Chapter 5: Married Another

I didn't turn around.

I could smell him from where I stood.

Oak sap and cologne and the stale heat of a car driven all night.

"Wynne, look at me," Gareth said. "You don't know what you're doing."

The princess's face didn't change.

"Councilor Stowe," she said, without raising her voice. "This is the King's gate, and it stays shut."

"That's my fiancée."

"That's my translator. And in about two minutes she'll be the Eastmarch Alpha's wife."

The bars rattled.

He had both hands around them.

"He's the Butcher of the Pass! He crippled me! Wynne, he'll take you over the mountains and you'll never be seen again."

Alaric's hand was still bound to mine.

He didn't look at the gate either.

He looked at me.

"Your choice," he said quietly, in Eastmarch. "Say stop, and I walk back over the pass."

"No one in my packs will blame you. I'll tell them the Kingdom's women are wiser than its men."

"Do you want me to stop?"

"I want you to choose," he said. "That's what you told me you came for."

I looked at our hands under the red cord.

Then I said the second vow.

"I bring no debt to your door and take none from it."

"Wynne!"

"I bring no debt to your door and take none from it," Alaric said.

The princess switched to our own tongue for the last of it.

"Before the King's gate and the Eastmarch wolves, is this done freely?"

"Freely," I said.

"Freely," said Alaric.

"Then it's done."

She unbound the cord.

One of Alaric's wolves stepped forward and held out a small leather pouch.

Alaric shook a ring into his palm.

It was a plain band of dark iron, forged by hand, with a single wolf track stamped into it.

"Mountain iron," he said. "It doesn't shine. It doesn't break either."

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