Chapter 19: Verity

The first wolf to fall was a child.

She was five or six, holding her mother's hand by the cellar bars, and her knees simply folded.

Then her mother went down beside her, and a man behind them, and a whole row of Iron Moon wolves.

All across the hall, the pack sank to the floor with their eyes rolling back.

The silver cord Verity had wound around the stone was glowing red, and it was pulling at every one of them.

"Stop it!" I shouted.

"I can't!" Verity was laughing and sobbing together. "It won't stop! It's mine, it's finally mine, I can feel it all!"

Her face was lit white from below.

The strength of four hundred wolves ran into her through her burned hand.

Her hair lifted.

Her eyes went huge and green and wild.

"Ilse," Wystan said, from the doorway, and his voice was thin. "It's drawing on the Silverfen wolves, too."

I turned and saw them going down along the walls.

I felt the draw reach for me.

The stone under my boots was warm.

Verity's cord was sliding across the floor toward my wrist.

I thought of the bridge, and the pull in my arm, and six years of sleeping through the afternoon.

I thought of what my wolf had told me in the ring.

*She can only take what you give.*

But these were not mine to refuse.

They were four hundred wolves who couldn't say no.

"Then I give it," I said.

Joran, on his hands and knees by the stone, lifted his head.

"Ilse. Don't."

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