Chapter 21: Her Oath

I would not swear until I knew he would live.

The Stonebrook healer worked on him for three hours in the clinic, stone sober, with Odessa standing over him holding a lamp.

I sat on the floor in the hall outside with my back to the wall and Bryn's head on my knee.

My fever had climbed again, and I counted my breaths to keep from fainting.

When the healer came out, his sleeves were red to the elbow.

"The blade slid off a rib," he said. "A finger to the left and he'd be dead. He'll live, and he'll be a bear about it."

I put my face in my hands, and nobody said anything.

"Now you," Odessa said gently.

"Not yet."

"Thea."

"I want him awake."

"He told you not to wait."

"I know what he told me," I said. "I'm not doing it in the dark with him on a table."

Odessa looked at me for a long moment.

Then she nodded.

"Morning, then," she said. "I'll tell the pack."

By morning, the hall was full again.

Two hundred Stonebrook wolves stood shoulder to shoulder, and behind them, along the back wall, stood forty Redcliff faces I knew.

The old man from the wire was there with his hat in his hands.

So was the tall young warrior, and the woman who had left her mother in the east row.

They had walked in at dawn, without anyone sending for them.

I stood on the dais in a borrowed shirt, held up by Bryn's shoulder.

Tobias lay on a cot at the foot of the steps, wrapped to the neck, gray-faced, with his eyes open.

He had insisted on being carried in.

I did not look at him.

I looked at Odessa.

She stood in front of me in her best coat, with her braid pinned up and her stick in her left hand.

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