Chapter 8: The Hollow

Torin's POV

I had not walked the north face in eleven years, and I had not walked it with anyone.

The path was a goat track cut into the cliff, loose gravel on one side and a drop on the other.

Wynn went ahead of me because I told her to.

I did it so I could watch her feet, and I told myself that was the only reason.

She wore her own boots and her own worn canvas jacket, and she had a flask of the housekeeper's tea tucked into the pocket.

She did not look back at me once.

At the first switchback her foot slid on the gravel, and my hand came up before I could stop it.

It stopped an inch from her elbow.

She caught herself on the rock and turned her head.

She looked at my hand, hanging in the air, and then at my face.

"You didn't touch me," she said.

"You didn't say."

"I would have fallen."

"You didn't fall."

She studied me a moment longer, and then she turned and went on up the path, a little slower than before.

I let my hand drop.

My father took women.

That is what I would have told her on the first night, if I had not been a coward.

He kept them in a stone cell under the Keep, and the Alphas called it an honor.

When he died, I walked down there on my first night as King.

Nine women were in the cells.

The one in the first cell asked me, before she asked my name, whether her children were warm.

She had a girl of thirteen and a baby boy.

I did not know yet that the girl would one day stand at my gate.

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