a breath.
"I hit you on your ribs and your back and your thighs. I hit you where your sleeves would cover it. I did it for fourteen years, and for most of them I enjoyed it."
Someone in the crowd made a low sound.
"I put you against the wall on your birthday," Garson said. "I broke your arm when you were fourteen, and I told the healer you'd fallen from a ladder."
He kept going.
He named every one he could remember, and there were more than I would have guessed.
His voice shook at the start and steadied in the middle. By the end he was only reading from a list in his own head, with his eyes on the stone.
When he stopped, nobody clapped, and nobody forgave him.
"That's the account," I said. "It stays on you."
"I know."
"You'll get no pardon from me today."
"I didn't come for one."
Dalton was crying so hard he couldn't speak, and I let him stay there on his knees.
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