Chapter 16: The Night After

They burned the mark at dusk, in the yard, in front of both packs.

Four Ashfall wolves held Rhea face down on a plank table.

Her hair was cut short with a hunting knife, and her shoulder was bare.

The old Stonehollow elder in the gray shawl spoke the words that stripped her of the pack's name.

"No pack, no den, no Moon-given kin," she said. "Go as you came."

Kellan laid the silver iron against the crescent scar at the back of Rhea's shoulder.

The smell rose first, and then the sound.

It wasn't a scream.

It was her wolf, howling out of her throat as it was cut loose, one long note that rose and rose and stopped.

Rhea went limp on the table.

When they let her up she stood on her own feet, gray in the face, with the old mark gone to a shiny red welt.

Her eyes were empty.

No one spoke to her, and no one opened a hand.

She walked to the gate, alone, and the gate opened, and she walked out of it into the dark.

Dorian watched her go with blood soaking through a bandage at his side.

He didn't call after her.

I handed Lyra to Hester, who sat in the longhouse doorway with a bandage around her head and a scowl.

"Go away," Hester said. "Both of you. I've got her, I have a concussion and a cradle, and I intend to use both."

"Hester."

"I will sing to her. Badly. Go."

Kellan's house stood at the top of the yard, a long low cabin with a stone chimney.

I didn't remember crossing the yard.

I remembered the door shutting behind us, and the dark, and my back against it.

He stood a foot from me, breathing hard.

"You stood on that ledge with nothing on," he said.

"I didn't notice."

"I did."

I laughed, and it came out shaky, and then it wasn't a laugh.

I had been holding my body together for four days with my teeth.

I took hold of his shirt in both fists.

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